Daily Score Blog

I missed this when it happened on April 22. Emergency contraceptives are now available without a prescription nationwide in Canada, as Medical News Today reports. They were already available in BC.

Today is the final day for the public to weigh in on a giant new habitat conservation plan--called the Forests and Fish Plan--that will govern how Washington's timber industry behaves and how well it safeguards habitat for endangered salmon. Here's the punchline: the plan will essentially grant the timber industry 50 years of legal immunity to the federal Endangered Species Act.

This is not a smart move.

Habitat conservation plans, ostensibly designed to protect endangered species, often authorize destructive activity that harms the very creatures they are supposed to protect. The Forests and Fish Plan will supposedly require timber companies to repair roads that erode into salmon streams, as well as leave streamside timber uncut. But the plan also leaves out a number of important measures.

Here is just a sampling of criticism that appeared in a recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer article:

"Clearly, this is not a scientific judgment but a political and economic one," wrote Phil Millam, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official involved in the talks.

"It was sort of preordained to make dumb decisions," said James Karr, a University of Washington fish researcher, who criticizes the deal for relying on "the opinion of people who were in the room at the time" rather than on solid science. He and 27 other scientists wrote to then-Gov. Gary Locke to complain that the plan had "a low probability of achieving its goals."

The Nation has a disturbing investigative report about Dr. David Hager, who is probably the man responsible for putting the kaibosh on Plan B's application for approval as over-the-counter medication last year. (We've chronicled the Plan B story here, here, here, here, and here.)

A leading voice among fundamentalist conservatives on women's health care, Dr. Hager is accused by his ex-wife (also a fundamentalist conservative) of sexually abusing her repeatedly over many years. And the juxtaposition of these accusations of marital rape and Dr. Hager's actions at the FDA point, in the end, to why over-the-counter access to Plan B is so essential.

USA Today covers Puget Sound's deteriorating health with an article that takes gloom and doom to new depths. For example:

The sound's endangered orca whales remain vulnerable to toxins. Deposits of chemical muck on the floor of the sound cause lesions in fish. Pollution has closed lucrative commercial shellfish beds. Salmon runs grow weaker. Shallow waters that provide fish and bird habitat are at risk of becoming oxygen-starved dead zones.

From our good friends and map gurus at CommEn Space:  a nifty visualization of how Pierce County has changed over the last century or so.  Nifty eye candy, showing the effects of sprawl, logging, and forest regrowth on the landscape.