Eight more varieties of maize, oil seed rape and fodder beet are likely to be considered later this year.Although biotechnology companies have agreed to a three-year moratorium on commercial planting, they say the placing of the seeds on the national list of those approved for sale is vital. Some firms want to grow the crops under controlled conditions to build up seed stocks for sale when the moratorium ends in 2003.The T25 maize will not be grown here yet, but its developer says it must go on the list as a signal to farmers that high-quality varieties are available. T25 has already been approved by the English, Northern Irish and Scottish agriculture ministers.Cardiff’s rebellion is being backed by Friends of the Earth. The head of campaigns for the group’s Welsh branch, Gordon James, said a GM-free Wales would bring economic advantages. “Welsh farmers and food growers would gain a market advantage by being clearly GM free. Wales can lead the way,” he said.Westminster MPs said they would vigorously oppose anyattempt to remove Cardiff’s right to block GM crops.

Joan Ruddock, the Labour MP and former minister who is spearheading a women’s campaign against genetically modified organisms (GMOs), said ministers would have to thrash out a solution. “It is the right of any country, however small, to protect its environment and its biodiversity. At the moment no one can be certain that GM crops are entirely safe, and so I would very much support any decision taken by representatives in Wales,” she said.Lawyers for the Welsh Assembly and for Friends of the Earth have been preparing opinions on whether Wales is legally entitled to impose a GM ban. However, a Cabinet Office spokeswoman confirmed that the responsibility for seed listing was devolved and would remain a joint decision between the four parts of the UK.A spokesman for Aventis Crop Science said politics should not come into the listing process, which was designed simply to show that seeds were distinct, uniform and stable, and that they had a value for cultivation and use in the UK..

Three British mountaineers have completed a remarkable climbing feat to help one of the world’s most critically endangered birds, the bald ibis. Three British mountaineers have completed a remarkable climbing feat to help one of the world’s most critically endangered birds, the bald ibis.
The scruffy but striking-looking large waders, which once bred in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and across the Middle East, have now been reduced to fewer than 250 individuals nesting in sea cliffs in Morocco.Since 1993 the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has been assisting the Moroccan government with conservation of the remaining birds in the Souss-Massa national park, and for this coming nesting season, with the ibises down to 60 breeding pairs, the RSPB and the Moroccan authorities decided to give them a special helping hand.Long-abandoned breeding ledges have been newly cleared on the cliffs and, to encourage the birds to use the sites, decoy ibises have been installed.The scheme was easier to dream up than to fulfil on the crumbling 250ft sandy cliff faces with a pronounced overhang. The RSPB called in three expert climbers, Diana Taylor and Tony Howard, who run an adventure travel company in Oldham, and Mick Shaw, who runs a building firm in Manchester, all specialists in climbing and mountain exploration in the Middle East and North Africa. They gave their services free and spent two days abseiling down the cliffs, directed by the RSPB’s project leader Chris Bowden, to clear the ledges and install the decoys, which had been made in England and taken out to Morocco.Local national park wardens are now waiting to see if the new ledges will attract more of the birds, which are among the world’s rarest. Bald on their crowns, with aMohican-like tuft of feathers sticking out behind and long red decurved bills, they are unmistakable, and attractive in an ungainly way, their bodies metallic dark-green with a violet sheen on the wings.Once there were breeding populations across much of Eastern Europe and the Levant, but by 1900 they had disappeared from much of their range.In the 20th-century colonies were extinguished in Syria and Algeria, largely by hunting. Most dramatically, the colony at Birecik in Turkey, which contained nearly 800 pairs in 1954, was down to 65 pairs 10 years later, and finally disappeared in 1989.