Afflicted by poverty and drought, millions of people in East and Southern Africa are increasingly hunting and eating wild animals and in the process endangering several hundred species, according to a report released yesterday by TRAFFIC, an international wildlife monitoring program. With the decline in numbers of traditional game species like buffalo, hunters are now going after elephants, zebras, hippos, and other animals. While conservationists have long been worried about the effects of killing primates for food in the tropical forests of West Africa, the concern over the meat trade in the savannas of the eastern and southern parts of …

The Democratic Party has unveiled new TV commercials that lambaste the environmental records of George W. Bush and his running mate Dick Cheney, just in time for the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. One ad shows an image of Texas with pollution spewing from the top of the state as if from a smokestack. The narrator notes that Bush appointed a chemical company lobbyist to enforce the state's environmental laws and that Houston is the smoggiest city in the U.S. Another ad, which criticizes votes Cheney made on a number of issues during his congressional career, points out that he …

A number of scientists are warning that the spread of invasive species could become the next big environmental crisis. Some of the invasives are brought into non-native areas deliberately, but most are imported accidentally, particularly as global trade increases. Once the species get established in places where they have no natural predators, they can spread like wildfire and wreak havoc on native ecosystems. Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson believes that invasives will lead to more extinctions than pollution. One recent study estimated that invasive species, including diseases, cost the U.S. more than $130 billion a year. A few examples: The …

The cruise ship industry has been hit with bad press lately for some high-profile pollution cases involving the illegal dumping of oil-contaminated water and other pollution into the channels and bays along Alaska's southeast coastal rainforest. These incidents have raised awareness that current law allows cruise ships to dump wastewater and treated sewage virtually anywhere. Hoping to burnish its image and stave off stricter regulation, the cruise industry is slowly introducing voluntary pilot projects to clean up wastewater on ships, which is generated at the rate of about 100 gallons per passenger per day. But a growing number of citizens …

Gabon's government reached an agreement last month with the country's major logging companies and an assortment of environmental groups to permanently protect a 1,900-square-mile tropical rainforest reserve rich with large mammals and other wildlife. The Lope Reserve has also been nominated to become the first national park in the West African nation. The agreement involves a redrawing of the boundaries of the reserve, opening up some previously protected land to logging while putting additional areas off-limits to tree cutting. Some environmental groups object to permitting any logging, but other groups, including the World Wildlife Fund, say the deal is a …

Even low levels of common pesticides can disturb the ability of salmon to smell, possibly reducing their chances of survival, according to research by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Salmon rely heavily on smell to help determine friends, even mates, from foes, and it may be the primary sense the fish use to navigate back to their home streams from the sea. In the past, safe pesticide levels for fish have been determined by lethality tests, but environmentalists say the new research shows that the levels must be set much lower. Two enviro groups last week said they would sue …

Congress's efforts to pass the massive bills that authorize government spending are being tied up because some Republicans insist on attaching to the bills unrelated amendments called "riders," many of which aim to undermine environmental protections. Defenders of Wildlife says that Republicans have placed at least 56 anti-environmental riders on 10 appropriations bills, including measures dealing with grazing, dam removal, wetlands, drinking water standards, and global warming. One rider would delay stronger environmental regulation of hard-rock mining. Another would block an administration plan to release more water from dams on the Missouri River to improve wildlife habitat. The White House …

In a move that has angered the international community, Japan sent out a fleet of ships into the North Pacific on Saturday with the aim of killing three species of whales -- minke, sperm, and Bryde's. An international moratorium on commercial whaling went into effect in 1986, but Japan has continued to hunt several hundred minke whales a year under the guise of "scientific research," with the meat ending up in Japanese markets. Other countries tolerated the hunting because minkes are relatively abundant, but the U.S. and Britain are now angry because Japan this year decided to expand its "research" …

China is enduring one of the worst droughts in its history, and many experts are worrying that the nation is running out of water for its 1.3 billion people. Some 400 of China's 668 cities have declared water shortages, which means that taps may work only a few hours a day, if at all. At least 20 million Chinese citizens don't have access to any running water, and another 200 million experience serious water rationing or shortages. To make matters worse, much of the freshwater that's available is polluted. Northern China is also beset by the problem of desertification, with …

ABC News is being hit with questions about the integrity of a "20/20" report on organic foods that was aired in February and again in July of this year. The report by John Stossel claimed, among other things, that non-organic produce does not necessarily have more pesticide residue than organic produce. Stossel said this claim was backed up by research commissioned by ABC News, but the two scientists who did research for the network say they never tested produce for pesticide residue. One of the scientists did test poultry and found that samples of conventional poultry had pesticide residue while …