Update: November 8, 2006

ENDANGERED WHAT ?

By Pam Eastlick for THE DEEP on line

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

We have a long history on The Deep of being concerned about environmental issues.  I was cruising the net looking for topics for this week’s column when I stumbled across some very interesting news, especially with all the election hoopla.  (And if you haven’t voted yet when you read this column; GO DO IT!). It seems that there have been several instances where scientists who work for the Federal government have had their findings ‘edited’ by the government officials who received them.  There’s an ongoing controversy concerning findings about global warming that were given to the EPA, NASA and NOAA.  In 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency turned in a draft report to their federal bosses.  By the time the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget finished with it and hammered the E.P.A. into submission, a long section on the risks posed by rising global temperatures was reduced to a noncommittal paragraph.

Last month, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said he was informed that the inspectors general for the Commerce Department and NASA had begun "coordinated, sweeping investigations of the Bush administration's censorship and suppression" of federal research into global warming.”  And also last month, it was reported in the prestigious journal Nature that administrators at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration blocked the release of a report that linked hurricane strength and frequency to global warming.  James Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist, said last February that NOAA has tried to prevent researchers working on global climate change from speaking freely about their work.

I thought that was pretty interesting and then I stumbled across a report of trouble in the Fish and Wildlife Service.  It seems that Julie MacDonald, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the FWS has been accused of personally reversing scientific findings, changing scientific conclusions to prevent endangered species from receiving protection, removing relevant information from a scientific document and ordering the FWS to adopt her edits.  The report also pointed out that Ms. MacDonald is an engineer with no training in biology.

That’s some pretty heavy-duty accusations, but oddly enough, that’s not what really caught my eye about the article.  It went on to say that Ms MacDonald and other Interior officials personally edited scientific documents to change the list of species eligible for Endangered Species Act protection and it listed the affected species which included (among others) the greater sage grouse, the white-tailed prairie dog, the roundtail chub (a fish) and “a tree found in the Mariana Islands”.  As you can imagine, my eyes widened and my ears rotated forward when I read that paragraph.

Although I’m now the Star Lady, my training (unlike Ms. MacDonald’s) is in biology and specifically in island plants.  I could immediately think of two candidates for the mystery tree.  I knew it wasn’t Serianthes nelsonii because it’s already on the endangered species list.  I suspected that it was either Osmoxylon mariannense, which grows only on Rota, or a small tree called Tabernaemontana rotensis.  After some consultation with colleagues, and a little more Web research, I discovered that the tree in contention was Tabernaemontana rotensis.

It turns out that I’m very familiar with T. rotensis.  (The name, charmingly enough, translates from the Latin as “a mountain cabin on Rota”).  It’s a small tree usually no more than 10 to 15 feet high, related to the Plumerias, and it was for many years considered to be (literally) vanishingly rare.  We’ve discovered that the problem with T. rotensis is that it looks like every other small tree in the forest.

We’ve also discovered that like many plants in the Marianas, its flowering and fruiting is typhoon-mediated.  In the months immediately following a major typhoon, many plants flower and fruit to ensure their continued survival.  For a small understory tree like T. rotensis, leaf loss from taller trees opens a sunny window for the T. rotensis seedlings.

What distinguishes T. rotensis from all the other understory trees is its flowers.  T. rotensis has small white bugle-shaped flowers that look like pinwheels, but here’s the difference.  The ends of each of the five petals are twisted and no other flower in the Marianas looks like that.  After Typhoon Omar, I was a part of a team of biologists that discovered at least 30 previously unreported T. rotensis trees because their flowers made them easy to spot. Apparently the problem arises with where we found them.  True to its name, Tabernaemontana rotensis is found on Rota, but it’s also found on Guam.

Tabernaemontana rotensis

For many years, the only specimen known from Guam was desperately clinging to the side of a cliff on Naval Magazine.  But my biologist buddies and I found several T. rotensis trees on Northwest Field on Andersen Air Force base. 

An article on the Union of Concerned Scientists website (http://www.ucsusa.org) states “In 2000, FWS published a rule recognizing T. rotensis as a species and proposing to list it as an endangered species.  In April 2004, the decision to list was reversed because FWS decided to no longer recognize T. rotensis as a species.  Documents show that DOI made the decision not to recognize the species in response to comments from the Air Force.”  (Italics are mine.)

So the Air Force gets to decide which species are endangered and which ones aren’t, eh?  Apparently having an endangered species smack in the middle of prime Air Force territory endangers some of those Air Force plans that were mentioned but not elaborated on by a recent visiting general. Speaking as a scientist, this really bothers me.  Speaking as a permanent resident of the island of Guam, this really bothers me.  Does it bother you?

Cruise on over to The Deep Website at www.thedeepradioshow.com to learn more about political corruption in our own backyard and many other topics.  Enjoy!