Groups Lobby To Save Biological Service Congress May Ax Program That Conducts Wildlife Research

Scientists, bird-watchers and gardeners are besieging Congress this week with pleas to save the National Biological Service.

The $160 million program is threatened with extinction by a budget-slashing Congress. It has already voted to rescind $14.5 million from this year’s budget and may kill the biological service next year.

The Interior Department program surveys the nation’s ecological treasures, from migratory birds to wild plants. It conducts approximately 90 percent of the nation’s wildlife research.

Prominent scientists have joined in a national lobbying effort to save the program.

“They’ve been calling our office nonstop,” said an aide to Rep. Robert Livingston, R-Louisiana, House Appropriations Committee chairman.

The Appropriations Committee will make its final budget recommendations by June 1.

“We’ve tied up the phones. This is all over the Internet, and hundreds of scientists have called in to protest,” said Kathleen Rogers, an attorney for the National Audubon Society.

The short-term savings from axing the program “would be quickly dwarfed by the true long-term costs, both financial and ecological,” said Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard University biology professor.

“Americans cannot afford to be penny wise and pound foolish when it comes to managing our biological heritage,” said Peter Berle, National Audubon Society president.

Data from the federal program is used to establish hunting seasons for waterfowl and to assess the health of songbirds and fisheries.

That is why sports groups like Trout Unlimited and the Garden Club of America are joining environmental groups in the lobbying effort, Rogers said.

The Audubon Society usually doesn’t use such confrontational tactics, but the threat to the program has struck a nerve nationwide, said Rogers, the group’s director of migratory bird policy.

“You usually don’t think of outraged birders. But they are furious,” Rogers said.

Rep. Livingston and House Speaker Newt Gingrich said earlier this year the program is among a long list of federal programs they think are unnecessary.

Spokane Rep. George Nethercutt, an appropriations committee member, wants to know whether the program duplicates other research programs, a staff aide said.

That’s surprising, said Susan Murray, the Audubon Society’s legislative director.

“The service was created in 1993 to coordinate scientific research and avoid duplication between agencies,” she said.