Bush's Biking an Effort in Effrontery

[MountainLaurel]

A WP columnist writes about the Patuxent nature reserve, where the Shrub was biking when all hell broke loose in DC last week.

When the wayward Cessna approached the White House last week, the president was out riding his mountain bike on the winding trails of Patuxent Research Refuge, 12,790 acres of woods and ponds where endangered whooping cranes live, migratory birds make their pit stops, and hikers, hunters and bird-watchers spend their leisure hours.

But don't expect to follow President Bush's example in the late afternoon or evening, or on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July or any other national holiday, because the same president who repairs to Patuxent for his recreation has saddled the refuge with budget cuts that have forced a sharp reduction in its public opening hours and other services.

Even as the refuge faces sharply rising energy costs and deferred maintenance demands, the facility has been hit with a 2 percent midyear budget cut, a decline in staffing and steadily increasing responsibilities, including post-9/11 mandates that it hire more law enforcement officers.

snip

Two of the scientists' major facilities at Patuxent have been shuttered recently because the refuge lacked money to maintain the buildings, Knudsen says. One closed facility, Stickel Laboratory, became famous as the site of the studies on the pesticide DDT that inspired Rachel Carson's classic work of environmental journalism, "Silent Spring."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051601508.html