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Post by justjohn on Jan 28, 2008 5:05:43 GMT -7
Bush Opens Roadless Tongass National Forest to LoggingJUNEAU, Alaska, January 25, 2008 (ENS) - Today, the Bush administration put a "for sale" sign on trees in pristine roadless areas of the Tongass rainforest in Alaska - America's largest national forest. This move by Bush officials to reverse roadless area protections parallels two others made recently in national forests located in Idaho and Colorado. Conservationists from across the country are indignant that roads will be punched through some of the nation's last, best roadless areas to allow private corporations to log America's public lands. "The few remaining roadless areas of our national forests are some of the only safe harbors for America's wildlife," said Mary Beth Beetham at Defenders of Wildlife. "As global warming threatens to dramatically change the landscape we must have the foresight to preserve these last remaining pristine forests for future generations. It's folly for the Bush administration, in its last few months, to work to destroy these areas." In December 2003, Bush officials "temporarily" exempted Alaska's Tongass rainforest from the Clinton era Roadless Rule, designed to protect 58 million acres of roadless wild forests in 39 states. The Bush administration's new management plan for the Tongass National Forest will raise no revenue for the U.S. government, as the U.S. taxpayers will have to pay to build the roads the timber companies need to access the forest. "With so much of our forest heritage already lost, every roadless acre counts. The spectacular roadless areas in Alaska deserve as much protection as those in every other state," said Larry Edwards with Greenpeace in Sitka, Alaska. "The Roadless Rule and the courts have sheltered many of the last, best places in our national forests, even during an administration hostile to forest protection. Now, with one foot out the door, Bush officials are looking for whatever way they can to give away the family silver," said Franz Matzner at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Tongass logging fell dramatically in the 1990s, and for years now has existed at levels that do not require slicing roads and clearcuts into virgin old-growth forests, as the Forest Service itself has acknowledged. "The new plan suffers from the same central problem as the old plan. It leaves 2.4 million acres of wild, roadless backcountry areas open to clear cutting and new logging roads," said Earthjustice attorney Tom Waldo. "The Tongass is worth a whole lot more to the American people as a standing forest than it is as a sea of stumps and logs." The land management plan released today was ordered more than two years ago by a federal court which concluded that the old plan justifying opening Tongass wildlands for development was invalid due to several factors, including a gross overestimation of demand for Tongass logs. Congress also has expressed concern with Tongass wilderness logging. The House of Representative has voted three times to stop taxpayer dollars from funding new logging roads there. In September 2006, the federal District Court of Northern California ordered the Bush administration to reinstate the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule to protect almost 50 million acres of National Forests and grasslands across the lower 48 states and Puerto Rico from road construction, logging, and other harmful development. Roadless area of the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska. (Photo credit unknown) Judge Elizabeth Laporte ruled that the Bush administration violated both the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act by when it repealed the Roadless Rule and put into place another rule without any substantial analysis or need. But the long term status of the roadless areas in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska was not settled by Judge Laporte. In 2003, the Bush administration exempted the Tongass from the roadless rule by creating a separate amendment that was based on the validity of the Tongass Land Management Plan. "The Forest Service is losing money hand over fist on roads that Americans don't even want," said Christy Goldfuss of Environment America. "Today," said Caitlin Hills with American Lands Alliance, "the federal government, in defiance of the facts and the strongly expressed sentiments of the American people to protect all roadless areas, has answered 'fire up the chainsaws.'" "The Tongass is the crown jewel of our nation's roadless wildlands," said Trish Rolfe at Alaska Sierra Club. "Wild salmon, bears, eagles, and wolves thrive there among moss-draped ancient trees, along crystalline fjords and untamed rivers. It has nine million acres of roadless areas that lack permanent protection. The Bush administration has just put some of the best of them on the chopping block." "All over the Tongass there are roadless wildlands that local people and visitors hold dear, jeopardized by this new plan," said Gregory Vickrey with Tongass Conservation Society. "These are special places critical to the region's incredible fish, deer and other wildlife, world-famous recreational opportunities, cherished subsistence practices, and the businesses and jobs that depend on the region's natural treasures," said Vickrey. "These are the very things that make Southeast Alaskans most want to live here."
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Post by valpomike on Jan 28, 2008 8:21:51 GMT -7
jj,
Don't bring them down, and use them, let them burn. What would you do?
Michael Dabrowski
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Post by kaima on Jan 28, 2008 9:00:34 GMT -7
Ahhh ... Tongass. The problem (argument) will be around long after all of us are gone! If you want a sure fire conversation in Alaska, just say "bear gun". If you want to strike emotion and risk your life, just say "wolf hunt" or "Tongass".
With teh Tongass it is a question (in my mind) of "what do we do with our nation's resources?" Do we let them sit, do we declare them to be protected to one degree or another, do we open part of them up for use, do we develop sustainable harvest and regrowth of those resources? If we don't utilize the resources in one way or another, how do we support developing an economy for the local people with sustainable jobs? Is the west to be kept in perpetuity as a playground and preserve for people from the east to enjoy?
Do we declare parts of the area to be a national treasure as with the "Misty Fjords", thus drawing rampant tourism to a pristine area and impacting that environment and making it no longer 'pristine'? In this case equally beautiful neighboring fjords are NOT declared a protected national treasure and thus do not draw the crowds, and thus through neglect remain pristine.
Without those single lane, dirt service roads in the Tongass forest virtually no one will ever go into the forest to enjoy the nature. With the service roads only extremely few people will ever go into the forest. Essentially they will remain playgrounds for the very rich and young, those with time and big money to get into the wilderness.
Old gold mine trails and other access routes that would be extremely difficult to build today are the basis - the roads - that give access to the wilderness for the masses of people. Neighboring valleys without road access may see a dozen or two visitors per year as opposed to thousand who can enjoy access over the now abandoned mining roads.
So you see I have lived with this since 1971 and the questions remain much the same. I claim to have no answers, but I do have some opinions. Thanks for asking.
Kaii
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Post by kaima on Jan 28, 2008 9:23:28 GMT -7
Now with Alaska warming up (there is no doubt about that; take Global Warming as a different topic entirely if you wish to dispute it, but Alaska IS warming up!) there is a great deal of politics about polar bear (cute and cuddly, even if they will eat you for lunch) and the spiecies being endangered by the lack of polar ice. Here is one article from yesterday:
Political science Lacking studies, state still disputes polar bear 'doom'
By TOM KIZZIA tkizzia@adn.com
(01/27/08 02:42:50)
Ken Taylor has had easier jobs than this one. It's not like the good old days chasing rhinos, climbing into bear dens and wrestling beluga whales in shallow water.
These days, sitting at a desk as deputy commissioner of fish and game, the veteran wildlife biologist has to muster the best science he can find to argue that Alaska's polar bears are in good shape and need no special protection from hypothetical doomsday scenarios.
This requires Taylor to stand up to the prevailing wisdom about global warming in most of the world's scientific community and the public -- not to mention some pretty strong opinions in his own department.
But Taylor, the Palin administration's point man on polar bears, argues that the scientific justification simply isn't there -- at least not yet -- to declare the polar bear "threatened" and touch off a cascade of effects under the Endangered Species Act. A decision on the bears is expected from the U.S. Department of the Interior in the next few weeks.
"From my perspective, it's very difficult to put a population on the list that's healthy, based on a projection 45 years into the future," Taylor says. "That's really stretching scientific credibility."
The state's own scientific credibility hasn't been helped by the fact that the Fish and Game Department no longer has any polar bear experts of its own. Nor did it help that, when state officials found a scientific study reinforcing their polar bear stance, a congressional committee called a hearing to decry "phony science" and Exxon Mobil-funded "climate deniers."
Still, Taylor has helped produce two reports in the past year arguing against an endangered species listing.
The state argues that there's too much uncertainty about the future of the Arctic ice sheet on which the polar bears depend. Explanations for global warming other than greenhouse gas emissions, such as sun spots and variations in the earth's orbit, need to be considered, the state says.
And despite experts who call the idea "fanciful," the state argues that polar bears forced onto land might be able to adapt quickly by eating birds, caribou and other terrestrial species.
"The country is being hit with sky-is-falling-type articles," said Taylor. "Very little attention is being given to those who say it's overblown."
ARGUING THE STATE'S CASE
Gov. Sarah Palin is leading the state's fight. In an op-ed column in The New York Times earlier this month, she said there is "insufficient evidence" to justify such a listing -- an opinion she said was based on "a comprehensive review" of the science by state wildlife officials.
With limited peer-reviewed science available that concludes the bears are doing fine, however, the state devotes most of its space to challenging everyone else's work.
That pits Taylor and his staff -- and several national consultants from the warming-is-overblown camp -- against polar bear biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey and leading international authorities in the World Conservation Union's Polar Bear Specialist Group, not to mention the climatologists of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Studies by those scientists contend that Alaska's polar bear populations are already showing signs of stress and decline linked to summer melting of their ice habitat. Ice shrinkage models suggest that two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be gone by the year 2050. Scientists now say the Arctic ice may be melting even faster than that.
The Palin administration's effort to block action by raising uncertainty has moved the state to the dubious margins of scientific credibility, according to environmentalists.
"They're not presenting a fair picture of the science," said Deborah Williams, a former Interior Department official who now heads the climate nonprofit Alaska Conservation Solutions. "It's a terrible disservice, to release something so irresponsibly biased."
National environmental groups sued to prompt the federal endangered-species review. They say the state is giving credibility to industry-funded dissenters whose studies are designed to confuse the public and the press.
"The deniers somehow manage to get a very small number of such papers published, and then those who oppose greenhouse gas regulation or protection of the polar bear seize upon them and promote them and ignore the fact that virtually the entire scientific community disagrees with them," said Kassie Siegel, the climate program director for the Center for Biological Diversity.
At stake is the state's credibility in other areas where a balanced view of science is important, such as predator control and oil spill cleanups, said Rick Steiner, a professor with the University of Alaska Marine Advisory Program.
Steiner filed a freedom-of-information request last month seeking records of the state's polar bear decision-making, including contacts between state officials and oil companies. He said he fears the state's position is driven by oil company concerns.
Fish and Game officials said a search of electronic records for polar bear and predator control communications would cost Steiner $468,784. Steiner is appealing.
RIPPLES OUTSIDE ALASKA
A federal listing of the polar bear as threatened could have far-reaching consequences, depending on the management plan drawn up to protect the bears.
State officials have expressed concern about effects a threatened-species listing could have on international hunting agreements and future oil and gas development in the Arctic. Sen. Ted Stevens echoed those concerns this month, saying bear protections could interfere with construction of a gas pipeline from the North Slope. Rep. Don Young and Sen. Lisa Murkowski have also spoken against the listing, which has been cited by opponents of a pending federal oil lease sale in Alaska's Chukchi Sea.
Past oil drilling on northern lands has not hurt the polar bears, according to federal studies. Environmentalists counter that current interest in offshore Arctic drilling presents new risks, including oil spills into water.
An even bigger question, spreading far beyond Alaska, is: How will a management plan protect the bears from anticipated habitat loss? Will it focus on new protections for the last few bears on land? Or will it provide new leverage over federal permits for projects in the Lower 48, raising challenges on everything from new freeways to coal-fired power plants -- all in an effort to curb greenhouse gases?
"When I voted for the creation of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, I never envisioned that gas and coal plants in the deserts of Arizona could be adversely affected by the listing of polar bears in the Alaskan Arctic," Young said this month.
The Center for Biological Diversity and other environmental groups say this is just the result they hope for: using the polar bear to address global climate issues. Anything less and the bears are doomed, they say.
Federal officials say there is nothing in the law to preclude listing species threatened by climate change. They say this is the first time such a listing might be made.
These are big issues, but they are secondary right now. They come to the fore later, if the bears are listed as "threatened" and a management plan must be prepared.
For now, the battleground is science.
The Endangered Species Act requires a listing decision to be made strictly on the basis of the best scientific information regarding the foreseeable future.
In other arenas, the Palin administration does not dispute that the globe is getting warmer. Because Alaska is so far north, the state has felt more impacts of climate change than any others.
With fanfare, Palin appointed a subcabinet to address climate change issues. The Department of Environmental Conservation Web site says global warming poses a serious threat to Alaska, and calls the satellite data on shrinking sea ice "convincing evidence" that change is under way.
But when it comes to polar bears, skepticism is the theme.
"We did not ignore any facts in our response to the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing," Palin said this month in an e-mail response to a question on the state's scientific backup. "We simply countered the arguments they presented with factual information they did not consider in their proposal. We also critically reviewed the assumptions upon which the proposed analysis was based."
DEARTH OF DATA
Both sides in the debate agree that polar bear population data are scarce.
Scientists say numbers around the Arctic grew significantly after most hunting was banned 35 to 40 years ago. The elusive bears have not been closely monitored, however, until the past few years.
Some bear populations still seem to be doing fine. But studies in Alaska between 2001 and 2005 showed a falloff in bear survival during years with less sea ice. A few years' data are not enough to warrant a threatened-species listing, state officials say.
Broader estimates for the southern Beaufort region would seem worrying, with population declining from 1,800 bears in the 1980s to a current estimate of 1,526. But techniques used for the two surveys were different, making the comparison statistically meaningless, federal scientists say.
The state emphasized that statistical problem as it declared the population stable. For evidence, the state mainly cited data from a 2006 federal study.
The state did not mention that the same federal study goes on to raise concerns about increasing cub mortality and shrinking size of adult bears, details that suggest trouble for the region's bears. The study actually concluded the population is changing for the worse.
Does the lack of hard statistical proof of a decline mean the population can be called stable?
"They're certainly not necessarily declining," said Doug Vincent-Lang, a fisheries biologist now serving as a Fish and Game special assistant on endangered species. Given the implications of a listing, he said, shouldn't the government have better data?
ALASKA AGAINST EVERYONE ELSE
Biologists who contributed to the federal endangered-species process have been told not to respond publicly to the state's comments, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Their response will be incorporated in the final decision, the agency said.
But Andrew Derocher, one of Canada's two top polar bear biologists, says the state is presenting a "bizarre" view of wildlife conservation.
"There's a very clear consensus that the population in the Beaufort Sea is not doing well," said Derocher, the current chairman of the international Polar Bear Specialist Group. "Polar bear scientists without exception are very concerned about the long-term preservation of the species."
The state also pokes at studies used to predict the future of polar ice, quoting at length from the climate scientists' own demurrals about margins of error. The chain of predicted problems following from those studies are based on "unsupported conjecture," the state says.
The state's critique was based on the work of a consultant, J. Scott Armstrong, a University of Pennsylvania expert on mathematical forecasting who has elsewhere challenged former vice president Al Gore to a $10,000 bet on whether the globe is truly warming.
The federal ice forecasts are actually considered conservative. Nine gloomy new studies released last fall by the USGS drew on the most likely projections of ice loss by the IPCC. The state contends the federal analysis should have included "outlying" scenarios deemed less likely to occur. That would have required biologists to consider studies predicting more ice -- and more bears.
But if anything, the federal analysis was too cautious. New ice studies are showing that the IPCC models actually underestimated the ice shrinkage of the past few years. A study released this month by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., says summer sea ice could be gone from the North Pole as soon as 2030. A widely quoted NASA scientist says it might even be gone by 2012.
Fish and Game drew on other state agencies for its comments. But the state was not able to cite its own research on polar bears -- despite Palin's reassuring comment in The New York Times that "state biologists are studying polar bears and their habitats."
The state gave up polar bear research to the federal government after passage of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act and now plays only a small role in those studies.
"They've done a clever thing," said Jack Lentfer, a retired polar bear biologist who managed the last state polar bear program, switching to the feds after 1972. Lentfer thinks the state is ignoring the consensus of active researchers. "They've got someone who can write in a scientific way. But if you look at it, it doesn't have any substance. They're speaking in generalities."
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Post by kaima on Jan 28, 2008 9:25:53 GMT -7
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Post by bescheid on Jan 28, 2008 9:34:15 GMT -7
J.J.
It would appear the Americans suffer of lack of balls in as much as to national resource use and management.
Natural resources are as they are, to be used. Whilst in the case of forest stands and what is topographical, is temporary. For nature has a tendency to recycle through normal attrition as of fires/insect predation and what ever nature has in mind.
Whilst sub-surface resources are kept safe as they are until used.
As it is in currant and present. To construct the means of transportation in such as these remote areas, will require an immense amount of risk manage met in capital with out immediate assets for collateral.
In as much to wild life, nature takes care of them. In as much to rare insects, they will no longer be rare. In the case of people, then people best take care of them selves, for nature is not with people.
Charles
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Post by valpomike on Jan 28, 2008 12:30:30 GMT -7
Charles,
I am very upset when you say, AMERICANS SUFFER OF LACK OF BALLS, to this issue. Who are you to judge, who is lacking balls, when you are not even a American? Please try and find fault with you own, we can take care of ourselfs. And this is only what you think, no sure is true, for all. What is your background in forest and it's planing? Why do you feel you know so much on the Americans? Your remarks, if you don't know now, have very much upset me. I have not told you what the Germans need do, for some time, and working on not doing it again. This is a thing that the American can work out, without outside help. And Global Warming is nothing but more of Al Gore's bunk. More great thinkers, don't agree with him, than do. He is not trained in this field either, but he thinks he is. He was a poor vice, and even worst senator, and now a statemen.
Michael Dabrowski
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Post by valpomike on Jan 28, 2008 12:32:59 GMT -7
To all,
I am sorry I lost it, but too many outsiders are telling us what to do, here in the U.S.A. We don't need this. I have been working on not talking to Charles, but this was too much. Again, sorry if I upset the rest of you, because I was very upset, and could not hold back any more.
Michael Dabrowski
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Post by bescheid on Jan 28, 2008 13:12:54 GMT -7
To all, I am sorry I lost it, but too many outsiders are telling us what to do, here in the U.S.A. We don't need this. I have been working on not talking to Charles, but this was too much. Again, sorry if I upset the rest of you, because I was very upset, and could not hold back any more. Michael Dabrowski My sir If you are truly sorry, you would have not returned of said post to my name!! For if your memory is correct of that I am very much aware of, you are not to address me for one month, Ok!! So to please, simply shut up and keep from clutter of your 2 - 3 line post that clog up the forum, Ok?? Of curios, are you the American spokesman for all American people??? Charles
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Post by bescheid on Jan 28, 2008 13:19:19 GMT -7
Charles, I am very upset when you say, AMERICANS SUFFER OF LACK OF BALLS, to this issue. Who are you to judge, who is lacking balls, when you are not even a American? Please try and find fault with you own, we can take care of ourselfs. And this is only what you think, no sure is true, for all. What is your background in forest and it's planing? Why do you feel you know so much on the Americans? Your remarks, if you don't know now, have very much upset me. I have not told you what the Germans need do, for some time, and working on not doing it again. This is a thing that the American can work out, without outside help. And Global Warming is nothing but more of Al Gore's bunk. More great thinkers, don't agree with him, than do. He is not trained in this field either, but he thinks he is. He was a poor vice, and even worst senator, and now a statemen. Michael Dabrowski Herr Michael I have no idea what you are speaking of..For what has this to do with Al Gore or global warming? are you nuts?? If I may ask, please refrain from your boose whilst speaking to me. Charles
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Post by valpomike on Jan 28, 2008 14:41:00 GMT -7
To all,
Please let me know, have I been out of line? Do my 2-3 lines posting, clog up the fourm? Do I not have a chance to speak my mind? If you, any of you, find my postings poor, please say so. If you think that Charles is out of line this time, please say so, also. I love this group, but find it hard to not post sometimes, when I read, what others, from other than the U.S. are telling us what to do here. Let the Americans handle things by ourselfs, if we need help, we will ask for it. I don't like every, someone calling Americans lack of balls, thos who are, are called women.
Michael Dabrowski
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Post by hollister on Jan 28, 2008 15:40:56 GMT -7
*pulling on my asbestos suit* In short Mike the answer to you question, "have I been out of line" is yes as far as I see it. The main problem is that this is a forum dedicated to Poland and Polish culture, not a how great is America forum. We have members from all over who post here and need to feel at home. They are just as entitled to their opinion as anyone else - sometimes we may not like their opinion but we need to be respectful and listen to what they have to say. After all that is a basic American virtue isn't it? Freedom of Speech? I saw nothing wrong in what Charles wrote - all he was doing was stating his opinion. From your own post you provide a great example I don't like every, someone calling Americans lack of balls, thos who are, are called women. If I read this correctly, if you have no balls you are a woman - and since the discussion started with a perceived slight over an accusation that a lack of balls was bad - then no balls = is a bad thing and parallel to that no balls = women thus women are bad! I find that a little sexists and disturbing - but that is your opinion and I accept that as it gives me a better picture of you are. And yes the 2 -3 line postings do clog up the forum. The forum had been acting like a giant conversation. One person would post something and someone would comment on that posting by adding what they thought or offering and alternative view or way of looking at something.
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Post by rdywenur on Jan 28, 2008 16:39:17 GMT -7
I also fully agree with Holly. I also did not see anything wrong with what Charles wrote. If you did not agree then there is a different way to address your opinion but not by pesonal attacks that wind up leading for no room for discussion. Read this article and then come back and ask the same question en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_war Do I think your wrong...yes.
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Post by livia on Jan 28, 2008 16:43:31 GMT -7
I must say I like both gentlemen Charles and Michael. They are very alike. Michael sees two states USA and Poland as 'the best' and presents them accordingly. And Charles sees Germany as 'the best' and presents accordingly. They could be great friends. So I hate to interfere, and in fact I don't wish to. It is just my love for the logic that interferes when I say that it was Charles who first used the remark in a 'derogatory' intention. But I agree that both gentlemen make a mistake of reasoning. Having no testicles is not a disability for more or less half of the human beings!!! ;D ;D ;D
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Mary
Cosmopolitan
Posts: 934
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Post by Mary on Jan 28, 2008 16:52:18 GMT -7
I must say I like both gentlemen Charles and Michael. They are very alike. Michael sees two states USA and Poland as 'the best' and presents them accordingly. And Charles sees Germany as 'the best' and presents accordingly. They could be great friends. So I hate to interfere, and in fact I don't wish to. It is just my love for the logic that interferes when I say that it was Charles who first used the remark in a 'derogatory' intention. But I agree that both gentlemen make a mistake of reasoning. Having no testicles is not a disability for more or less half of the human beings!!! ;D ;D ;D Livia, you and the others have some valid points. I like you enjoy Charles and Michael both. I think they are just like oil & water, they just don't mix. I must say, and I think some of you may agree, that when I read Charles' post I just knew Mike would be offended! I could see it coming, and then the counter attacks. I think our gentlemen can't help but irritate each other. One point I would like to make though, I have noticed that Mike has been very restrained lately, and I hope you all have noticed this too. He enjoys the group and is very interested in Poland and his people there. Please give him credit for that. Mary
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