[at-l] FYI:National Park Service To Allow Commercial Bioprospecting

[Jan Leitschuh]

National Park Service To Allow Commercial Bioprospecting
Public Interest Groups Oppose Commercialization of Parks
By: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
Published: Oct 4, 2006 



The National Park Service (NPS) has unveiled its plans to allow commercial bioprospecting in the National Parks. Under the plan, the Park Service will allow private corporations to extract and make money from organisms taken from the national parks, including millions of acres of wilderness areas.

The term that NPS uses to describe the new commercial arrangements is "Benefits-Sharing." The document NPS put out for comment, technically called a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), follows a seven-year-old court order obtained by public interest advocates opposed to the "commercialization of the commons" forcing NPS to do an environmental review leading to the DEIS first published on September 22, 2006.

"This is, sadly, another step along the path of turning our national treasures into corporate booty," said Beth Burrows, Director of the Edmonds Institute (EI), one of the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit over this matter. "We support scientific research in the parks, but we are against commercializing the parks and their wildlife."

More at :http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_43259.shtml