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And other words from readers

  Re: Greening the Elephant Dear Editor: The story about Martha Marks’s efforts to build Republicans for Environmental Protection is a good reminder of why some of us oldies wax nostalgic for the Good Old Days. She is right that the real Republicans used to be wonderful conservationists, with a string of landmark laws to […]

Tulun: Too Late?

The tiny islands of Tulun and Takuu off the coast of Papua New Guinea are being swallowed by the Pacific Ocean, posing a danger so immediate that their 2,400 residents are being urged to evacuate at once. The islands, also known as Carteret and Mortlock, could become victims of global warming, which is thought to […]

Santi-ugho

The city of Santiago, Chile, located in the shadow of the snow-capped Andes Mountains, is blessed with one of the most breathtaking natural surroundings of any urban area on Earth. But from May to September, you wouldn’t know it; heavy smog obscures the Andes entirely and lends the word “breathtaking” a different meaning. A poll […]

Bottleneck

Evian, Perrier, Poland Spring — bottled water has become ubiquitous in the U.S., and the resultant plastic containers are posing an increasingly serious problem by clogging landfills and contributing to air pollution. In California, where bottled water is particularly popular, the state Department of Conservation is unveiling a campaign this week to convince consumers to […]

Lisa Goodman, River Alliance of Wisconsin

Lisa Goodman is the northern coordinator for local group assistance at the River Alliance of Wisconsin, a statewide nonprofit that advocates for the protection, enhancement, and restoration of Wisconsin’s rivers and watersheds. Tuesday, 27 May 2003 MADISON, Wis. Today began with a paddle. It is a short portage from house to river. Crossing a street […]

Into Thin Air, and Thick Refuse

In the 50 years since Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary first scaled Mt. Everest, so much refuse piled up on the world’s highest mountain that some took to calling it the world’s highest garbage dump. By the early 1990s, an estimated 50 tons of metal, glass, and plastic, including many hundreds of abandoned oxygen […]

Double Trouble

The number of animal species in Brazil known to be endangered has nearly doubled since 1989, reaching 398, according to a three-year study conducted by the Brazilian government and released last week. Tropical wolves, rare parrots, and exotic frogs and turtles are among the many threatened creatures. The comprehensive survey of animal and plant life […]

Famous Last Birds

The population of California condors is soaring back to relatively healthy numbers. Biologists have counted 222 of the birds, a tenfold increase from 1982, when the species hit its nadir with just 22 condors remaining. “This is the greatest the population has been probably since the 1950s,” said Bruce Palmer, coordinator of the California condor […]

Raising the Zanzibar

The island of Zanzibar, located just off the coast of Tanzania, is set to get its first national park. The island, which is independently governed, plans to convert the 12,355-acre Jozani Forest Reserve into a national park to promote better conservation, management, and natural-resource use, according to Mussa Ame Silima, Zanzibar’s minister of agriculture, natural […]

Donald Ducks

Setting the stage for a congressional standoff, the U.S. House and Senate handed in opposite votes yesterday on a Pentagon-backed measure to ease endangered-species protections on military land. Four Republican senators broke with their party for a 51-48 vote against the measure, while the House supported it 252-175. Both houses of Congress are expected to […]