HARM the albatross and dreadful things can happen, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge warned. The albatross has long been under threat from pirate, long-line fishing. Much has been said of the need to protect the 21 remaining species of the bird, but environment minister Elliot Morley admits that there are no immediate solutions to the problem.
However, he says a milestone was reached when the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP) was ratified in March 2004. It involves the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands and the British Antarctic Territories. Morley also now leads an international ministerial task force of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to investigate threats from pirate fishing.
But Euan Dunn, head of marine policy at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), says ratification of ACAP has not yet been extended to Tristan da Cunha, the only known breeding ground for the Tristan albatross, the Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross and the sooty albatross 鈥� all endangered. Moreover, long-line fishing off the Brazilian coast kills between 700 and 800 birds each year, he adds.
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The European Commission presented draft proposals for a Community Action Plan three years ago for reducing incidental catch of seabirds in long-line fisheries, but the RSPB reckons the plan is a joke and hardly worth the paper it is written on. A deadline is set for 2006. So what is Morley going to do to press the commission to keep to its 2006 commitment?
There remains the threat of that terrible curse. In Coleridge鈥檚 words, 鈥淕od save thee, ancient Mariner.鈥�
I FOUND David Lykken鈥檚 article 鈥淣othing like the truth鈥� most interesting (快猫短视频, 14 August 2004, p 17). Lykken reckons the polygraph is easy to beat and that there is no evidence that it works.
Lady Scotland, who is the Home Office minister with responsibility for the criminal justice system and law reform, tells me that the government is considering making polygraph tests compulsory in the treatment of sex offenders.
She detailed the sort of safeguards that will apply:
- 鈥� The tests will not be used as 鈥渇ishing expeditions鈥� 鈥� trying to make the offender confess to further offences.
- 鈥� Where the offender does disclose new information about previous or current offending, this would have to be further corroborated before any further action was taken.
- 鈥� Finally, the polygraph should not be used to determine issues of guilt or innocence.
Matters of guilt and innocence, says Lady Scotland, will remain solely for the courts to determine using established lines of enquiry and evidence. She expressed concern about 鈥渓ack of certainty from an evidential point of view鈥� with polygraph testing, and handing over any assessment of a witness鈥檚 credibility to a machine.
I believe any proposal to make the polygraph compulsory should be put on the back burner.
