BABBITT AND OTHERS SUED
FOR BETRAYAL OF PUBLIC TRUSTPUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS SLAM SECRET DEALS AT YELLOWSTONE
INTERIOR AND PARK SERVICE CAUGHT TRYING TO MAKE
AN END RUN AROUND THE PUBLIC . . . AND THE LAW
Washington, D.C., Thursday, March 5, 1998. The Edmonds Institute (EI), the International Center for Technology Assessment (CTA), the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (AWR) and others filed a lawsuit today to stop the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service (NPS) from making behind-closed-door deals for the harvesting and commercialization of natural resources in Yellowstone National Park.The suit alleges violation of the Technology Transfer Act of 1986, the National Park Service Organic Act, the Yellowstone National Park Organic Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and Public Trust Doctrine. The legal action comes on the heels of last August's announcement of a breakthrough deal allowing Diversa, a private company, to remove Yellowstone National Park resources and use them to develop patentable products. In return for granting such access, Yellowstone was to receive a small yearly fee, a percentage of royalties from any products that might ensue, and assistance in scientifically cataloging the resources of interest. The company stood to make millions. How much the park stood to gain is still a matter of secrecy and contention.
"The Parks Service cut a backrooom deal and bent laws to allow the commercial exploitation of Yellowstone," explains Joseph Mendelson, legal director of CTA and attorney on the public interest cases regarding the Diversa deal. "The precedent set by this agreement threatens not only Yellowstone, but all of our parks."
The subjects of all the deal-making at Yellowstone are a kind of living gold -- microorganisms, tiny forms of life that exists only in the kinds of environments found at Yellowstone -- highly acidic and extremely hot thermal pools and geysers, for example. The heat-loving microorganisms and the enzymes they produce can be extremely useful in industrial processes ranging from paper and beermaking to meat tenderizing and pharmaceutical creation. Thermus aquaticus, one such useful microorganism, was taken from Yellowstone a few years back and one of its enzymes currently earns for its "owners", Hoffman LaRoche, the Swiss drug giant that holds its patent, more than $100 million a year, with earnings projected to increase to $1 billion a year by 2005. No money came to the national parks or the national treasury from the Yellowstone-derived microorganisms or its enzyme.
The Diversa agreement, seen by NPS as a potential cure for the Thermus aquaticus dilemma and a model for many more deals to come, is about much more than making money from microorganisms.
"The Diversa agreement is the trigger for a full-scale rush toward the commercialization of Yellowstone's natural resources," laments Mike Bader, former Yellowstone ranger and current executive director of AWR.
"We didn't preserve Yellowstone for these purposes," notes EI director Beth Burrows. "When you visit Yellowstone, you pass under a great arch inscribed with the words, 'for the benefit and enjoyment of the American people'. I don't think this is what the builders of that arch had in mind...unless we're back to arguing that what's good for business is good the country."
The NPS came to a deal with Diversa through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), an arrangement used to avoid the stringent requirements for public notification and involvement called for under the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). Getting wind of the deal before it was announced at Yellowstone's 125th birthday celebration last August, EI and CTA cried foul and filed a legal petition with the Department of Interior, asking the agency to drop the deal, open the decision-making process to public scrutiny and participation, and do the environmental impact assessments required under NEPA. January 21, National Park Service Director Robert Stanton denied the petition to drop the Diversa deal.
Today's lawsuit follows in the wake of extensive legal efforts by EI to obtain the details of the Diversa deal through Freedom of Information Act requests. Initially denying it even had paperwork about the Diversa deal, DOI recently settled with EI, paying out close to $8000 in legal fees after discovering relevant documents in its own files. NPS, forthcoming with most of the requested material, denied EI's petition for access to Appendix B, the financial details of the deal.
"When DOI settled, we didn't even bother with a press release;" notes EI's Beth Burrows. "We hoped it was the beginning of the open door policy we were seeking. And so we waited for the resolution of all our petitions, for all the shoes to drop. Well, last week, they denied us access to Appendix B and we were forced to file a lawsuit to shake loose the financial details . Today, in order to pry open the deal-making decisions for public scrutiny and involvement as well as to ensure environmental impact assessment, we find it necessary to take the whole process to court."
CTA's Joseph Mendelson explains, "To exploit Yellowstone's resources commercially without making sure the public has a full opportunity to understand the environmental impacts is contrary to numerous laws and a violation of public trust."
"The integrity of Yellowstone and the national park concept is too precious to jeopardize in the interests of big business," adds AWR director Mike Bader. "The Interior Department admits they want to develop 'marketable products', but Yellowstone is held in trust to be preserved in perpetuity for the benefit and enjoyment of all the American people."
Joining EI and CTA in suing DOI and NPS will be Phil Knight, Bozeman, Montana tour guide, activist, and outfitter and the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (AWR), a conservation group with 3500 individual and 1000 business and organizational members in the Montana area.