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Yellow Jersey Optional

City of Paris to begin bike-sharing program Ah, Paris. The sex tape! The jail time! Wait, wait … wrong Paris. Ahem. The croissants! The berets! The phallic tower! And now: the free bikes! By mid-July, 10,648 bicycles will show up in 750 stations across The City of Love, allowing riders to pick them up and […]

As If Trees Didn’t Have Enough to Worry About

As landowners age, future of family-owned forests in U.S. is unclear An interesting phenomenon is sprouting up among American landowners — or forest-owners, to be precise. Nearly 60 percent of U.S. forests are privately owned, most by families and individuals, the majority of whom are 55 years old and older. More often than not, aging […]

Birds of a Feather Decline Together

Common American bird populations have dropped sharply Populations of 20 common American bird species have declined by at least half in the last 40 years, according to a new analysis from the Audubon Society. Hard-hit species include the whippoorwill, meadowlark, common tern, field sparrow, ruffed grouse and — our favorite to say — common grackle. […]

Bill of Fights

In exclusive blog post, Kerry calls for energy progress and laments GOP roadblocks Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) swung by our blog Gristmill yesterday to post about the ongoing tussle in the Senate over a bill intended to reform the U.S. energy system. He and his allies are pushing for 20 percent of U.S. electricity to […]

Washington watersheds deserve better data

Water-typing is the name for a process of identifying and cateorizing streams, lakes, and wetlands in terms of their importance for biodiversity and human use. It's a pretty basic inventory developed by the Washington Department of Natural Resources in the 1970s, and it works, but only when it's done right.

The accompanying image shows what happens when it's done wrong. In January, this important habitat for fish was logged without any protection simply because the map was in error: it failed to show that this stream supported fish. Normally, this sort of waterway would have at least received a 58 foot buffer. An important regional group, the Wild Fish Conservancy (the author of the photo), has demonstrated that the original maps underestimate the actual miles of fish-bearing streams statewide by up to 50 percent!

Buffalo and Behold

Herds of migrating wildlife survive and thrive in southern Sudan Wildlife populations are thriving in, of all places, war-wracked southern Sudan. The first aerial wildlife survey of the country taken in 25 years found herds of more than a million gazelle and antelope, migrating in formations up to 30 miles across and 50 miles long. […]

OK, We’re Moving to Iceland

World Health Organization ranks countries’ environmental health To those who think environmentalism is all about prioritizing starfish over humans, read on: Cleaning up the globe’s air and water could save 13 million lives every year, according to the World Health Organization. Yesterday, WHO released a country-by-country analysis of health issues in 192 nations, factoring in […]

Don’t Count Your Hatchery Salmon Before They Hatch, or Even After

Judge rules hatchery fish don’t count when determining ESA status A federal judge in Washington state has overturned a contentious Bush administration policy that had tallied hatchery-raised fish as well as wild populations when determining the species’ status under the Endangered Species Act. Under that policy, that a collection of green groups sued to overturn, […]

Bad to the Roan

BLM OKs drilling on Colorado’s Roan Plateau, new grazing rules blocked Steamrolling the opinions of various Colorado politicians, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has OK’d oil and gas drilling on 73,602 acres of the Roan Plateau, known to be rich in both underground fossil fuels and aboveground wildlife. Two of Colorado’s Democratic representatives had […]

Authenticity

I’m sitting in a coffee shop just off Dupont Circle, blogging using the free wi-fi. At last I feel like a real blogger!