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Quoted from appended article:
["These are our commons, the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone are the only two areas in the whole United States that people see as our common areas," she said. "If you don't have that as a common public area free from commercialization, what do you have left?"]
Or restated slightly -- if we permit the Corporate Takeover of Nature, then surely the Corporate Takeover of Everything will follow.
Pasted below is an excellent public-land privatization article in which the author brings together a great many related public-land privatization topics. Unfortunately she left out the recreation user fee component entirely, but for many of you receiving this message, user fees are a privatization/commercialization component with which you are well acquainted. So here's the rest of the story.
Scott
PS... two excellent resources on this topic are "Privatization-Government for Sale" on AFGE's webpage and "Privatization of America's Public Lands" on our website.
--- begin quoted ---
Prospecting for Profits
By Kari Lydersen, AlterNet July 16, 2003
Yellowstone, the country's first national park, is home to more geysers
and hot springs than anywhere else in the world. Now it is seen as a
source of what could be described as organic gold. This "gold" would be
the microorganisms that live in Yellowstone's unique ecosystems - like
Thermus aquaticus, a heat-loving microbe discovered in the park's
Mushroom Pool in 1966.
One of Thermus's enzymes, known as the Taq polymerase, became the key
to the polymerase chain reaction technique for manipulating small
amounts of genetic material because of its ability to withstand high
temperatures. In the 1980s scientist Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize
for perfecting this technique, which has become a key component of
molecular biology, medical research and law enforcement, making
possible the practice of DNA fingerprinting.
Since buying the patent for the Taq enzyme for $300 million in 1991,
the Swiss drug company Hoffman-LaRoche has earned more than $100
million a year from it. Meanwhile Yellowstone and the National Park
Service have gotten not a cent from this windfall.
Over the past six years the cash-strapped park service has been
planning to change that, with a plan to allow companies to patent
microorganisms found in national parks and develop profit-sharing
agreements with the park service for their use.
In 1997, at Yellowstone's 125 birthday celebration, the National Park
Service and U.S. Department of the Interior announced the signing of a
Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the Diversa
Corporation, a San Diego-based company specializing in research in hot
springs. Under the plan Diversa would pay Yellowstone $100,000 a year
to extract biological tissues, sediment, soil, water and rocks from the
park and the park would get a small percent of royalties from any
products developed from this research. At the time of the Diversa
agreement signing Yellowstone also had at least 15 other similar
agreements in the works.
To many in the park service and the corporate world the plan seemed
like an ideal fit. Because of the small size of microbial samples -
usually an eyedropper or teaspoon of water - this kind of research was
not seen as overly invasive. And it could be a way to generate badly
needed funds for the park service.
But opposition to the plan quickly surfaced. Critics noted that while
Yellowstone should share in profits derived from its resources, the
patenting and royalty process creates the temptation for massive
prospecting of microbial resources in our nation's parks. And
Yellowstone's charter specifically forbids the commercial use of plants
and animals from the park.
"Allowing biotechnology companies to extract natural resources from the
parks for profit may affect the ability of the parks to serve their
inspirational and expressive functions," says a 1999 article in the
Ecology Law Quarterly. "In deciding to enter into the Diversa
agreement, the Park Service has framed the question as whether
bioprospecting companies should pay for the right to seek their
fortunes in the national parks. The real question, however, is whether
they should have that right at all."
In 1998 a lawsuit was filed by the Edmonds Institute, the Alliance for
the Wild Rockies, the International Center for Technology Assessment
and Montana resident Phil Knight against the U.S. Department of the
Interior alleging that the Diversa agreement violated various federal
statutes and environmental protections.
While research at Yellowstone and other parks has continued, as a
result of the lawsuit this and other CRADA agreements have been stalled
pending an environmental assessment study, expected to be released
sometime this year.
Patent Profit
Research in Yellowstone or other national parks is nothing new;
Yellowstone's first research permit for the collection of microbial
materials was issued in 1898 and hundreds of research permits are
granted by the park every year.
But the potential for corporations to patent the results of their
research and make massive profits off them appears to be escalating.
Already enzymes extracted from the hot springs are used for cleaning
industrial machines, making paper and beer and tenderizing meat, among
other things. And it has been reported that so far only one percent of
the microbes in Yellowstone's hot springs have been discovered.
"As the benefits of biotechnology have become increasingly visible, the
demand for bioprospecting has also grown," says the lawsuit. "This
increased demand places greater and greater value on places like
Yellowstone that have a high level of biodiversity, here greater
concentrations of genetic information offer the best chance of
discovering biochemical materials that may lead to important (and
commercially rewarding) projects."
On a large scale the physical process of prospecting for these enzymes
could have serious effects on the environment, especially fragile and
rare environments like Yellowstone's hot springs. And some see its
philosophical implications as even more disturbing - they see it as
nothing less than the privatizing and marketing of life.
"You say you're only privatizing microbes, which to most people are
what you find squooshed on the bottom of your shoe," said Beth Burrows,
executive director of the Edmonds Institute, a Washington-based
non-profit public interest group. "But then what's next? Privatizing
plants? Animals? Human beings?"
Privatizing Workers
While microorganisms are on the road to being privatized for profit, so
are the park service and forest service employees who are charged with
protecting the environments that are home to these microorganisms and
other diverse forms of plant and animal life.
Under a mandate from President Bush that federal agencies study at
least half of all potentially commercial positions for privatization,
thousands of park service and forest service jobs along with hundreds
of thousands of other federal jobs in various sectors are being
considered for privatization. According to the American Federal
Government Employees (AFGE) union, the largest federal employees union
in the country, 850,000 to one million jobs - or over half the federal
workforce - are likely to be privatized in the next few years. This
includes park and forest service employees as well as prison guards,
border patrol officers, veterans' healthcare providers and more.
In April National Park Service Director Fran Mainella announced that
900 park service jobs are already slated for immediate replacement by
private contractors, and in the coming months another 1,323 more jobs
will be privatized. These 2,200 plus jobs represent about 13 percent of
the Park Service's total workforce, according to the non-profit
watchdog group PEER (Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility). The bulk of these jobs are maintenance and
administrative positions, though hundreds of scientists, archaeologists
and environmentalists are also on the roster for privatization.
Privatization plans for the Forest Service were announced in early
July. Forest jobs being privatized include wildfire control, law
enforcement, environmental protection and timber production.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the next three years
thousands more park and forest service jobs will also be studied to see
if they can be more cheaply filled by private contractors. By the end
of fiscal year 2007, the forest service is expected to privatize 10,000
of its 44,000 jobs.
"This will be a fairly radical transformation of the way these agencies
operate," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER. "Ultimately it
will lead to corporations taking over management of our resources
altogether. They're proposing replacing career scientists with
consultants who will be primarily motivated by getting the next
contract renewed. So they are much less likely to report inconvenient
findings back to management."
Diversity Suffers
To add insult to injury, not only are the park and forest service
undergoing these cuts, but they are being forced to pay for the studies
to determine whether certain jobs should be privatized out of their own
already-strapped budgets. In a memo to the Assistant Secretary for
Policy, Management and Budget, the National Park Service Director noted
that the studies cost about $3,000 per job, for a total of $2.5 to $3
million to comply with Bush's mandate. The memo outlines how the source
of these funds has not been identified, and how park services will need
to be curtailed, during the busiest summer months to boot, in order to
come up with the funds. The memo also explains that the privatization
push will be a major blow to the park service's diversity, since a high
proportion of the jobs being studied are filled by women or minorities.
"In recent years we have sought to increase the diversity of our agency
workforce," says the memo. "These studies have the potential to impact
this effort, for example 89 percent of the jobs proposed for study in
the Washington D.C. area may affect the diversity of our workforce.
Studies in San Francisco and Santa Fe show large concentrations of
diverse [employees in jobs being studied] as well. This potential
impact upon this workforce concerns us."
Compromising Safety
The privatization means that thousands of well-paying, mostly union
jobs will be replaced by largely non-union private contractor
positions. Critics of the plan also fear that as is often the case with
privatization, it will mean a reduction in quality and thoroughness of
services, as companies cut corners to maximize their profits and keep
costs low to win bids for future contracts. For the park and forest
service, this could mean less maintenance work done protecting fragile
environments and the safety of parkgoers, and less effective
fire-fighting and other crucial services.
In just one example of how privatization is expected to compromise
safety across the spectrum of jobs, a June letter to Secretary of
Commerce Donald Evans signed by a number of Congressmen points out how
privatization of the federal seafood inspectors "would risk an increase
in the incidence of serious illness, death or other problems from
contaminated seafood or seafood that otherwise fails to meet inspection
standards."
The Congressmen acknowledge the fact that private contractors would
potentially compromise their performance in search of profit. "We would
add that utilizing private sector firms for this vital inspection
function would also at least raise the idea in the minds of some that
the inspection contractors could certify questionable seafood shipments
in order to maximize earnings," says the letter.
In a worst-case scenario, the privatization of park and forest service
jobs will dovetail with the search for profit from national parks,
whether through timber sales, increased tourism or the privatization of
micro-organisms. The same or affiliated companies that are seeking to
buy timber or explore and privatizate micro-organisms could also be
hiring the park employees who theoretically oversee the protection of
the environment.
"It's often true that companies that get contracts for environmental
protection are related to companies that are polluting, so it's a
conflict of interest," said Brendan Danaher, a policy analyst for the
AFGE. "We think if there's one thing that should remain under the
public sector it's protecting the environment."
Ruch notes that under the new structure, "you could have Georgia
Pacific National Forest - a park run by a timber company. There's no
reason why Walt Disney couldn't bid on managing the Everglades national
park."
Burrows fears the dual privatization of employees and micro-organisms
could open the door to out of control prospecting, patenting and
selling of micro-organisms (along with other forms of exploitation of
resources) with little regard for bioethics or protection of these
organisms and their often fragile environments.
Resistance Brewing
Between the unions, non-profit groups like PEER and various
legislators, there is plenty of resistance to the federal employee
privatization plan in general and the park and forest service
privatization specifically. In June U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) in the
House and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in the Senate introduced the Park
Professionals Protection Act, which would prevent the privatizing of
park and forest service jobs.
"The livelihoods of the ambassadors to the national parks are at risk
for the purpose of hiring individuals whose politics mirror the Bush
administration's anti-conservation priorities," said Rahall, adding
that it is a "bogus idea" to think outsourced contractors could do a
better job than career federal employees.
Reid said, "Our national parks were created to protect special places
in nature as a legacy to future generations. They should be managed for
posterity, not profit."
Burrows thinks that given the psychic and symbolic importance our
ever-diminishing areas of natural wilderness and beauty have for the
American people, not only are park and forest service employees and
micro-organisms in danger, but our culture and way of life as a whole.
"These are our commons, the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone are the only
two areas in the whole United States that people see as our common
areas," she said. "If you don't have that as a common public area free
from commercialization, what do you have left?"
Kari Lydersen, a regular contributor to AlterNet, also writes for the
Washington Post and is an instructor for the Urban Youth International
Journalism Program in Chicago. She can be reached at
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