Saturday, July 11, 2009Last Update: 2:10 PM PT

     WASHINGTON (CN) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to list two species of Hawaiian damselflies, the flying earwig Hawaiian damselfly and the Pacific Hawaiian damselfly, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.      The agency's listing recommendation is based on a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity, which noted a tremendous reduction in available habitat for the insects, over time. The early Hawaiians diverted water from streams to farm taro, a staple crop. Then sugar cane farmers converted streams to irrigation to the point that stream beds often are dry, and finally, native forests were degraded throughout the 20th century.
     The petition states that an estimated 30 percent of all coastal plain wetlands in Hawaii already have been lost to agriculture and urban development, and that lowland freshwater habitat in Hawaii already approaches 80 to 90 percent.
     

     WASHINGTON (CN) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that a petition from the Xerces Society contains enough information to initiate a status review of the Susan's Purse-Making Caddisfly, to determine if it should be listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The caddis fly's name comes from its creation of a silken purse shaped cocoon during its development from larvae to adult.
     Susan's purse-making caddisfly was identified as a new species in 1976, and has only been found in two sites in central Colorado. The petition argues that the species is seriously threatened by habitat loss, primarily due to the effects of livestock grazing and timbering projects.
     The Xerces Society says that the limited habitat of Susan's purse-making caddisfly also is threatened by groundwater depletion due to increasing use by surrounding cities, damage from unregulated off-road recreational vehicle use and hiking, and the effects of drought. Changing water temperature likely to occur in the mountainous West due to global climate change also may affect the insect.
     The USFWS requests public comments on critical habitat, which may be designated if the caddis fly is listed.

     WASHINGTON (CN) - The Securities and Exchange Commission plans to amend regulations to make money market funds more liquid, resilient to market turmoil, and less susceptible to collapse if consumers make a "run" on the funds.
     Specifically, the SEC wants to tighten risk controls in money market funds by requiring funds to maintain a part of their portfolios in instruments that can be readily converted to cash, reducing the weighted average maturity of portfolio holdings, and limiting funds to investing in the highest quality portfolio securities. The SEC also plans to require money market funds to report their portfolio holdings monthly to the agency.
     Under these changes, money market funds that have "broken the buck" (re-priced its securities below $1.00 per share) would be allowed to temporarily suspend redemptions, if the board of the fund decides to liquidate the fund, to allow for the orderly liquidation of fund assets without driving the prices of fund assets down.

     WASHINGTON (CN) - The Environmental Protection Agency is planning emission standards for new marine diesel engines with per cylinder displacement at or above 30 liters, installed on U.S. vessels. The agency also announces two public hearings on this issue, in August.
     The Rural Utilities Service is requiring that borrowers of electricity establish and maintain a written standard policy on the interconnection of distributed resources, so owners of distributed resources know what they have to do to connect their facilities to the electric power systems of borrower electric cooperatives. Distributed resources are power generating facilities that are owned by individuals (usually through roof-top solar panels) or corporations (usually biomass burning facilities used in the wood products industry and agriculture).
     

     WASHINGTON (CN) - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration plans to allow the Navy to add acreage to its sonar research and testing area within its Naval Undersea Warfare Center Keyport Range Complex, in Washington State, which could harass sea mammals.
     The agency states that due to its planned mitigation and monitoring regulations, the number of mammals affected is likely to be lower than the Navy's estimate, and that it expects none of the animals to be killed or injured.
     The level of harassment envisioned would include: "disruption of natural behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, surfacing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering, to a point where such behavioral patterns are abandoned or significantly altered."
     NOAA has proposed to allow sea mammals to be harassed the indicated number of times in the next five years: Harbor porpoise 56,415; Northern fur seal 220; California sea lion 570; Northern elephant seal 70; Harbor seal (from inland Washington waters) 27,340; and Harbor seal (from Oregon and Washington Coast) 505. NOAA assumes that all Harbor porpoises exposed to 120 decibels of sound change behavior patterns, whereas a scale can be used to measure the likely harassment to the other marine mammals.