Activists Call for Tighter Import Restrictions to Halt Invading
Plant, Animal Species
10/28/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Environment Not a Trade-Off, Activists Say; Countries at
Risk from Invading Plants, Animals
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 28, 1999
Byline: Robert McClure
Green crabs inadvertently imported from Europe in ships' ballast
water are poised to cripple Puget Sound's multimillion-dollar
shellfish harvest.
Northwest forests are likely to get nicked by the Asian longhorned
beetle, which arrived with wooden crates and artificial Christmas
trees imported from China. The beetle has already killed thousands of
trees in New York and Chicago.
Trading ships from South America unleashed cholera into American
waters, sickening 15 people in Alabama. And elms were wiped out
across much of the East by a Russian fungus.
With international trade skyrocketing and ministers of the World
Trade Organization gathering in Seattle next month, environmentalists
yesterday offered these examples to justify their call for tighter
restrictions on importation of goods that may contain pest plants and
animals.
Environmentalists who want to see WTO rules changed to better protect
the Earth held a breakfast near downtown Seattle to appeal for
changes in WTO trading rules.
"The rules of the WTO . . . intentionally constrain environmental
protection," said Dan Seligman, a trade specialist for the Sierra
Club. "That is what the trade rules are for. That is what they are
designed to do."
Under WTO rules, a country that suspects goods being imported from
another country might harbor a plant or animal that could harm its
agricultural goods or forests can challenge the other nation's right
to export the suspect product.
But here's the catch: The country bringing the challenge must be able
to show how the imported good is dangerous. That's not always
possible.
For example, the fungus that killed off America's chestnut trees
earlier this century, robbing the nation of 40 percent of its lumber,
was benign in its Asian homeland. Asiatic chestnuts were unaffected.
Similarly, the Dutch elm disease did not afflict elms in the Old
World. Another example is the blister rust that devastated American
white pines.
In each case, the plant or animal that got loose and caused damage in
this country was able to do so because natural enemies that held it
in check in its homeland were not present here.
Now, logs are being imported from South America and Asia to be
processed in Pacific Northwest mills left hungry for lumber by the
decreased timber cut permitted in U.S. national forests.
William Denison, a fungus expert and former Oregon State University
researcher, estimates there is a greater than 50 percent chance that
Siberian larch trees are hosts to some sort of fungus that is fatal
to their close cousins here, the Douglas fir.
Russian scientists have not studied larch and the fungi they support
very thoroughly, Denison said.
"We were unable to stop chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease or pine
blister rust," Denison said. "Nothing that science has learned in
this century about controlling forest diseases gives us any reason to
hope we would be able to control a similarly destructive disease if
it hit Douglas fir."
The Clinton administration has refused to forcefully prosecute a
program of vigilance because it so strongly supports international
trade, environmentalists charge.
They are backed up by a 1997 report by the General Accounting Office,
the investigative arm of Congress. The GAO investigated the Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service, which is supposed to keep
invasive pests out of goods coming into American ports.
Anna Cherry, a spokeswoman for the inspection agency, said a
government task force set up by President Clinton earlier this year
is wrestling with how to best combat the spread of invasive pest
plants and animals.
Yet often, the system works, Cherry said. When Asian gypsy moths were
discovered in the Seattle area earlier this decade, the government
moved swiftly to stem the outbreak through aerial spraying.
Meanwhile, other nations in the WTO regard environmentalist fears
about goods they want to ship here as protectionist ploys to help
keep out imports and boost prices for U.S.-produced goods sold here.
The Clinton administration has also resisted efforts to require ships
to treat their ballast water, which can carry invasive species across
the globe.
One of the most famous examples is the European green crab, which has
spread toward Washington after gaining footholds in the Northeast and
San Francisco Bay.
The green crab eats the larvae of shellfish, such as the Dungeness
crabs of Puget Sound. Although the crab has not yet arrived in Puget
Sound, it has been found in Willapa Bay in southwest Washington and
in British Columbia. It will probably arrive here soon, scientists
say.
Cherry, the spokeswoman for APHIS, said Americans will have to stay
vigilant if they want to keep out invasive pests.
"We live in a world where this is global trade. It's a global
village," she said. "There is no way to avoid the movement of goods
and people."
P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or
robertmcclure@seattle-pi.com