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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 29, 1994)
Environmental groups face declining membership WASHINGTON (AP) — Just a* a new and more con* sorvative Republican Congress threatens to roll bai k environmental regulations, major environmental groups are struggling to stern declining memberships and dwin dling contribution* The financial problems threatening many of the coun try’s environmental organizations was dramatized last week when the 102-year old Sierra Club, announced a it) percent cut In staff after losing 9 million over the last four years The Wilderness S<« iety. National Wildlife Federation and the National AudulKin Society also have faced mem bership problems and disappointing revenues since the booming growth that at companied the 20th anniversary of Earth Day nearly five years ago Hut spokesmen for the three t onservation groups said the worst seems to f>e over with membership either sin bilized or rebounding Hut even groups with continued growth are uneasy and are reexamining their programs with an eve toward cutting costs and getting the most out of limited resources The mironmenl il nili meiil’s memiM-i i rev enue concerns come at a lime when environmentalists are under some of the sharjiest altar ks in years from con servatives in Congress. property-rights ndvie ales and commercial interests that ms- environmental regulation as the enemy of ei onoinii growth Tins followed two years in which many environmen talists have Ins ome complai ent, partly tea ause the Clin ton administration had put card-carrying environmen talist-. in mam kev positions of power For example Vie* President AI Ciore and Interior .Secretary Bruce Bab bitt. But environment at ids found the roomily completed 103fd Congress anything but pro-environment And they fear the new. dearly more conservative Republican-led Congress may try to emasculate environmental laws altogether by hamstringing regulators. A growing num ber of legislators want to toughen risk assessment requirements and protect property owners from intrustvt environmental regulations Some environmental leaders suggest the new hostility in Congress may spur membership and contributions, but others see that as little to cheer about "It reminds me of a mortician saying it's great that them's a big death wave," says Erik Olson, who follows > congressional issues for the Natural Resource* Defense Council, a leading environmental group. )a< k Murray, the NR1X "s director of development, says the apparent attempt by some leaders in the next Con gress “to dismantle the* environmental laws of this coun trv i an t help hut inc rease interest in environmental organizations "There's no doubt our membership income will grow " The NRfK: with revenues of $22-3 million last year, has had stead) growth since 1990 But In the tml years we haven’t had strong growth." said Murray. "We haven't been immune " In recent \ears the National Audubon Society has undergone both membership and financial shocks as it :.-!(•< .ised ,!s interests In tin* d.sm.iv (if some longtime members and felt the pressures of the faltering t*c ones my. "But we've seen a real bounce hat k in 1994." said Tom Martin. Audubon's chief operating officer. Like the Sierra Club, both the Audubon Society and the Wilderness Society have reduced staff at various times in recent years because of budget difficulties ‘Our problems created a year or so ago whan we iaid off sis people, says Wilderness Society spokesman Hen Beach Nevertheless, since 1990 membership has dropped from 400,000 to 275.0(H) and annual revenues from nearly S18 million to SJ5 million. The National Wildlife Federation's membership of 1.7 million is about what it was in 1085. but about 200.000 fewer than what it was in 1900 Membership in the Sier ra (dub peaked at 610.000 in 1990, but fell by nearly 100,000 over the next three years before rebounding this year to 570,000 member* Carl Pope. exei uttve director of the Sierra Club, says that white membership is rebounding, average contribu tions are still down, requiring belt-tightening measures He blamed the poor m onomy that has led to declines in contributions to non-profit groups in general. Pope said the Sierra Club will eliminate about 40 posi tions from its 350-person staff and is reexamining its agenda to focus on areas it can have the most impact "It s been a very painful process." Pope said in an inter view Greenpeace, which boasts of having several million members worldwide, also reports average contributions down slightly. Rick Hind, a (Greenpeace spokesman, also blamed the poor economy and said such fluctuations are not unusual. hptmt hid Inifrnauofli! Graduate Internship Opportunity Mkrovieski cuv) South Faotk Program Information Meeting Wednesday, November 30, 4-S:30 pm 332 Gilbert LIVE ENTERTAINMENT NIGHTLY FREE POOL Tu« *tU y -S* t uril* y Until SM)0 pm Sunday li MoruUy All Day *mukcr» wtkomt S** our concert u Krdulr in Friday^ Entrrtainmrnt wclton DIM SUM Everv Sun 1 V am | 5 pm Ve serve Chinese and Indonesian cuisine for lunch and dinner. Prices from $3.75 to $8.95 CHINAgyjI RESTAURANT Tty our cfinnerc roof >7t I. 1Sttl • upiun «*>t toucmxtaian • J4J-2IJ2 • Twe out Avuutue I Make Big Plans Oversized Copies available up to 3 feet x 14 feet 1265 wunmttw 344 3555 fi« 344 0870 kinko'i your branch office Even cadavers available on Internet (JIICACO (AP) - Sixteen months ago, a killer was exec uted in Texas Today, his body is a teach ing tool for the world, made available on the Inter net at the first three-dimensional, c omputerized cadaver The "Visible Man' is a detailed atlas of the human body. assembled digitally from thousands of X-ray. magneto and photo images of cross sec turns of tin* body The National I.ibrarv of Medicine is unveiling the "Visible Man" today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Sot lety of North America This is the first tune such detailed information about an entire human body has been compiled.” said Dr Donah! A B Lindberg, director of the library, which is the equivalent of the Library of Congress for medical matters The digitalized cadaver will be available free to anyone who gets permission from the library Hut the data is so extensive that downloading it takes up to two weeks of uninterrupted time on the Internet, and up to 15 gigabytes of storage space, enough to accommodate about 50 times the con tents of The Knt ydopedia Britannica The information would fill mote than 30 typical personal computers and is expected to be sought mainly by medical schools and researchers, said Michael Ai karman. a computer specialist with the library The "Visible Xian" will fie an immediate teach ing tiro! for medical students, and in the future, it could be used to develop surgery simulators much like the flight simulators used to train pilots today, he said. "We hold this out as an example of the future of health care which more and more will Ixxorne visual rather than textual." Ackerman said in an interview. "It's a whole different way of look ing at medicine." Commercial ventures also hope to capitalize on the "Visible Man." Ackerman said; one idea is 'T'untastii Voyage: The Game." based on the Isaac Asimov book that was later made into a movie, in which a group of scientists is miniaturized and injected into the bloodstream of n dying man. The library is spending Si -1 million to develop the "Visible Man" and a "Visible Woman,” which is still more than a year away, said Victor Spitzer, a computer-imager and anatomist at the Universi ty of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, where the imaging was done. The work began on Aug. 5, 1993, several hours after the execution bv injection of Joseph Paul Jernigam 39, an ex-mechanic who killed a 75-year old man during a burglary The body was flown to Colorado ami underwent hours of CAT and MK1 scans. Then it was sawed into four pieces and each was frozen in gelatin. One at a time, each piece was attached to a special table and slowly raised under a sjiecial pinning tool called a cryoinac rotome I he instrument, designed espec ially for cutting cadavers, shaved away c ross-sec turns of the cadav er 1 millimeter — a total of 1.H70 c ross sections from head to toe Each newly exposed layer of cadaver wus photographed and sc aimed into a computer by a digital camera The digital photos were stacked and pro grammed into un imaging computer along with the data acquired from the CAT and MRI sc ans CotAvel! Anderson, an associate professor of anatomy and cel! biology at the University of Illi nois at Chicago College of Medicine, said the pro ject "looks terrific." Tile "Visible Man" probably will lie most useful for surgeons and radiologists looking for new solu tions to old problems — students may be over whelmed with more information than they can handle, he said Operators reprimanded for mishandling calls PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Sov «n oil operators who worked the night a teenager was beaten to death on the steps of a church will he disciplined for mishan dling the < alls, the mayor said Monday Transcripts of the 111 calls made Nov 11. the day 16-year old Kddiu Polec was beaten, show operators grew impatient with some callers and waited about 40 minutes after the first of about 20 calls to send police Police responded within five minutes. Mayor Edward G. Kendell said that of 11 operators on duty that night, three will be sus pended with intent to dismiss, three will be suspended and transferred and one will \w referred to a disciplinary hoard for a hearing "They are being suspended for abusive and rude responses to callers." Kendull said "That is unacceptable " Polar was attacked by up to 20 teenagers swinging baseball bats, and died in a hospital the nest day of a fractured skull Five young men have been charged with murder. The attack followed a false rumor that someone from Polec's neighborhood in Philadelphia had raped a gir! from suburban Abington. The mayor has appointed a committee to come up with rec ommendations for improving the 911 system And he sanl more polioa supervisors will be added to the operation. Ronald Mauldin, a union offi cial. said the operators and dis patchers were being made scapegoats The mayor "is blaming the equipment and the lack of super vision. The real problem is a lack of training." Mauldin said. Mauldin said the call-takers get five to seven days' training, most of it on the job "That 's not enough Years ago. you had to know X amount of streets, churchet and play grounds. certain areas of the city. Now. all you need is a 12th-grade education and be able to type," he said.