The International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), Muscle Shoals, Ala., wants to set the record straight. Contrary to an article in The Times Daily, the local newspaper, there are no immediate plans for launching a fertilizer research effort that would develop more efficiency in nutrients and lower costs to farmers. “There is no R&D center presently in the works,” John Shields, interim marketing and development director, told Green Markets. He said the confusion was over an interview with Amitara Roy, president and CEO, in which Roy expressed his desire for the Shoals to become the core of research into finding affordable, environmentally friendly fertilizers.

Roy pointed out that IFDC works to help farmers in developing countries increase crop production and farm income, and that mission could be expanded to share the developments with farmers in the United States. He said more efficiency is needed in utilization of nitrogen and somewhat in phosphorus, also through development of fertilizers that would provide nutrients to the plants as they are needed and retain the remainder in the soil.

Shields conceded that IFDC should be getting back to some of its principle missions, which would include an expanded center in R&D. “There needs to be more public research and we have the wherewithal to do it,” he added. “But we need the money to do it.” He believes present efforts should be focused on generating more interest in this area.

The paper indicated that laboratory space could be leased for research from The Tennessee Valley Authority at the agency’s idled chemical engineering building next door to IFDC headquarters. Roy was quoted as saying it would cost $5 million to purchase equipment and refurbish the lab, with it costing $15-$20 million per year for five to six years to pay for the research. In addition, it quoted Roy as saying a new generation of fertilizers could be developed in as little as five years.

In June, IFDC announced several initiatives for developing and promoting better fertilizer use, including integrated soil fertility management to improve the profitability for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Henk Breman, an IFDC expert in environment and agronomy based in Rwanda, said the technology promotes both organic and inorganic sources of plant nutrients, including mineral fertilizers, crop residues, phosphate rock, and lime. IFDC also is promoting deep placement, or the insertion of large briquettes of urea fertilizer into the root zone of transplanted rice, as a technology to decrease fertilizer use. Roy said this method improved net returns significantly and reduced urea use by 50 percent, and has implications for other areas.

The U.S. Forest Service is reviewing U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer’s Aug. 12 rejection of a seven-year ban on building and logging on nearly 60 million acres of undeveloped national forests as environmentalists appealed the controversial court ruling. Brimmer ordered a permanent injunction against the federal government’s roadless rule in response to a lawsuit filed by Wyoming, saying the rule was enacted in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Wilderness Act.

“The Forest Service, in an attempt to bolster an outgoing President’s environmental legacy, rammed through an environmental agenda that itself violates the country’s well-established environmental laws,” he stated. “This court is of the opinion that the Forest Service violated the public interest when it flagrantly and cavalierly railroaded this country’s present environmental laws in an attempt to build an outgoing president’s enduring fame.”

Conservation groups that intervened in support of the Forest Service were the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Pacific Rivers Council, Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, and the Wyoming Outdoor Council. They filed an appeal to Brimmer’s ruling in the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, asking the appellate court to prohibit development in roadless areas while the case proceeds.

The Forest Service adopted the roadless rule in January 2001 in the final days of the Clinton administration. It prohibits logging, mining, and other development on 58.5 million acres in 38 states and Puerto Rico. Roadless areas make up nearly one-third of Forest Service lands and 2 percent of the nation’s land mass. The Clinton-era restrictions were beset by legal challenges almost immediately upon their implementation.

Brimmer’s latest order echoes a similar ruling he made five years ago in response to a lawsuit filed by Wyoming four months after the rule took effect. His 2003 ruling was rendered moot when the Bush administration decided not to appeal and instead issued its own rules for roadless areas, which required governors to petition the federal government to protect roadless areas in their states.

Conservation groups and attorneys general from Oregon, Washington, California, and New Mexico later challenged the Bush policy. In 2006, U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte of San Francisco set aside the Bush rule and reinstated the Clinton rule, which prompted Wyoming to renew its complaint in federal court.

Mike Anderson, an attorney with The Wilderness Society, said he believed the California decision is still in effect despite Brimmer’s ruling. Wyoming Attorney General Bruce Salzburg said the injunction was appropriate because roads might be needed in national forests to fight fires and insect infestations.

Users of public lands in Colorado and Idaho could soon be subject to new rules for the roadless areas of those states, which have pursued their own rules under the federal Administrative Procedure Act, a broad law that allows states to petition the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, to make changes to rules for federal lands.

The U.S. Forest Service is working on a draft plan for managing Idaho’s roadless lands, which was started by former Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, written by former Gov. Jim Risch, and backed by Gov. Butch Otter. Risch, now lieutenant governor, said he expects his state’s rules for its 9.3 million acres of roadless areas to take effect this year. Jonathan Oppenheimer, a forest specialist for the Idaho Conservation League, said if Brimmer’s decision holds, Idaho could have the only roadless protection plan in the nation.

Last month in Colorado, the Forest Service published proposed rules for that state’s four million acres of roadless areas, written in conjunction with the state government.