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You’re Living in Your Own Private Idaho

An increasingly common type of collaboration between a conservation group and a logging company will protect up to 600,000 acres of private forestland in northern Idaho from development. The Washington-based timber company Potlatch, which owns the land, will sell its development rights to the California-based Trust for Public Land, which in turn expects to raise […]

Staples Gunned

In a milestone victory for trees and forest advocates, the office-supply giant Staples announced yesterday that it would phase out paper goods made from threatened forests and increase the average amount of recycled material in its paper products to 30 percent, up from the current average of less than 10 percent. No timetable has been […]

On Thin Rice

Arkansas and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are supporting a $200 million plan that would rescue rice growers in the state and divert water from the White River to 250,000 acres, representing about 5 percent of U.S. rice production. The proposed project would cost about $300,000 per farmer. Advocates for the plan say the […]

Elder Hostile

Older Americans living in the country’s most polluted cities are more likely to need medical treatment than those living elsewhere, according to the first large-scale study of the impact of pollution on medical care costs. The study by Stanford University economist Victor Fuchs, which was published today in the journal Health Affairs, found that pollution […]

Andrew Katkin, National Environmental Trust

Andrew Katkin is the web manager for the National Environmental Trust. He is a member of NET’s team of staffers attending the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species. Monday, 11 Nov 2002 SANTIAGO, Chile Only a week has passed since the opening ceremonies of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species meeting […]

Better Red Than Dead

A federal judge last week lifted development restrictions on more than 4 million acres of land that had been designated as critical habitat for the threatened California red-legged frog. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service imposed the restrictions in early 2001, but developers quickly sued to overturn them. To the dismay of environmentalists, the court […]

Sound the Alarm

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the midst of a five-year effort to catalogue the woes of the Puget Sound ecosystem, gathering information for what could become an undertaking as grand in size as the $8 billion Everglades restoration project. Many of the 2,354 miles of the sound’s seashore, containing tide flats, marshes, […]

I’m a Loser, Baby

The environment stands to be a big loser now that Republicans have recaptured control of the U.S. Senate and expanded their lead in the U.S. House. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) — who had a zero percent score (that’s right, a goose egg) from the League of Conservation Voters in the last session of Congress — […]

A new language is needed to win the day for native species

This cold morning at the Presidio, elegant terns wheel over the lagoon at the edge of the San Francisco Bay, screeching like a fleet of squeaky bicycles. In the distance, fog blots out the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. On the strip of beach closest to the water, dogs chase tennis balls into the […]

Up a Creek

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection is quietly considering a proposal that would greatly increase the amount of cancer-causing effluent that could be dumped into streams. Randy Sovic, of the DEP’s Division of Water Resources, said the proposal would give his agency more “flexibility” in writing water-pollution permits. Currently, pollution rates in West Virginia […]