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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 […]

Put a Tiber in Your Tank

In the last two weeks, tons of dead fish have floated to the surface of the Tiber, the famed Italian river that was once one of the lifelines of the Roman Empire. According to environmentalists, two-thirds of the fauna in a three-mile stretch of the river have been wiped out since July 15; even eels, […]

Fool Standards

Automakers are gearing up to take California’s landmark new vehicle-emissions law to court, even though they could face a public opinion backlash by doing so. Industry reps say they are “very confident” that the courts will agree with their argument that California is encroaching on federal jurisdiction by trying to set its own fuel-economy standards. […]

Great Burial Reef

It’s not a great time to be the Great Barrier Reef. When sea temperatures around the famed Australian landmark hit record highs early this year, 60 percent of the coral on the reef suffered from heat-related bleaching, according to marine scientists. Warm water temperatures caused the algae that live on the reef to leave, disrupting […]

Radar Strange

Ever since Sept. 11, sophisticated surveillance systems have been the talk of the town, and fans have proposed installing them in all sorts of places — airports, subway systems, sports stadiums. But rainforests? Yep. Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso flew to the jungle city of Manaus yesterday to inaugurate the Amazon Surveillance System, a $1.4 […]

Beached Wails

You might want to think twice before you head out with your sunscreen and towel this weekend. The number of sewage-tainted beaches is on the rise, jumping 19 percent between 2000 to 2001, according to a report released yesterday by the Natural Resources Defense Council. The group said that 13,410 beach closings and water advisories […]

The Bycatcher in the Rye

“Save the whales!” “Save the dolphins!” Those were rallying cries of the environmental movement in the 1980s and ’90s, and they culminated in a successful campaign for “dolphin-safe” tuna — that is, tuna-fishing practices in the Pacific Ocean that wouldn’t harm marine mammals. Unfortunately, scientists now say that commercial fishing in the Atlantic and elsewhere […]

Johnny Panic-grass Seed

As New Zealand wrestles with the fate of very new crops, a seed bank in the U.S. Southwest is wrestling with the fate of very old ones. Based in Tucson, Ariz., Native Seeds/SEARCH preserves and passes on rare seeds planted by Native Americans. Although the growing conditions in much of the Southwest are harsh — […]

Flaming-goes

They’re thriving as campy lawn statues across America, but in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, the Caribbean flamingo is flirting with extinction — again. In the 1950s, the region’s flamingo population, Mesoamerica’s lone flamingo colony, dwindled to a mere 5,000 birds. But the population recovered in the sanctuary of the 200-square-mile Ria Lagartos Biosphere Reserve, […]