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Copyright 1995 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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Cover: Photograph taken in Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge, North Dakota by David Policansky
Committee to Review the Department of the Interior's Biomonitoring of Environmental Status and Trends Program
DIANA W. FRECKMAN (Chair),
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado
LAWRENCE BARNTHOUSE,
Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
ELIZABETH BLOOD,
Joseph Jones Ecological Research Center, Newton, Georgia
P. DEE BOERSMA,
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
THEODORA COLBORN,
World Wildlife Fund,Washington, D.C.
FRANK DAVIS,
University of California, Santa Barbara, California
FRANK GREGG,
University of Arizona (retired), Tucson, Arizona
NANCY J. HUNTLY,
Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho
FRANCES C. JAMES,
Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida
RONALD KENDALL,
The Institute of Wildlife and Environmental Toxicology, Pendleton, South Carolina
PAUL MCCORMICK,
South Florida Water Management District, West Palm Beach, Florida
ERIC P. SMITH,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia
WILLIAM H. SMITH,
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
GUNTHER STENT,
University of California, Berkeley, California
Staff
DAVID POLICANSKY, Program Director
DEBORAH D. STINE, Project Director
TANIA WILLIAMS, Research Associate
ADRIÉNNE DAVIS, Senior Program Assistant
JEFFREY PECK, Project Assistant
NORMAN GROSSBLATT, Editor
RUTH CROSSGROVE, Copy Editor
Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology
PAUL G. RISSER (Chair),
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
MICHAEL J. BEAN,
Environmental Defense Fund, Washington, D.C.
EULA BINGHAM,
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio
EDWIN H. CLARK II,
Clean Sites, Inc., Alexandria, Virginia
ALLAN H. CONNEY,
Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey
ELLIS COWLING,
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina
JOHN L. EMMERSON,
Eli Lilly & Company, Greenfield, Indiana
ROBERT C. FORNEY,
Unionville, Pennsylvania
ROBERT A. FROSCH,
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
KAI LEE,
Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts
JANE LUBCHENCO,
Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon
GORDON ORIANS,
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
FRANK L. PARKER,
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennesee
GEOFFREY PLACE,
Hilton Head, South Carolina
DAVID P. RALL,
Washington, D.C.
LESLIE A. REAL,
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
KRISTIN SHRADER-FRECHETTE,
University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida
BURTON H. SINGER,
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
MARGARET STRAND,
Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, Washington, D.C.
GERALD VAN BELLE,
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
BAILUS WALKER, JR.,
Howard University, Washington, D.C.
Staff
JAMES J. REISA, Director
DAVID J. POLICANSKY, Associate Director and Program Director for Natural Resources and Applied Ecology
CAROL A. MACZKA, Program Director for Toxicology and Risk Assessment
LEE R. PAULSON, Program Director for Information Systems and Statistics
RAYMOND A. WASSEL, Program Director for Environmental Sciences and Engineering
Other Recent Reports of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology
Science and Judgment in Risk Assessment (1994)
Ranking Hazardous Sites for Remedial Action (1994)
Review of EPA's Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program: Forests and Estuaries (1994)
Review of EPA's Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program: Surface Waters (1994)
Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children (1993)
Issues in Risk Assessment (1993)
Setting Priorities for Land Conservation (1993)
Protecting Visibility in National Parks and Wilderness Areas (1993)
Biologic Markers in Immunotoxicology (1992)
Dolphins and the Tuna Industry (1992)
Environmental Neurotoxicology (1992)
Hazardous Materials on the Public Lands (1992)
Science and the National Parks (1992)
Animals as Sentinels of Environmental Health Hazards (1991)
Assessment of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Studies Program, Volumes I-IV (1991-1993)
Human Exposure Assessment for Airborne Pollutants (1991)
Monitoring Human Tissues for Toxic Substances (1991)
Rethinking the Ozone Problem in Urban and Regional Air Pollution (1991)
Decline of the Sea Turtles (1990)
Tracking Toxic Substances at Industrial Facilities (1990)
Biologic Markers in Pulmonary Toxicology (1989)
Biologic Markers in Reproductive Toxicology (1989)
Copies of these reports may be ordered from the National Academy Press
(800) 624-6242
(202) 334-3313
Preface
In 1993, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) asked the National Research Council to review FWS's proposed Biomonitoring of Environmental Status and Trends Program to help ensure that its design was scientifically sound and defensible, that it will be effective in identifying and evaluating contaminant threats to FWS trust resources, and that redundancy will be minimized with other agencies' monitoring programs. In response to this request, the Committee to Evaluate the Department of the Interior's Biomonitoring of Environmental Status and Trends Program was formed by the Research Council's Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. The committee's first report is provided here in partial response to the request.
The biomonitoring program was recently transferred to the newly created National Biological Survey (NBS), and the NBS requested that this study be broken into several phases. During the first phase, the committee was asked to evaluate the overall concept of the Biomonitoring of Environmental Status and Trends Program as outlined in the draft detailed plan. The evaluation—the topic of this report—would review the aims and goals of the program and would indicate whether the program is feasible and whether there is potential duplication with other efforts. It would then be used to improve the biomonitoring program plan when it is revised by the NBS over the next year. In the last phase of the NRC study, the committee will also review the final version of the detailed plan. The interim phases, if any, are yet to be defined.
Although the program is now part of the NBS, NBS Director Ronald Pulliam asked the committee to evaluate the Biomonitoring of Environmental Status and Trends Program relative to FWS needs, not NBS needs. NBS needs will likely respond to the needs of the Department of the Interior (DOI) as a whole instead of just FWS—for which the Biomonitoring of Environmental Status and Trends Program was designed. The committee has complied with the request, but in this report also suggests some directions in case the NBS subsequently decides to expand the program beyond FWS to the NBS or DOI as a whole.
In this report, the committee agrees that there is a need for a program to evaluate the presence and impact of contaminants potentially affecting the FWS trust lands and species; however, a great deal of work remains to be done before implementation of the Biomonitoring of Environmental Status and Trends Program if it is to be successful. In particular, FWS should re-evaluate the fundamental nature of the program, take a more hypothesis-driven approach,
and be more responsive to clearly stated questions than is indicated in the current draft of the detailed plan.
Although this report represents the work of the committee, it benefited greatly from the support of staff of the National Research Council: Program Director David Policansky, Project Director Deborah Stine, Research Associate Tania Williams, Editor Norman Grossblatt, Copy Editor Ruth Crossgrove, Sr. Project Assistant Adrienne Davis, and Project Assistant Jeffrey Peck.
The committee also acknowledges with appreciation presentations made at its meetings by the following persons: Christine Bunck, John Moeller, Ronald Pulliam, Christopher Schmitt, James Coyle, and Wayne Wilford of the National Biological Survey; Timothy Hall and Pamela Mathes of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Pamela Eaton of the Wilderness Society; Ruth Fleischer of the House of Representatives Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources; and Myra Hyde of the National Cattleman's Association.
Diana W. Freckman
Chair