Wintering Waterbirds and Recreationists in Natural Areas: A Sociological Approach to the Awareness of Bird Disturbance

Disturbance to wintering birds by human recreational activities has become a major concern for managers of many natural areas. Few studies have examined how recreationists perceive their effects on birds, although this impacts their behavior on natural areas. We surveyed 312 users on two coastal ornithological sites in Brittany, France, to investigate their perception of the effects of human activities on wintering birds. The results show that the awareness of environmental issues and knowledge of bird disturbance depends on the socioeconomic characteristics of each user group, both between the two sites and within each site. Results also indicate that, whatever the site and the user group, the vast majority of the respondents (77.6 %) believed that their own presence had no adverse effects on the local bird population. Various arguments were put forward to justify the users’ own harmlessness. Objective information on recreationists’ awareness of environmental issues, and particularly on their own impact on birds, is important to guide managers in their choice of the most appropriate visitor educational programs. We recommend developing global but also specific educational information for each type of user to raise awareness of their own impact on birds.     

Consensus Building and Sustainability: Some Lessons From an Adverse Local Experience in Greece

The paper focuses on the example of a local island community in Greece, to illustrate the difficulties of effective consensus building, in support of sustainable policies. In the first section the issue of sustainability and the importance of participation are discussed, before moving to a brief outline of the nature of participation and its sources since the 1960s. It follows an analysis of the epistemological framework of consensus building process which is considered as the most integrated and sophisticated version of participatory planning. This analysis serves as a background for judging the appropriateness of consensus building for the resolution of an environmental problem harassing a Greek island community. It is about the problem of water availability and management in the small Aegean island of Leros. The paper shows how illegal practices in the use of water, administrative fragmentation and confusion over knowledge of the problem and its solutions lead to divisions in the stakeholder groups and to obstacles in the way of participation. The intrinsic problems embedded in Greek (and probably not alone) society and political culture, which prevent collective action and participation, account in part for the anticipated risk of unwelcome, illegitimate outcomes of a potential consensus building process. Nevertheless, if communicative planning is to gain universal acceptance, it should first resolve some critical theoretical and practical shortcomings related to its normative, ethical and philosophical assumptions. Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

Fetal intestinal microvilli in human amniotic fluid

The intestinal microvilli of fetal origin in human amniotic fluid were purified by Ca²⁺ precipitation of contaminating organelles followed by differential centrifugation of microvillar membranes. In the purified preparation, the specific activity of the microvillar marker-enzymes maltase and sucrase increased about 77-fold over that in cell-free amniotic fluid. Significant contamination of the purified preparation by endoplasmic reticulum (microsomes) and lysosomes was ruled out on the basis of a low content of the marker enzymes glucose-6-phosphatase (microsomes) and acid phosphatase (lysosomes). Amniotic fluid microvilli contain typical enzymes of the fetal intestine including maltase, sucrase, trehalase, alkaline phosphatase and γ-glutamyltransferase, and their morphology by electron microscopy resembles that of vesiculated intestinal microvilli. Prenatal detection of genetic diseases due to a deficiency of a protein expressed in these membranes or associated to abnormal microvilli seems feasible.     

Molecular prenatal diagnosis of 3-hydroxy−3-methylglutaryl coa lyase deficiency

We report the first molecular prenatal diagnosis of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl CoA lyase (HL) deficiency. The proband had a classic but severe presentation with hypoketotic hypoglycaemia and acidosis, secondary mental retardation, and epilepsy, and HL deficiency was documented in cultured fibroblasts. We found him to be homozygous for the frameshift mutation N46fs (+1), which yields a distinct pattern on single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis. In two subsequent pregnancies, molecular prenatal diagnosis was performed using SSCP. In the first, chorionic villus biopsy was normal. In the second pregnancy, amniocentesis revealed an affected fetus. In both pregnancies, the diagnosis was confirmed enzymatically. HL activity was less than 7 per cent of control values in amniocytes and fetal liver of the affected pregnancy. In the second pregnancy, amniotic fluid metabolite measurements by stable isotope dilution-selected ion monitoring mass spectrometry showed greater than 100-fold increases of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaric acid and of 3-methylglutaconic acid levels compared with controls.     

Local to global perspectives on forest and land fires in Southeast Asia

Forest and land fires are not new to the landscapes of Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, strikingly different perspectives persist about the significance of fires in the tropics to environmental changes and human well-being and consequently how they should be managed. Our synthesis of papers in this special issue suggests both trade-offs and complementarities in various policy responses with differing objectives. There are, however, at least three domains with high potential of meeting multiple objectives. First, is through identification, and improved management, of ecosystems vulnerable to fire under current and future climate. Agriculture, forestry and human settlements on peat land areas in Indonesia are candidates for such a focus. Second, is through building adaptive capacities to manage fire and related land and water resources. Investments in capacity at multiple levels are needed, but particularly at fairly local levels where stakeholders have strong incentives to manage fires appropriate to local contexts. Third, is through building awareness that fire management does not universally equate to fire suppression. Severe smoke haze episodes, for example, are also a result of timing of fires, and some fire-adapted ecosystems may depend on fire to persist. Finally, we emphasize that effective fire management is unlikely to be realized without greater engagement by research and policy with stakeholders in thoroughly exploring the full range of land and fire management options. Negotiation, compensation and trade-offs are probably inevitable.     

Trisomy 16 fetus surviving into the second trimester

A 27-year-old gravida 4, para 3 was found to have anhydramnios at 14 weeks' gestation following a size/date discrepancy noted at her routine prenatal visit. A detailed ultrasound revealed multiple fetal anomalies including congenital heart defect, chest hypoplasia, and bilateral dysplastic kidneys. Karyotype revealed trisomy 16 in 15/15 cells from a tissue specimen obtained from the fetal cord insertion site following elective pregnancy termination.     

Representing inequities in the distribution of socio-economic benefits and environmental risk

There is currently no standard methodfor analyzing claims of environmental inequity. Neitheris there a database of statistics on the extent ofrelationship between regional indicators ofenvironmental quality, likely sources of pollution, andthe demographic characteristics of affectedpopulations. The resolution of environmental disputesis often hampered by inadequate communication betweenstakeholder groups about their perceptions andprioritization of the issues in dispute and bydifferential access to information about the issues byeach stakeholder group. This paper describes a web-based tool, ICEP, that uses multi-layered GIS maps toestablish a standard method for analyzing claims ofenvironmental inequity and establish a database ofcorrelation coefficients between environmentalindicators, industry type by SIC code, and demographiccharacteristics of the population in proximity tonoxious facilities. The maps are generated fromstakeholder reports of environmental quality and aredesigned to be accessible via the Internet. Thisprovides stakeholders with direct access to graphicaldisplays of the perceptions of their co-stakeholdersand provides all groups with links to relevantinformation sources about the issues in dispute. ICEPenhances existing community environmental websites likeScorecard and Envirofacts by providingdisplays of median household income as a measure of thedistribution of benefits accrued within an area.