The European Union is planning to strengthen controls on mushroom imports from Central and Eastern European countries, following an unusual spurt in the number of shipments reported to be radioactively contaminated, according to the Environmental News Service.

Contamination of mushrooms and other forest products with radioactive cesium has been a continuing problem since Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986, but after receiving 19 notifications of contaminated shipments from Austria, Germany and France in quick succession, the European Commission convened an urgent meeting of a regulatory committee, the report said.

The Commission announced on October 15 that it is planning to issue a new regulation imposing stricter controls on mushroom imports, according to the ENS report.

In particular, this will require EU countries to monitor mushroom imports more intensively for radioactive contamination and to define points of entry of mushroomsimported from countries such as Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.

Commercial fishing to end in Glacier Bay Park in US

The US Department of the Interior Appropriations Act, has provided for the phase-out of commercial fishing inside Glacier Bay Park in Alaska to protect the park's marine resources.

``We have increased protection for the park's marine resources for the benefit of present and future generations, while also assuring fair treatment for fishermen who have fished Glacier Bay for many years,'' said secretary of the interior Bruce Babbitt.

Commercial salmon and halibut fishing has occurred in the waters that comprise Glacier Bay National Park for more than 100 years and indigenous populations have fished the waters on a subsistence level for thousands of years. However, private use of the national park resources for personal profit has long been viewed as inappropriate in national parks, their resources belonging instead to all Americans.

Commercial fishing in GlacierBay National Park has taken significant amounts of living resources from the park's marine waters. Only those halibut, salmon, and Tanner crab fishermen with a qualifying history of fishing in Glacier Bay Proper will be allowed to continue to fish there. When these fishermen are gone, there will be no more commercial fishing in Glacier Bay Proper.

Market mechanism of Kyoto Protocol

A US official says the most important feature of the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change is the opportunity to use the power of the marketplace to achieve environmental objectives.

Speaking at a Foreign Press Centre briefing last week, Melinda Kimble, acting secretary of state for oceans, International Environment and Scientific Affairs, said many people believe the agreement is important because it calls on developed countries to assume binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that can cause global warming.

Kimble said the two key mechanisms that the agreement put in place are the opportunity to have aninternational emissions trading regime and the so-called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which would allow industrialised nations to finance emission-avoiding projects in developing countries and receive the credit for doing so.

``This is the first time in any environmental agreement that we have created a mechanism that has the potential to harness the power of foreign direct long-term investment in the developing countries,'' she said. ``It can make a major contribution to sustainable development, and it can ensure that there is global participation in solving what is clearly a global problem.''

`Bio-invasion' threatens bio-diversity

A new environmental study warns that the spread of exotic species from one place to another, called `bioinvasion', greatly threatens biological diversity and has the potential for a global disaster.

The environment group, Worldwatch Institute, says that the increasingly global economy could bring worldwide ecological disruptions. As global trade carriesnon-native `exotic' species across natural boundaries--such as deserts, mountains and ocean currents-biological ``pollution'' sweeps the planet.

Invasions are a centuries old process, note researchers, but with trade and international releases of certain exotics (garden plants, pulpwood trees, etc), invasion rates are far beyond their natural levels.

``The integration of the global economy is spreading more and more organisms around-in ship ballast water, in containers, even in commodities themselves,'' said Worldwatch research associate Chris Bright, author of Life out of Bounds: Bioinvasion in a Borderless World.