Sir

I commend your News Feature “Caught between shores” (Nature 440, 144–145; 2006), highlighting the rift between academic and corporate ecology. I fully support your callfor a higher standard of ecological science to regulate business activities and defend the environment. However, considering that environmental issues are gaining global and political centre stage, and with a growing awareness of the need to preserve natural heritage, I feel you stopped short of speaking out on the truly crucial issues at hand.

There has been considerable movement at governmental level during the past few decades to implement a host of environment-protection legislations. These are designed to force businesses to consider the ecological implications of their actions within a legal framework, usually through an environmental impact assessment (EIA).

But there has been insufficient back-up or policing of these policies. The major blunder is that the responsibility for organizing the ecological studies required for an EIA is left to the very companies who are supposedly being regulated. It may well be that the science performed within such companies is sound and impartial. But without an official system to regulate the EIA process, is it really surprising to see hostile attitudes among ecologists in academia towards colleagues perceived as going to the ‘dark side’?

Perhaps a United Nations-sanctioned professional body should be created to govern scientists involved in EIA preparation. The Ecological Society of America runs a professional certification scheme that would be a useful model for such an action. Or perhaps EIAs should, by law, be outsourced to ‘regulated’ ecological consultancies.

If big businesses have a genuine ethical policy, they will support such actions. If they don't, the wheat will be sorted from the chaff.