Mysterious orange goo in Alaskan Arctic identified as tiny eggs

The mysterious orange goo that washed ashore at the northern Alaska village of Kivalina has made headlines around the world, seeming to vaguely portend some new sign of climate disaster or industrial mayhem.

Not so, though. Scientists for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at Auke Bay in Juneau took samples of the weird orange material that was found floating in the harbor in Kivalina, 625 miles northwest of Anchorage -- and also on beaches, in rainwater and in a river 150 miles away. They concluded it was no man-made nightmare at all.

Rather, it's a large mass of microscopic eggs, researchers concluded, quieting the international alarm.

"We now think these are some sort of small crustacean egg or embryo, with a lipid oil droplet in the middle causing the orange color," said Jeep Rice, a lead scientist at the lab. "So this is natural. It is not chemical pollution; it is not a man-made substance."

Rice said scientists were quickly able to identify a cell structure within the material once they put it under a microscope, meaning they could "identify this as animal."

What kind of animal? Not sure yet, nor can researchers rule out the possibility that the eggs might be toxic -- samples have been sent to a NOAA lab on the East Coast for further testing.

-- Kim Murphy

Photo: The weird orange substance that washed ashore near the northwestern Alaskan village of Kivalina and other areas isn't man-made. Credit: Mida Swan / via Associated Press

Arctic oil spill could prove tough to clean

 

Shell Exploration's plan for exploratory oil and gas drilling in the Beaufort Sea won conditional approval from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. One of the big questions now is what happens if there's an oil spill.

Agency officials are expected as early as next week to act on Shell's oil spill response plan, which conservationists say falls short of the mark for responding to an accident in icy waters, often shrouded in darkness, hundreds of miles from the nearest deep-water port.

Earlier this month, Canada looked at the same issue: How hard would it be to clean up an oil spill in the Beaufort Sea, which straddles the border between the two countries. The answer? Really hard.

Even in the "summer" season between July and October, when Arctic drilling normally occurs, true open water without ice occurs only 54% to 88% of the time, even close to shore, according to the report, prepared for the National Energy Board by S.L. Ross Environmental Research Ltd. of Ottawa.

Conditions can be so bad that no ice cleanup measures are even possible about 20% of the time in June, 40% of the time in August and 65% of the time in October, said the report, which measured typical temperatures, wave heights and ice patterns and how they might prevent the use of such responses as in-situ burning, containment  and application of dispersants.

After October, any active response would almost certainly deferred until the following melt season, the report said.

Drilling in Arctic waters? Scientists aren't sure if it is safe

 
Escalating oil prices and diminishing supplies around the world are focusing more attention than ever on the vast petroleum reserves under the Arctic seabed, and in the relatively pristine shoreline areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

The Obama administration is moving to speed up drilling where possible, but the nagging problem with a wholesale move into the Arctic is how much we don't know about the remote, fragile region. How much more drilling can safely be accommodated?

Can polar bears survive the twin threats of shrinking sea ice and greater ship traffic? What about fish stocks and an acidifying ocean? Bowhead whales might be able to migrate around new oil platforms, but will they be stressed out by drilling noise? And what if their food supplies are shrinking as well?

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in March 2010 ordered up a report on what we don't know, and need to know, about what is happening to the Arctic environment. This week, the answer finally arrived, in the form of a long-awaited new report from the U.S. Geological Survey on what science gaps need to be filled to safely carry on the march into one of the coldest and least-understood places on the planet.

"There is significant potential for oil and gas development in U.S. Arctic waters, but this is a frontier area with harsh weather conditions as well as unique fish and wildlife resources that Alaska’s indigenous people rely on for subsistence," Salazar said in a statement accompanying the report. "To make responsible decisions, we need to understand the environmental and social consequences of development and plan accordingly. This study is helpful in assessing what we know and will help inform determinations about what we need to know to develop our Arctic energy resources in the right places in the right way."

If you were waiting for answers, forget it. The 292-page report doesn't have them, but it does do a   decent job of laying out the questions. And they're big, USGS analysts say.

First, the effects of climate change have to be understood and then taken into account, the report says. Already, the number of days that seismic exploration vehicles can operate on the tundra without causing environmental harm (meaning over a protective layer of ice) has shrunk from 200 to 100 over the past 30 years.

Continued projections of even more accelerated sea ice loss "will ultimately affect nearly every aspect of the Arctic environment," the report says, because plants and animals there are so uniquely adapted to the specific extreme conditions that have been the norm until now.

"Energy activities may exacerbate those changes, unless careful analysis of risks and tradeoffs is conducted," the report warns, though it also recognizes that less extreme weather could reduce the chances of drilling accidents and spills.

Huge new boreal forest preserve in Manitoba

 

 
Efforts to combat climate change and diminishing wildlands have increasingly focused on the vast belt of northern forest that rings the globe south of the Arctic. The boreal forest is a vast repository of stored carbon and, in much of northern Canada, a pristine region populated by wolves and caribou along rivers still teeming with fish.

The forest in Canada's Manitoba province has been under threat in recent years by expanding hydropower development. A major new electrical transmission line has been sought through the wild woodlands east of Lake Winnipeg, a plan many indigenous residents say would threaten a region they have called home for thousands of years.

Now the government of Manitoba has granted permanent legal protection to nearly 2 million acres -- an area the size of Yellowstone National Park -- on the ancestral lands of the Poplar River First Nation people.

The "Asatiwisipe Aki Management Plan" is being celebrated by conservation groups across Canada and the United States, which see it as a crucial step toward protecting the boreal forest not only for the people of the Poplar River and the wildlife there, but as a hedge against a warming planet.

Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger said the Poplar River reserve, about 250 miles north of Winnipeg, is  part of a larger, 10-million-acre area being proposed for designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

"This is really important for us, because we do think it's a priceless world asset, and you only get one chance to do it right," Selinger said in an interview.

"What's unique about it is not only do the First Nations still occupy it, but it's intact. There's a complete ecosystem that generates clean water, oxygen; there's a huge storage of peat that's one of the most effective ways to store carbon dioxide."

Planning for the area was led by the Poplar River First Nation, which will now oversee its preservation and limited development. Other First Nation groups are preparing land-use plans for surrounding tracts that are part of the World Heritage Site proposal, but they have not yet advanced so far in the regulatory process.

New concerns in Congress over planned Keystone XL pipeline

 

With continuing spill problems on the Keystone pipeline carrying oil extracted from Canada's tar sands to the U.S., there are growing demands for a broader review before any approval of a second Keystone XL pipeline, proposed to carry the controversial product across the U.S. heartland to Texas.

In a letter this week to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson, 34 members of Congress urged the State Department to hold off on granting an international permit for the second pipeline until a range of potential concerns is addressed. Download letter from Congress

These include the possible heightened risk of pipeline spills as a result of the corrosive effects of tar sands oil and studying how importing a relatively carbon-intensive product such as tar sands oil fits with the Obama administration's goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and overall oil imports.

The proposed 36-inch-wide Keystone XL pipeline would run 1,711 miles from northern Alberta to Port Arthur and Harris County, Texas, transporting up to 700,000 barrels a day.

The State Department in April issued a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement looking at some of the concerns raised over the pipeline, which would cross one of the nation's major agricultural aquifers in Nebraska.

National forest rules face controversial overhaul

 

 
What would be the first major overhaul since the Reagan administration of rules for planning the nation's 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands is entering the homestretch -- comments are now in, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is promising a final rule by the end of the year.

Yet considerable disagreement persists over how thoroughly the U.S. Forest Service should be planning to protect viable wildlife populations and watersheds that, originating deep in federal forests, provide half the water supply to residents of the West.

The Forest Service in its proposed new rules aims at an "adaptive land management" strategy that will allow managers of the nation's 155 national forests to adjust for impacts such as climate change and the need to use forests as resources for not only timber but recreation, water supply, wildlife habitat, mining, wilderness and as building blocks of entire ecosystems. The rules focus not just on timber harvest, but forest restoration.

"It's a positive framework that will allow the Forest Service to more effectively restore our natural resources, support the economy and adapt to changing conditions," Harris Sherman, undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment, said in announcing the proposed new rule in February.

Hundreds of conservationists, scientists and federal lawmakers have called the proposed new rules a big improvement but say it's crucial that the Forest Service go several steps further in spelling out protections for watersheds and wildlife to ensure that the national forest system remains a bulwark to guarantee healthy wildlife populations and clean water.

"We have always maintained that our federal lands, our public lands, should be the front lines of healthy landscapes. They should be the front line of species conservation," Jamie Rappaport Clark, former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director, now with the Defenders of Wildlife, told reporters in a briefing organized by the Pew Environment Group. "But the rule is actually far weaker than the almost 30-year-old rule it would replace."

Timber industry representatives, on the other hand, along with several local officials and a group of former Forest Service employees, say the proposed new rules amount to micromanaging from Washington, D.C., instead of giving forest managers across the country the room they need to effectively manage forests in their own communities.

Budget rider would lift wolf protections in northern Rockies

 

When Congress passes the federal budget, it’s increasingly likely lawmakers will also be sealing the fate of wolves in the northern Rockies. An unrelated rider quietly attached by legislators from Montana and Idaho to the crucial spending compromise would for the first time in history allow Congress to cancel federal protections for an endangered species.

The recovery of wolves near Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and the surrounding ranchlands has been fought out in the courts for years. But never has the controversy come so close to a simple gunshot to the head as this week.

Not only is the budget rider a near done-deal,  requiring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Utah, but a federal judge in Montana over the weekend rejected a proposed settlement that might have provided the only momentum against a congressional coup de grace.

“This creates a very dangerous precedent for the Endangered Species Act,” said Josh Mogerman, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C.

“For the first time in history, Congress is removing a species … from the Endangered Species Act based on political, rather than biological, judgments,” the public interest law firm, Earthjustice, said in a statement.

Fight intensifies over West Coast coal exports to Asia

 

Plans for a major West Coast coal export facility-- the subject of an intense fight over greenhouse gases and U.S. coal supplies to Asia--took a new turn when Millennium Bulk Terminals Inc. announced it was withdrawing its permit for the facility near Longview, Wash.

The company -- faced with intense public opposition when it was revealed that it was quietly talking of building a facility up to 14 times bigger than it had publicly admitted -- said it will submit a new permit application to allow full public discussion of all development alternatives.

"To show our continued commitment as a good neighbor, we will do an Environmental Impact Statement to address concerns that have been raised about this project, and we will ensure that all parties continue to have a voice in the process going forward," Joe Cannon, CEO of Millennium, said in a statement.

He said the company will now do a full site capacity analysis to evaluate the effects of shipping a variety of commodities, including coal, aluminum and cement, "in various amounts."

In a reflection of the massive market demand for bringing Montana and Wyoming coal to Asia, plans for a second major export facility got underway last month in northern Washington state, 17 miles south of the Canadian border, where a company called SSA Marine is proposing to build the largest shipping, stevedoring and warehousing facility on the West Coast of the U.S.

The proposed Gateway Pacific terminal near Bellingham, which began environmental reviews on Feb. 28, already has agreements to ship 24 million tons of coal a year to Asia.

U.S. will do new studies on Keystone XL tar sands pipeline

The U.S. State Department will require additional environmental studies before granting a permit for the 1,660-mile Keystone XL pipeline, proposed to carry oil from the tar sands of northern Canada through the U.S. heartland and on to south Texas.

In an announcement Tuesday, department officials said they would open a new round of public comments on a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, to be released in mid-April, with a decision on whether to grant a permit for the controversial pipeline now expected by the end of the year.

Pipeline opponents have long called for new environmental reviews, looking especially at the ability of a standard oil pipeline to safely carry the diluted bitumen found in the tar sands of northern Alberta.

A study last month by three of the nation's biggest environmental organizations and the Pipeline Safety Trust warned of a higher risk of corrosion-related spills linked to higher levels of abrasives, temperature and acidity in tar sands oil -- claims that TransCanada, the pipeline builder, has rebutted. Download Keystone XL Fact Sheet TransCanada

Ranchers in Nebraska and surrounding states are also calling on the State Department to look at the possibility of a new pipeline route that would avoid a sandy, vulnerable area above the Ogallala Aquifer, a key source of farmland irrigation and drinking water that underlies eight states in the Great Plains.

Tongass in Alaska to get federal roadless protection

 
The federal rule protecting the nation's last remaining stretches of roadless wilderness will apply now to the largest and grandest of the national forests under a court ruling in Alaska, which threw out the exemption granted to the Tongass National Forest.

Ruling in Anchorage, U.S. District Judge John W. Sedwick invalidated an exemption crafted under the Bush administration that had been intended to boost the crippled timber industry in Southeast Alaska by allowing access to stands of timber in remote sections of the forest.

The Tongass, stretching over 17 million acres of emerald islands and azure waterways, has long been prized for its stunning stands of towering old-growth trees, which also are home to bears, wolves, salmon, bald eagles and other wildlife.

"The Tongass exemption reflected an outdated policy of building these extremely expensive roads into wilderness and remote areas of the Tongass just to log out the last valuable stands of old growth that still remained in the forest," said Tom Waldo, an attorney for Earthjustice, which helped argue the case.

Regulations protecting many of the nation's roadless areas, originally put forward under the administration of President Bill Clinton, have been batted back and forth in the courts for years. A special exemption was carved out for the Tongass National Forest, which had a management plan in place protecting much of its remaining old-growth trees and guaranteeing a supply of timber to the region's dying timber industry.