Uncategorized
All Stories
-
Bang Dugong
The animal that inspired seafarers to tell tales of mermaids is disappearing from the planet, according to a report released this week. The dugong, a large sea mammal that is a cousin to the famous manatee of Florida and the Caribbean, was thought by ancient sailors to be half-woman, half-fish, perhaps because of its habit […]
-
Banned, on the Run
The FBI’s top domestic terrorism officer yesterday called the Earth Liberation Front and its companion, the Animal Liberation Front, the largest and most active U.S.-based terrorist organizations. According to the FBI, the two organizations have perpetrated a total of 600 attacks since 1996 costing $43 million in damage. The bureau acknowledged, however, that no one […]
-
Anti-protection Racket
Fourteen of 25 groups of wild West Coast Pacific salmon and steelhead may lose their protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, following the federal government’s formal acceptance yesterday of petitions to de-list the groups. Last year, the National Marine Fisheries Service began evaluating the protected status of 23 of the 25 groups after a […]
-
Not-so-secret Agent
Four decades after the U.S. started using Agent Orange in Vietnam, the two countries will begin working together to assess the effects of the toxic chemical on human health and the environment. Agent Orange is a defoliant that contains TCDD, the most dangerous form of dioxin, which causes cancer, immune system malfunction, and birth defects. […]
-
Winding Down?
What is the world coming to? Denmark, that model of eco-friendliness, announced last week that it would prioritize financial competitiveness over environmental sensitivity — and that, as a result, it would stop subsidizing the installation of new wind turbines beginning in 2004. Economy Minister Bendt Bendtsen said electricity generated by wind turbines was too expensive […]
-
An Ocean in Iowa
Forget that image of pretty pastoral farmhouses dotting the rural U.S. landscape: The reality is that farms are responsible for an ever-increasing amount of pollution that poses a significant threat to rivers, the ocean, and wildlife. A recent study by the Pew Oceans Commission found that fertilizer runoff and livestock feedlots were among the fastest […]
-
Love Birds?
It’s tough to be a po’ouli as Valentine’s Day approaches. Actually, it’s tough to be a po’ouli on any day. Scientists are doing their darnedest to save the extraordinarily rare Hawaiian honeycreeper from extinction — and right now, that means matchmaking. A team of biologists has outfitted the one known male po’ouli with a tiny […]
-
Big. Yellow. Different. Worse.
The wheels on the bus go round and round, and the diesel fumes from the bus go far and wide. That’s the bad news from a study released yesterday by the Union of Concerned Scientists analyzing emissions from the nation’s 454,000 school buses. Nine out of 10 of those buses are powered by diesel fuel, […]
-
Bitter Sweet
Two years of wrangling and two days of intensive, closed-door negotiations ended in compromise yesterday when the U.S. Forest Service and environmentalists agreed to allow limited logging of burned timber in Montana’s Bitterroot National Forest. Under the terms of the agreement, the USFS will begin logging about 14,770 burned acres; in exchange, it will not […]
-
War and Peas
War is hell — and not just for human beings. A team of researchers from the U.N. Environment Programme is headed to Afghanistan to measure the ecological damage of decades of war, drought, famine, and more war. The study, which is part of a relatively new trend of analyzing the effects of human conflict on […]
