Five Before Chaos

It’s been pretty much well established that the role of national lands in the eyes of the far-right (most of which rather they didn’t exist at all) is that they are something to be exploited for profit, and by profit, we’re not talking about the American people, it’s the big corporations.. The latest outrage is what’s called ‘commercial bioprospecting’, that is, the mining of the lands for genetic and biological information to be used for commercial purposes. Geov Parrish, over at Working for Change, has this:

The National Park Service (NPS) is quietly taking public comment through December 15 on a proposal to allow private companies to “bioprospect” in our national parks: to commercially mine, not the mineral riches of a park, but the genetic resources of plants, animals, and microorganisms in territories specifically set aside for stewardship in the public trust.

The proposal is contained in a September 15, 2006 court-ordered Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), an outgrowth of a lawsuit over a similar 1997 proposal at Yellowstone National Park during the Clinton administration. Steady privatization has been underway at the Park Service for more than 20 years, but the requirement that the NPS actually study the effects of bioprospecting seemed to shelve this particular bad idea.

And then, magically, seven years later, the EIS appears, laying out three options that would cover not just Yellowstone but all parks. The document, subtly entitled “Benefits-Sharing,” reads less like an environmental study and more like a sales pitch for its preferred choice, “option B,” to allow commercial bioprospecting but require “benefits-sharing” agreements and potentially some degree of public disclosure of those agreements. (Or, potentially, not.) The other two choices the public is to comment on are option A, to do nothing — thus allowing bioprospecting without so-called benefit-sharing; and option C, which is to only allow this genetic mining for “noncommercial or public interest research.” Not exploiting our parks’ genetic treasures at all is not even listed as an option in the document.

I’m mostly opposed to this on principle, nore than anything else, namely because since the Repubs came to power in ‘94, there has been an ever-increasing movement to privatize and commercialize our national parks and forests. This is just the latest in a series of many, and stopping it would send a message that this needs to change direction. Some places need to be sacred, for Chrissake. There’s some more info from ‘Parks Not For Sale’ here. And you can send your comments to the forest service, which they are taking until December 16th form there, too. There’s a good talking points sheet there as well. Check it out and drop ‘em a line, won’t you?

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