Association for the Advancement of Science received funds to
continue its research on patterns of power consumption, including
an assessment of how flexible consumer demand may be. Dealing with
a more immediate issue, the Association of the Bar of the City of
New York Fund was assisted in a study of governmental procedures
for licensing of power plants, which entails complex legal,
environmental, and policy issues that neither courts nor public
service commissions alone are equipped to settle.
Education, Research, Land Use.
Control of
agricultural pests without exclusive reliance on pesticides is a
major environmental challenge. One promising approach was assisted
this year through a $262,000 research and training grant to the
University of California's International Center for Biological
Control. The center is expanding successful experiments in
integrated control—a system of managing pests rather than
seeking their total extermination. To minimize the use of poisons,
integrated control employs a combination of such techniques as
breeding resistant plants and mixed plantings (e.g., alternating
rows of alfalfa that the insects eat instead of the cash crop).
For the
1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, the
Foundation financed several studies to help develop plans for
global monitoring. Grants totaling $216,500 were made to
universities and to the International Council of Scientific
Unions.
Completing
a three-year program to broaden environmental understanding among
elementary and secondary school students, the Foundation made
supplementary grants to the University of Colorado's Mountain View
Center and to New York City's Wave Hill Center for Environmental
Studies. Both projects train teachers to incorporate into regular
subjects lessons inspired by students' first-hand encounters with
their immediate environment.
The Nature
Conservancy, the leading private organization working to preserve
natural lands, has saved 150,000 acres of scientifically or
aesthetically important land from commercial exploitation since
1965,