Corporation increasingly are using their vast financial assets to privatize what remains of our public lands. The Los Angles Times recently published a major article on corporate funding of National Forests and the reality of corporate decision-making regarding the nation's public lands. The example cited is the San Bernardino National Forest, where the non-profit San Bernardino National Forest Association has raised $1.3 million for the forest from corporations.

Sound too good to be true? It is. American Honda Motor Company is a major contributor, having given $250,000 to the association. Not surprisingly, its off-highway vehicle resources coordinator is a board member of the association. Also not surprisingly, Honda has played a key role in designing the Forest's 204-mile off-road vehicle trails, and in promoting the environmentally-destructive OHV "Enduro" race, involving more than 200 motorcycles ripping through trout streams and other sensitive habitat.

Corporate gifts instead of corporate taxes.

American Honda is one of numerous motorcycle, OHV, motor boat, jet-ski, and snowmobile manufacturers that, along with petroleum companies, sporting equipment manufacturers, and commercial resorts, make up the membership of the Amercian Recreation Coalition (ARC). ARC opposes any taxation on recreation equipment and supplies to provide additional funding for Federal public lands, and instead advocates user fees to provide funding so that facilities for mechanized and commercial recreation will be improved.

ARC was the author of the Federal Recreation Fee Demonstration Program enacted for a 30-month trial period by the 104th Congress via a rider to the 1996 Department of Interior Appropriations Bill. ARC also succeeded in getting another rider attached to the just-enacted 1999 Department of Interior Appropriations Bill which extends the "demonstration" program another 5 years!

In 1979 and subsequent years the ARC tried to get the Democratically-controlled House and Senate Natural Resources Committees to consider and approve legislation enacting recreation user fees as alternative to taxation on recreation equipment, without success. Even in the Republican-controlled policy committees of the 104th and 105th Congresses, ARC was unable to find sufficient legislators to sponsor recreation user fees as separate legislation, but with the assistance of receptive Congressional members of House and Senate Appropriations Committees has been able to use the back-door method of appropriation riders to achieve its goal.

Public lands must be used for recreational purposes that respect, protect and preserve the ecology and natural capital of those lands. Corporations, like Honda, that pursue private gain through exploitation of public lands while clothing such efforts as pro-environmental initiatives, are particularly evil.

The complete LA Times article should be available at the newspaper's website: www.latimes.com. Title is "America's Eroding Atolls of Nature." Subtitle: "National Forests are under assault from urban neighbors and budget cuts. San Bernardino facility leads the way in seeking corporate help, but some call it a devil's bargain." The author, Frank Clifford, spent a great deal of time researching the article, including several visits to the Forest.

Please help the Greater Baltimore Group stop the extension of Route 43, White Marsh Boulevard through the A. V. williams property off of Eastern Avenue in East Baltimore County. The williams property contains 1,000 acres of contiguous woods includes 450 acres of wetlands.

To date, this property has never been developed. It has no water or sewer. Yet it has been rezoned for "light industrial: development in the Baltimore County Master Plan. Under this designation, the Route 43 extension is being sold to citizens as necessary for the economic salvation of Eastern Baltimore County (Essex and Middle River.)

Two million dollars was snuck into the budget last year for an engineering study for a road that is clearly not Smart Growth. But this road, is at the top of dutch Ruppersberger's wish list. We need to make sure Governor Glendening sticks by all of his ideas about Smart Growth and does not allow state funds to be used to destroy these trees and wetlands.

For more information and to help in this fight contact: Erica Parker at 410-661-7484. And call, write or fax the Governor to ask him to stop this project.

Cal/EPA's Department of Pesticide Regulation recently released an annual pesticide illness report that showed 1,580 potential or confirmed cases of pesticide illness in 1996, down slightly from the previous year. About 56 percent--884 illness reports--were non-agricultural, while 696 reports involved pesticide use in agricultural settings.

Among fieldworkers, illness reports continued a downward trend that spans nearly a decade. In 1996, DPR identified 137 fieldworker illnesses with a confirmed or potential link to pesticide exposure. Fieldworker illnesses have averaged 157 a year from 1989 through 1996. That compares to an average of 282 fieldworker
illnesses annually between 1982 and 1988.

From 1995 to 1996, illnesses with a potential or confirmed link to pesticide exposure dropped from 1,593 to 1,580. There were 884 non-agricultural illnesses (down from 937 in 1995), and 696 agricultural illnesses (up from 656 the previous year). A single drift incident in Kern County accounted for 243 of the agriculture illnesses in 1996.

For a copy of the report and a brochure describing the illness surveillance program, contact DPR's Worker Health and Safety Branch, 1020 N Street, Room 200, Sacramento 95814, phone (916) 445-4222. The report and tables presenting different aspects of the data can also be downloaded from the publications section of DPR's Web site www.cdpr.ca.gov.

Media Contacts:

Veda Federighi (916) 445-3974 or Glenn Brank (916) 445-3970.