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Way Downstream

In Anne Arundel County, Annapolis Neck along the South River was counted among Maryland’s Seven Special Places in need of urgent protection in a new report by the nonprofit Environment Maryland Research and Policy Center, which this week reports that Marylanders are in grave danger of losing seven tracts of undeveloped Maryland farms, forests and parks — including old farmland and forest in Crystal Spring and Masque farms on Annapolis Neck — to development and sprawl. The other six tracts include Prettyboy Reservoir; Assawoman Bay; Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge; Terrapin Run in the Allegheny Mountains; Cayots Corner and the Patuxent River Rural Legacy Area. To preserve this land, Gov.-Elect Martin O’Malley will need to fully fund Program Open Space in next year’s budget. In the past, Gov. Robert Ehrlich diverted Open Space funding, accumulated from the real estate transfer tax, to the general budget …

In Maryland and Virginia, we’ll soon be boating in the wake of explorer John Smith. Before recessing for the holidays last week, the U.S. Senate followed the lead of the House of Representatives in approved retiring Maryland Sen. Paul Sarbanes’ bill to blaze a National Historic Trail, based on the route of Captain John Smith’s exploration of the Chesapeake Bay region, nearing its 400th anniversary next year. If the bill achieves the next step — a signature by President Bush — this will be the first National Watertrail in the country. Such a trail would promote tourism and history trips in a living classroom. Though John Smith traveled the Bay for two years in a small 30-foot shallop, today’s boaters will take to the trail in kayaks, canoes, sailboats, powerboats and more, from Jamestown, Virginia, to Smith Falls on the Pennsylvania border …

In Washington, you’d better not do your shopping for kids at capital gift shops. That’s because children’s jewelry and other inexpensive kid gifts available there contain dangerous levels of lead. That’s the finding by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, a Democrat who wants to be a lead cop in addition to president of the United States …

Our Creature Feature is yet another global warming tale, this one from France. By now, it’s usually in the 30s or colder in Paris, and the migratory birds have long since departed for tropical Africa. But this week, the warblers, swallows and other feathered travelers were enjoying the balmy upper 50s and showing no signs of leaving.

You can’t blame them for being partial to Paris. But the birds might regret it if things change in a hurry: The record low in Paris is eight degrees. That is highly doubtful, though, given what is occurring on planet Earth with the build-up of pollution in the atmosphere. “We are seeing rapid and major climate changes that the birds are having to face, especially the migrators,” the French League for the Protection of Birds said in a statement.