Latest Articles
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Famous Last Birds
The population of California condors is soaring back to relatively healthy numbers. Biologists have counted 222 of the birds, a tenfold increase from 1982, when the species hit its nadir with just 22 condors remaining. “This is the greatest the population has been probably since the 1950s,” said Bruce Palmer, coordinator of the California condor […]
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The Anti-Pepsi Generation
Leaders of two rural communities in Kerala, a state in southwestern India, are going head-to-head with Coca-Cola and Pepsi, accusing the companies’ local bottling plants of depleting groundwater and triggering shortages. One village government revoked the water-use permit of a Pepsi plant last week, and another village denied a license renewal to a Coke plant […]
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Wisconsin anglers band together to protect an elusive fish
Every winter, on the outskirts of Appleton, Wis., the world’s strangest subdivision suddenly appears. Thousands of shacks, each about the size of a two-hole outhouse, proliferate on the frozen expanse of Lake Winnebago. Dick Koerner in his shack on Lake Winnebago. Photo: Erik Ness. Early in the morning on Feb. 8, Dick Koerner jockeyed his […]
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Raising the Zanzibar
The island of Zanzibar, located just off the coast of Tanzania, is set to get its first national park. The island, which is independently governed, plans to convert the 12,355-acre Jozani Forest Reserve into a national park to promote better conservation, management, and natural-resource use, according to Mussa Ame Silima, Zanzibar’s minister of agriculture, natural […]
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Crop Dustup
Speaking before the United States Coast Guard Academy yesterday, President Bush accused the European Union of undermining efforts to end widespread hunger in Africa by banning genetically modified (GM) food. Bush praised “high-yield bio-crops” as key to increasing productivity and ameliorating hunger in developing nations, and claimed the E.U. ban was based on “unfounded, unscientific […]
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Donald Ducks
Setting the stage for a congressional standoff, the U.S. House and Senate handed in opposite votes yesterday on a Pentagon-backed measure to ease endangered-species protections on military land. Four Republican senators broke with their party for a 51-48 vote against the measure, while the House supported it 252-175. Both houses of Congress are expected to […]
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They Can’t Strongarm Armstrong
A federal judge has issued an excoriating dismissal of a lawsuit filed by 22 Southern California inland cities that challenged rules requiring them to help prevent trash from reaching the ocean. The ruling, from U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong, is significant because it dismisses the first of 13 legal challenges to new state and […]
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A Grist interview with Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean
With George W. Bush boasting perhaps the worst environmental record of any president in U.S. history, it almost goes without saying that any contender in the 2004 election will appear to be an environmentalist nonpareil by comparison. Indeed, nearly every Democrat running for president is advertising himself as just that, and former Vermont Gov. Howard […]
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Whittled Away
U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman handed President Bush her letter of resignation yesterday, citing the desire to spend more time with her family. Whitman, who was frequently at odds with the Bush administration and constantly under fire from conservationists and industry leaders alike, did not mention political differences as a factor in her decision to […]
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Read U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman’s letter of resignation
Christine Todd Whitman sent the following communication to all U.S. EPA employees on May 21, 2003, the day after she resigned her post as EPA administrator. The communication includes her letter of resignation to President Bush, dated May 20, 2003. To All EPA Employees: Yesterday afternoon, I met with President Bush at the White House […]
