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Fish and Foul

PCB-Laced Salmon Pollute Alaskan Lakes Pollution is turning up in some of Alaska’s remotest and most pristine lakes, and the problem isn’t secret shore-side industries — it’s salmon. According to research published in this week’s edition of Nature, sockeye salmon pick up PCBs in the northern Pacific Ocean, then head to Alaska to spawn and […]

Durban Renewal

World Parks Congress Closes with Signing of Durban Accord The 10-day World Parks Congress closed yesterday in Durban, South Africa, with the signing of the eponymous Durban Accord. The accord is not legally binding for its 154 signatories, but it is still considered a tool to “promote, guide, and influence positive action for protected areas […]

A Real Page-turner

Small Recycled Paper Company Is Making Big Strides New Leaf Paper, a small but fast-growing recycled paper company in San Francisco, aims to revolutionize the paper industry — a revolution that’s sorely needed. Ninety percent of printing and writing paper in the U.S. still has no recycled content at all, says Susan Kinsella, executive director […]

Put It in Park

Megapark Will Protect Vast Stretch of Pristine Amazon Rainforest Brazil has announced the creation of a new “conservation corridor” that will link 12 separate protected areas in the Amazon rainforest to create a 25 million-acre megapark. It will be the world’s largest protected stretch of tropical rainforest, encompassing about 70 percent of Brazil’s northern state […]

Allen Hershkowitz, Natural Resources Defense Council

Allen Hershkowitz, PhD, is a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council and author of Bronx Ecology: Blueprint for a New Environmentalism. Monday, 15 Sep 2003 ASHEVILLE, N.C. Having just returned last week from four days hiking in, driving through, and flying above the forests of eastern Tennessee, on the Cumberland Plateau, today I […]

Soilant Green

U.S. Fails to Inspect Farmed Fish Imports for Dangerous Chemicals If the orange foam caused by Canadian aquaculture isn’t enough to scare you away from farmed fish, how about the presence of malachite green, a fabric dye suspected to cause cancer, in Chilean farmed salmon? This year, European countries seized dozens of tons of farmed […]

Holey Cow

Ozone Hole Approaches Record Size The ozone hole over Antarctica, which shrinks and expands with the seasons, is now larger than it’s ever been at this time of year — nearly 11 million square miles — and within the next few weeks it could set an all-time record for size, a leading scientist is warning. […]

Readers sound off on Bushisms, organic weed control, and more

  Re: Vehicular Geocide Dear Editor: The Bush administration declared that the EPA would not be regulating carbon dioxide emissions because he decided that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. How could his genius have escaped me for so long? What a masterstroke! In one sentence, he solved the problem of carbon dioxide pollution. I […]

My Old Kentucky Sewage

Kentucky Sewage System Worst in Nation Poor Kentucky. Not only does the state often find itself near the bottom of national rankings on education and income; now, it’s dead last in plumbing. Fully 40 percent of Kentucky homes are not connected to sewage treatment plants, instead relying on failing septic tanks or “straight pipes” that […]

Not Just a Day in the Park

More than 11 percent of Earth is Protected, But Species Still Suffer There’s good news and bad news from the fifth World Parks Congress, being held this week in Durban, South Africa. The good news: There are now more than 100, 000 protected natural areas on the planet, including large stretches of the Amazon rainforest […]