Uncategorized

The Protocol of the Elders of Ozone

The ozone hole will likely close within 50 years, according to scientists who just ended a major conference on the issue in Buenos Aires. They said that the international ban on ozone-depleting chlorofluorcarbons, which resulted from the 1987 Montreal Protocol, is beginning to have an effect, but that the ozone recovery is not likely to […]

Bye, Bye Birdwatchers

For perhaps the first time, an environmental group, the Nature Conservancy, has landed among the top 10 of U.S charities ranked by income. The conservancy sat at No. 9 on a listing by the NonProfit Times, with a total income in 1999 of $704 million. The group claims it devoted more than 93 percent of […]

The Fisher Is King

Fearful that a lawsuit filed by enviros might lead to a court-ordered logging injunction in the Sierra Nevada in California, the U.S. Forest Service next week will initiate its own three-month logging ban on 11 million acres in the region. Three enviro groups, including the Earth Island Institute, sued the Forest Service in October for […]

Kris Williams is saving sea turtles in Georgia

Kris Williams is the “Turtle Babe” of Wassaw Island. At 33, the attractive, square-jawed blonde heads the oldest volunteer-based sea turtle conservation project in North America. What a babe. Optimism comes as naturally to Williams as the tide comes to the beach. It has to, because sea turtle conservation in Georgia isn’t easy. “Awareness is […]

Well Hello, Dolly

Making a U-tern

Stoking the fires of the Midwest’s most contentious environmental issue, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corps of Engineers agreed yesterday that the flow of water in the Missouri River should be increased in the spring to save fish and birds from extinction. Gen. Carl Strock became the first Corps official to […]

You Picked a Fine Time to Fund Me, Lucille

Halfway through a five-year effort to preserve wildlife habitat and farmland in Central California, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation issued a report yesterday saying that it could not go it alone and that the land preservation movement needed long-term support from the state government to be successful. The foundation is funding a $175 million […]

Panda-monium

Two decades into the effort to save giant pandas in China from extinction, the greatest remaining threat to pandas may be poor farmers. Chinese authorities estimate that only about 1,000 pandas continue to live in the wild after logging and poaching decimated the animal’s ranks. In recent years, the country has introduced stiff fines to […]

Whooping Ukraine

Greenpeace leaked a report coming out of Austria yesterday that questions the safety of two nuclear plants meant to succeed reactors at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. The report to the Austrian government by Vienna University describes the Soviet-designed reactors, which are 80 percent completed, as “highly hazardous.” The London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development […]

Let's Make a Deal

In the wake of the collapsed climate change talks last weekend in The Hague, Netherlands, the Clinton administration has proposed that top officials from the U.S. and the European Union meet later this month to reach a deal on how to account for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The meeting would include the EU’s lead […]