Thursday, 14 Jun 2007

Don't Count Your Hatchery Salmon Before They Hatch, or Even After

Judge rules hatchery fish don't count when determining ESA status

A federal judge in Washington state has overturned a contentious Bush administration policy that had tallied hatchery-raised fish as well as wild populations when determining the species' status under the Endangered Species Act. Under that policy, that a collection of green groups sued to overturn, upper Columbia River steelhead had been listed as threatened instead of endangered due to the inclusion of millions of hatchery-raised fish in making the determination. "The court concludes that in evaluating any policy or listing determination under the ESA, its pole star must be the viability of naturally self-sustaining populations in their naturally occurring habitat, " U.S. District Judge John Coughenour wrote in his decision. "To be sure, the inclusion of hatchery fish alongside natural fish ... strikes the court as odd." The ruling, welcomed by conservation groups, is at odds with a 2001 decision by another federal judge who ruled hatchery fish should be counted when determining a species' ESA status. Wednesday's decision is likely to be appealed.

OK, We're Moving to Iceland

World Health Organization ranks countries' environmental health

To those who think environmentalism is all about prioritizing starfish over humans, read on: Cleaning up the globe's air and water could save 13 million lives every year, according to the World Health Organization. Yesterday, WHO released a country-by-country analysis of health issues in 192 nations, factoring in agricultural methods, noise pollution, workplace hazards, climate change, and more. In 23 countries, more than 10 percent of deaths could be traced to just two fixable factors: unsafe water and indoor air pollution from cooking fires. Poverty-stricken Angola, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Afghanistan fared the worst in the rankings, but environmental health is of course an issue in developed countries too; the report indicated that 1.8 million lives could be saved annually in 53 countries around Europe if a healthy environment was prioritized. Iceland and Israel keep their people the healthiest, according to WHO, followed by Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Britain, and the U.S.


A visit to the Northwest yields culinary inspiration for Massachusetts-based columnist Roz Cummins, who samples the region's organic restaurants, chews the fat with the Grist staff and the authors of the local-food journal Plenty, and finds the perfect local strawberries to re-create her mother's blitz torte. Find the recipe -- as well as a few more tales from Roz's big adventure -- in today's column.

Intel It Like It Is

Tech companies go for the green

This week, a consortium led by big tech kahunas Google and Intel kicked off an effort to reduce the power use of the approximately 250 million personal computers and servers manufactured each year. Participants that signed on to the Climate Savers Computing Initiative -- including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, and Yahoo! -- have agreed to halve new machines' electricity use by 2010. While costs may go up by $20 or so per computer, machines will also be more reliable and quieter, and consumers will quickly make up the difference in electricity savings and possible utility rebates, say backers. The consortium expects that their efforts could save $5.5 billion in electricity costs by 2010 and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 54 million tons annually -- not insignificant, as computing is estimated to be the source of about 2 percent of worldwide GHG emissions. Guess tech companies have recognized that reduced energy use has "net" benefits. Ho ho!

Buffalo and Behold

Herds of migrating wildlife survive and thrive in southern Sudan

Wildlife populations are thriving in, of all places, war-wracked southern Sudan. The first aerial wildlife survey of the country taken in 25 years found herds of more than a million gazelle and antelope, migrating in formations up to 30 miles across and 50 miles long. The numbers compare to or even surpass the throngs of wildebeest on the famous Serengeti plains. Wartime poachers and rebel hunters do seem to have had more of an impact in the western part of the region, where previously numerous buffalo, elephant, rhinoceros, and zebra populations are decimated or missing altogether; but in the east, ostriches, lions, leopards, hippos, and even the thought-to-be-extinct beisa oryx have survived and thrived. As Sudan rebuilds after more than 20 years of war that saw the deaths of some 2 million people, it faces balancing wildlife conservation with economic development; pastoralist refugees are finally returning to the region, and oil permits have already been given out in some migratory corridors. While many species survived the war, researcher Paul Elkan wonders: "Can they survive the peace?"