His unpublished report, seen by New Scientist, contradicts a claim made by the rocket company on its website that there are "no endangered or threatened species that use the island".

Sombrero, a windswept 38-hectare island, is part of the British overseas territory of Anguilla. It is uninhabited except for a manned lighthouse. Two years ago, Andrew Beal, a Texas aerospace entrepreneur, persuaded the Anguillan government to lease him the island for a $250 million rocket launch pad to carry telecommunications satellites into space (New Scientist, 20 March 1999, p 18).

Beal Aerospace's formal environmental assessment, carried out by ICF Consultants of Fairfax, Virginia, says that the island's birds are unexceptional and reported seeing only two invertebrate species and a black lizard, Ameiva corvina, on the island.

But Michael Ivie, an entomologist from Montana State University at Bozeman, has returned from a week on the island in November with a very different story. He uncovered two more species of reptile and 65 species of invertebrates, including a dozen that he thinks may live nowhere else. These include grasshoppers, beetles, a carnid fly and two species of scorpion.

"ICF is a big consulting company but it seems they didn't have the experience or skills necessary for the task," says Ivie. When contacted by New Scientist, ICF referred questions to Beal. David Spoede, a spokesman for Beal, which has not seen Ivie's report, says: "ICF is the world's leading environmental authority on rocket-launch facilities."

Spoede adds: "We are the only people doing unbiased science because we used research done by Dr Ellen Censky before our plan came up." But Censky, director of the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History at the University of Connecticut and a lizard specialist, says: "Excuse my language, but bullshit. They have misrepresented both written publications and verbal conversations."

The black lizard was almost wiped out by hurricane Luis in 1995. The Beal spokesman quotes Censky as saying "it survived by climbing the lighthouse" and that man-made structures helped it survive.

But Censky says: "Lizards did not climb into the lighthouse to survive the hurricane. The natural activity of the lizards in inclement weather is to go down into holes. I told them that this was not a healthy population. Any intrusion on the island might be detrimental." Spoede says ICF is "adamant" Censky made the comments about the lighthouse.

Ivie considers the island is "a Galapagos in miniature" and highly susceptible to damage by human activity. Jim Stevenson of Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which commissioned Ivie to study the island's ecology, agrees.

"We are not opposed to rocket launch sites, but it is now clear that Sombrero is a very special place of global importance." Beal's plan has to be approved by both the British and Anguillan governments.

From New Scientist magazine, 12 February 2000

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