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Owl’s Not Well

In a blow to environmentalists, the California spotted owl has been denied protection under the federal Endangered Species Act. According to the U.S. Fish and Wild Service, there is not enough evidence that the owl’s habitat is sufficiently threatened to merit listing — even though the agency acknowledged that a U.S. Forest Service plan to […]

Jesse Lichtenstein reviews The People’s Forests by Robert Marshall

At 3:30 in the morning, on July 15, 1932, 31-year-old Bob Marshall started walking. His goal: to see how many peaks in the Adirondack Mountains he could scale in one day. At 1 p.m., he met up with Herb Clark, an old family friend, at the summit of Mount Marcy, the highest mountain in the range. Clark was with a young architect named Paul Schaefer. More than 30 years later, looking back on the encounter, Schaefer could vividly recall his impression that Marshall's eyes "reflected a great joy for living."

Kerrying the Weight of the World

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a presidential hopeful, took a swipe at George W. Bush yesterday by blasting the president’s environmental record. “Almost as soon as this administration took office, they invited in the chief lobbyists to rewrite the very laws that were intended to protect our land, our water, and our air,” charged Kerry. He […]

Antoinette Gomez, Sustainable South Bronx

Antoinette Gomez is an environmental consultant working with Sustainable South Bronx, a grassroots environmental justice organization. She is also a fellow in the Environmental Leadership Program. Monday, 10 Feb 2003 BRONX, N.Y. My day begins in my home office (one benefit of being a consultant) with follow-up calls on two projects. In January I began […]

Gaza Stripped

As if the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians weren’t producing enough problems, the U.N. now says the clash is creating a big environmental mess in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A study conducted by the U.N. Environment Programme over the last five months documented increasing water pollution, loss of natural vegetation, indiscriminate waste dumping, […]

Chutes and Bladders

Kids who romp around on wooden structures in playgrounds could face a higher risk of contracting lung or bladder cancer than those who don’t come into contact with the equipment, the head of the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Friday. Nearly all wooden playground equipment in the U.S. has been treated with the […]

Af-gone

Afghanistan’s most significant wetland area is now almost as dry as a bone, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Satellite imagery shows that 99 percent of the Sistan wetlands, which stretch into Iran, have dried out since 1998. The main source of water to the wetlands, the Helmand River, has been flowing at far […]

No Credence to Clearwater Revival

Stormwater runoff flowing into restored Seattle-area creeks and rivers appears to be killing salmon, according to a groundbreaking study by the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service. Eighty-eight percent of coho salmon studied last fall died within hours of swimming into a stream that was being inundated by runoff. Rainwater pours off streets, roofs, and parking […]

Invasion of the Habitat Snatchers

Invasive species are wreaking havoc on African wetlands to the tune of billions of dollars per year, according to a new study by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). For example, the water hyacinth, introduced from the Amazon Basin as an ornamental plant, has spread to most of Africa’s lakes and rivers, choking out other flora […]

Not Keeping Their Powder Dry

The Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming is the center of coalbed methane mining (CBM) in the United States — and now, for the first time, private citizens in the basin have sued a CBM company for damages to their land. Dan and Mary Brannaman, who own a ranch in the basin but not […]