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Spy-ghetti
Ancona, Italy, announced yesterday that it will pay $70,000 for satellite photographs to help it pinpoint the exact location of illegal toxic waste dumps in the city. Italy’s Environment Ministry says at least 152,000 tons of illegal refuse, much of it toxic, are dumped in the nation each year, primarily by organized gangs dubbed the […]
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No More Genetically Modified Haggis
A British law requiring genetically modified foods to be labeled as such — in restaurants and bakeries as well as supermarkets — has caused manufacturers, retailers, and restaurant chains to make a mad dash to rid their goods of GM ingredients. But the law is also causing a fair amount of confusion, because different companies […]
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Dirt Poor
Some 60 percent of the hillside areas in Central America and the Andean region of South America show signs of serious soil erosion, according to a new report by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), based in Cali, Colombia. Tropical hillsides, which comprise 9 percent of the world’s landmass, lose 13 billion tons of […]
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Platforms, Shoo
Oil companies are looking to save millions of dollars in costs by leaving oil platform towers in place in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast to serve as artificial reefs instead of paying to remove them, as required under state and federal law. California state Sen. Dede Alpert (D) is sponsoring a bill that […]
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Ted's Bill: Bogus
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R) is stirring up trouble again with a rider attached to an appropriations bill that would exempt Alaska salmon fishing from the Endangered Species Act. The Clinton administration has threatened to veto the bill over the rider, a move that could jeopardize not only the Columbia River chinook stocks that migrate […]
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Schroeder Plays a New Song
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder opened the fifth U.N. World Climate Conference yesterday in Bonn, Germany, with an unexpected call to developed nations to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change by 2002. Thus far, only 14 countries, most of them developing, small island nations already threatened by rising sea levels, have ratified the treaty, which […]
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Willy Wonks and the Toxic Factories
Orca whales in the waters around Washington state and British Columbia are severely contaminated with PCBs, which can weaken the animals’ immune systems and hamper reproduction, according to a comprehensive, new study by Canadian and American scientists. Researchers took samples from 47 killer whales and found that they are 400 to 500 times more contaminated […]
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Dear John
Rhode Island Sen. John Chafee, a moderate Republican who worked to fashion bipartisan solutions to environmental problems, died unexpectedly of heart failure last night, at the age of 77. Chafee, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, played a significant role in the passage of the 1988 law against ocean dumping, the 1989 […]
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This Story Made Us Yak
The Wild Yak Brigade, a group of wildlife vigilantes working to protect the chiru, a gazelle-like animal that lives high on the Tibetan plateau, is under fire from poachers and the Chinese government. The chiru — whose fur is turned into shahtoosh wool, which is sought to make fashionable and expensive shawls — is joining […]
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No Fences Make Good Neighbors
The neighboring nations of Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe yesterday agreed to create a transborder conservation area with the aim of protecting biodiversity and promoting socioeconomic development in the region. The new Transfrontier Conservation Areas will pool the management of Mozambique’s Gaza Park, South Africa’s Kruger National Park, and Zimbabwe’s Gonarezhou Park. The agreement, signed […]
