Latest Articles

Mining Gets the Shaft

The pay dirt has run out for gold miners in California. Last week the state mining board okayed the nation’s toughest regulations on open-pit metallic mining, requiring companies to refill mining pits and flatten waste piles in order to restore the landscape to at least some semblance of its pre-mining state. The industry complains that […]

Earth Angelina

Actress Angelina Jolie, who played a tough-chick adventurer in the movie “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” is taking on a new role: eco-crusader. She has pledged to donate at least $1.3 million over the next few years to establish a wildlife sanctuary in northwest Cambodia, a region that until five years ago was controlled by remnants […]

Aroma, but No Therapy

You don’t know smelly until you’ve been in the vicinity of a massive factory farm, or, as they say in the biz, a “concentrated animal-feeding operation.” State and local air-quality officials fear that the stench and, more importantly, the accompanying air pollution from such facilities won’t get under control anytime soon because the U.S. EPA […]

West Virginia activist Julia Bonds takes on mountaintop-removal mining

The ancient mountains of Appalachia are corrugated with deep, narrow valleys, some of them no wider than a football field. Coal-mining families, who have lived in these valleys for generations, are now being driven out of their homes by the latest innovation of the very industry that has sustained them for so many years. That […]

Nigerian activist Odigha Odigha fights to halt illegal logging

In southeastern Nigeria, private logging companies are felling the country’s last remaining rainforests. These hardwood forests shelter the highest diversity of primates in the world and some 20 percent of the planet’s butterfly species. Odigha Odigha. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. Odigha Odigha grew up in and around these forests, in the Ijagham community of Cross […]

Interviews with the 2003 winners of environmentalism’s greatest honor

These are dark times for grassroots activists. Just weeks ago, President Bush dismissed millions of anti-war protesters as little more than a “focus group” — a group whose opinions he was determined to ignore, and did. But the indifference of the world’s sole superpower is only one of the obstacles facing activists. Today’s problems are […]

Joel Sisolak, Friends of the Cedar River Watershed

Joel Sisolak is executive director of Friends of the Cedar River Watershed in Seattle, Wash. Monday, 14 Apr 2003 SEATTLE, Wash. This past weekend was relatively quiet. I had time to avoid my spring cleaning, relax with a book, and play ultimate Frisbee. I did make one trip out to North Bend, Wash., to speak […]

Wild Thing, I Think I Lost You

In a major blow to wilderness advocates in Utah and around the country, the Bush administration on Friday announced its intention to suspend new wilderness reviews of federal lands in the West and to remove protections from nearly 3 million acres in Utah that had been under consideration for wilderness status. The Interior Department, in […]

Battle Dreary

Kashmir, once renowned for its lush landscape and abundant wildlife, has for decades served as a battle zone between India and Pakistan, and all the turmoil has taken a heavy toll on the region’s environment as well as its people. “Cross-border bombardment is damaging the forests and wildlife beyond imagination,” said Farooq A. Niazi, head […]

Crop Rotation

Iowa may soon play host to the world’s largest wind farm, after Gov. Tom Vilsack (D) on Friday signed a measure that removes regulatory hurdles to clear the way for the project. MidAmerican Energy Co. expects to start construction in September of a 200-turbine facility in northern Iowa that would pump out 310 megawatts of […]