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Cut That Out

California’s largest timber company, Sierra Pacific Industries, will shift its logging practices from selective thinning to clear-cutting on 70 percent of the 1.5 million acres it owns in the state. Company representatives say the clear-cutting will take place along ridgelines or roads, allowing firefighters better access to control wildfires. But environmentalists say clear-cutting actually increases […]

Richard Murphy, Ocean Futures Society

Richard Murphy is a marine biologist who has traveled all over the world with Jacques Cousteau and his son, Jean-Michel, exploring, helping to organize filming expeditions, and doing research. He works for Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society as a writer, scientist, photographer, and educator. Monday, 29 Oct 2001 SANTA CRUZ, Calif. I began this week […]

Going Ba-Nenanas

Is the climate changing? You bet. Or residents of Nenana, Alaska do, anyway. For the last 84 years, the folks in Nenana, 230 miles north of Anchorage, have been placing bets on when the ice would break up on the nearby Tanana River. The annual guessing game, known locally as the Nenana Ice Classic, allowed […]

Grizzlies: Add 'Em

A bid to scrap a plan to reintroduce grizzly bears along the Montana-Idaho border was overwhelmingly rejected by the public, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Although 98 percent of the 28,000 comments supported reintroducing grizzlies to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, a representative for Interior Secretary Gale Norton said this week that the final […]

Hi Ho Silver

Notwithstanding intense citizen pressure, the U.S. EPA decided yesterday to proceed with a massive cleanup of Silver Valley, Idaho, making the area one of the nation’s biggest Superfund sites. Many residents had argued that toxins leftover from more than a century of mining no longer posed health or environmental problems, and feared that the EPA […]

Accountant Dracula

The U.S. Forest Service’s accounting practices are “totally unreliable,” the General Accounting Office reported Tuesday. The GAO report, which came in response to a request by Reps. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) and George Miller (D-Calif.) for an agency audit, was by far the most scathing condemnation of irregular accounting practices at the USFS to date. Watchdog […]

Real Geniuses

Two environmental activists were among the 23 people honored with MacArthur “genius awards” yesterday. One of the $500,000 fellowships, which are awarded annually to outstanding individuals by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, was pilot and conservationist Sandra Lanham. Lanham flies researchers to remote areas of the Southwest and Mexico to study endangered […]

The Tide Is High

If you think you have to spend a year in a tree or a lifetime on Capitol Hill to help the environment, think again. Thanks to a new online program called "Turn the Tide," everyday folks can learn how to protect the environment and — here’s the twist — keep track of how well they […]

Gulf Not Up to Par

Global warming will bring troubled times to the Gulf Coast in the next 50 to 100 years, according to a study released yesterday by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Ecological Society of America. The report predicts flooding, droughts, and shortages of fresh water from Laguna Madre to the Florida Keys. Rising sea levels […]

Morocco and Roll

The success of the next round of climate change negotiations, which open in Morocco next week, will be determined by the European Union, Russia, and Japan. The talks will attempt to translate the principles of the Kyoto treaty on climate change into a set of binding rules that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by […]