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Summer Buggin’

Think of it as good news in bad packaging: The swarms of mayflies that are coating Midwestern towns this summer are a sign that the region’s waterways — most notably the Mississippi River — are healthier than they’ve been in decades. The flies don’t bite or sting; they just mate and die, all in the […]

Beluga Wails

Bad news for wealthy gourmets: By the end of this year, beluga caviar, the king of pricey delicacies, could be illegal fare in the United States. Earlier this week, the government proposed protecting the beluga sturgeon under the Endangered Species Act, following legal action against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services by the Natural Resources […]

Tipping the Scales

A government-commissioned study has concluded that escapes from fish farms in Scotland pose a “major threat” to the nation’s wild fish population. According to Friends of the Earth, about 1 million salmon have escaped from Scottish fish farms in the last five years. If just 1 percent of the farmed population escapes each year, the […]

Fish Styx

In Ohio, what you don’t know can hurt you: The state has just cut a program that warned the public about consuming pollution-tainted fish. In the past, the state EPA and Department of Natural Resources collected fish samples and tested them for pesticides, mercury, and other toxic chemicals; the resulting information was then assessed by […]

Totally Trashed

Every day, New Yorkers generate about 11,000 tons of residential trash. Ever since former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) shut down the city’s only operating landfill, Fresh Kills, the city has been plagued by the question of what to do with its garbage. For the last year, trash has been hauled on trucks to incinerators and […]

Charms to Soothe the Savage Breast

Ten years ago, a group of women headed to Washington, D.C., from their homes in Long Island, N.Y., to demand answers from the government about why so many women from their area were afflicted with breast cancer. Ultimately, the energy, dedication, and political savvy of those women rocketed the Long Island breast cancer story into […]

Hanford and Stuns

Oregon officials and anti-nuclear activists are taking aim at the draft assessment of the federal government’s plan to ship thousands of truckloads of radioactive nuclear waste through Oregon to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state. The draft environmental impact statement by the U.S. Energy Department estimates that the environmental effects of transporting the waste […]

Yeah, Baby

To Marlene Sandberg, “changing diapers” means something different from just putting a clean Huggies on baby. Sandberg, who is Swedish, is working to change not just individual diapers but the whole product. In the mid-1990s, after reading that every Swedish baby produces a half-ton of dirty diapers per year (which then persists in landfills long […]

Zoo Zoo Zooma Zoom

Sure, that little kitten at the animal rescue shelter is cute, but have you ever considered an orangutan? Hopefully not — but far too many people have, fueling an illegal primate market in Nigeria, the country that conservationists say does the most trade in endangered species on the African continent. The animals are brought to […]

Michigan Seems Like a Nightmare to Me Now

It’s about 2,000 miles from Michigan to California — and about a world away. Linked by market forces (California is the nation’s biggest car market, Michigan the nation’s biggest car manufacturer) but separated by cultural chasms, the relationship between the two states has always been rocky. Now, in the wake of last week’s landmark Golden […]