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Published online 23 July 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.715
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Eco-warrior trashes seismic experiment
Explosive geological studies on a Canadian island disrupted by activist.
Researchers working in certain fields are accustomed to the dangers of lurking bears, moose or lions. But a team of geophysicists studying granite formations on an isolated Canadian island in British Columbia faced a different threat last week: an environmental activist who sabotaged their seismic studies.
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It's a govt duty to provide full protection to any scientific endavour.Clear cut policy involving govt. permission & protection need to be formulated before executing such scientific explorative programme.Sequrity guards alongwith explorative scientific team is need of hour.Social scientists need to work on societial perspective of scientific endavours. Anurag chaurasia, ICAR, India
In trashing a complex science study, Mr Ingmar Lee was inspired by hearsay and ignorance. The Batholiths study was designed to better understand how the earth works. Mr. Lee apparently decided that a project he did not understand must therefore be a threat to his surroundings. That said, where are the voices of outrage in support of harmless scientific inquiry? By their silence, do we presume that environmental groups working in coastal BC support the actions of Mr. Lee?
First off, I must reiterate, as I did to Rex Dalton, (the author of above article), that after disarming the shot, I did not return to the site to "taunt" the blasters, nor did I "come out of the woods, yell threats, and disappear." Had I done so, I would have no reason to deny that. I have a chronological record of my whereabouts during the entire time that anyone was up there working to rearm the shot and can easily prove that I was nowhere near the site. That said, I would also like to respond to the contention by commenter Lincoln Hollister (above) that I "decided that a project I did not understand must therefore be a threat to my surroundings." Well, as I wrote in the statement I issued after my action, the Batholiths project proponents offered no information, no public process whereby local residents could learn, ask questions or express concerns about their project. As it turns out, this was the case all along the blast route. It is also becoming clear that a proper Environmental Impact Assessment was not conducted. In 2007, a previous incarnation of the Batholiths project was shut down after concerns were raised about the effects of marine seismic blasting on local marine mammals, and it appears that the scientists, in an effort to avoid a repeat embarrassment, must have taken pains to keep the 2009 project very low-key, and in fact, simply try to sneak it in the back door. Denny Island is in the midst of the so-called 'Great Bear Rainforest' and is reknowned as being amongst the most spectacular tracts of intact primaeval wilderness on the planet. In March 2009, the British Columbia government recognized its significant importance and established a purportedly strict set of guidelines (Eco-system Based Management EBM) as to how any sort of development was to be conducted in this area. That this seismic blasting experiment, which involved the detonation of as much as a ton of explosives per shot could sneak past the EBM requirements exposes the scheme for the greenwash farce that it is. The BC Central Coast is under serious threat from all sorts of massive oil and gas development, which include the impending construction of an 1100 km., 1 metre dia. pipeline stretching from the Alberta dirty-oil tar-sands to Kitimat, -just up the coast from here- from where the oil is slated to be loaded onto as many as 200 giant 1000 ft. "VLCC's" (Very Large Crude Carriers) ~ a veritable super-tanker traffic jam threading its way back and forth through the rock pile that is the BC Central Coast. Whether or not the Batholiths Seismic experiment benefits the oli and gas industry, the scientists failed to conduct even the most rudimentary public process to help local residents understand what was going on. They did not bother to observe even the most rudimentary EBM principles which have been established for this area. It just so happens that the floathouse where I live with my family is about 1 km. from the Denny Island blast site. We are here studying Sandhill cranes and we have 5 nests under observation which are within 2 km. of the site. We observed the hatching of Sandhill chicks (www.pacificwild.org)at the beginning of June and currently, those chicks are in their most vulnerable pre-flight stage. Of course, numerous other species in the area are also raising their young. No scientific study was offered which could demonstrate the benignity of their experiment, nor was any monitoring program in place, which could have observed, and proven a negligible effect. Cheers, Ingmar Lee
A very interesting situation - perhaps what this article highlights best is both the lack of public engagement during fieldwork by some research scientists (who are often short of time and money!) and the scepticism displayed by many environmental activists towards what they perceive as authority. Ingmar - clearly the local environment is very important to you, and rightly so, but did you try to contact the research team to express your concerns before attempting direct action?