In Annapolis, Gov. Robert Ehrlich is unhappy with a proposal to slash a considerable portion of his Eastern Shore pilot project to restore the Corsica River and its environs. The Legislative Service Department, part of the General Assembly, says that lawmakers should whack $2.4 million from the project that Ehrlich, backed by White House funding, wants to stand as a main environmental achievement of his administration …

In Washington, D.C., environmentalists, elected officials and non-profit groups convene for a one-day Potomac Watershed Trash Summit March 16 at the World Bank. The goal is to rid the Potomac — plagued with old tires, soda bottles, cans, plastic, Styrofoam and even an occasional old car — of its trash by 2013. To seal the deal, elected officials and key government leaders from the Potomac Watershed — including U.S. Reps Steny Hoyer and Chris Van Hollen and Maryland State Senate Pesident Mike Miller — sign a Declaration of Action …

In Virginia, seafood marketers are as determined as ever to plant more Asian oysters in Chesapeake Bay, even though scientific studies about their potential negative impacts continue. The Virginia Seafood Council last week proposed increasing by 150 percent, to 2.5 million oysters, the number that would be grown in protective mesh cages suspended above the floor of the Bay …

Our Creature Feature comes from Indonesia, where farmers have used guns, spears and poison over the years to keep elephants from trampling and devouring their crops, usually with little success. Finally, they’ve hit on a method that is far less violent but seems to be working: hot peppers.

Huge Sumatran elephants that can destroy a field in an instant are halted in their tracks when farmers tie chilies to their fences. “The smell stops elephants from coming anywhere close to the farmland,” a spokesman for the Sumatra’s Way Kambas National Park told Reuters. That keeps everyone happy, including the elephants, participants with locals recently in elephant soccer and elephant swimming races.