Latest Articles

Smoky Signals

The superintendent of Yosemite National Park announced yesterday that he would retire rather than accept a transfer to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where he would have been called upon to oversee two controversial projects opposed by environmentalists and others. One project involves building a road across the largest undeveloped wilderness in the eastern U.S. […]

Orange You Glad?

The District Attorney’s office in conservative Orange County, Calif., is beefing up its environmental crime division to become one of the most rigorous eco-SWAT teams in the nation. While resources for pursuing environmental criminals have been dwindling in many other areas in the state, Orange County has tripled its budget in the last three years […]

Threatened sea turtles find allies in Baja

To be an endangered sea turtle near Punta Abreojos on Mexico’s Baja Peninsula is to be a lucky animal. In this remote fishing village, the local fishing cooperative cracks down on any member caught with a turtle. For the first offense, you lose fishing privileges for three months, and must instead don a hairnet and […]

Sleep With the Fishes

At least 20,000 chinook salmon and other fish have died in Northern California’s Klamath River in the last two weeks, but federal officials are unwilling to attribute the deaths to the Bush administration’s decision to divert water away from the river this year and into an irrigation project in southern Oregon. U.S. Fish and Wildlife […]

Homeland Insecurity

Despite all the hype about guaranteeing “homeland security,” the Bush administration has scrapped plans to impose strict regulations to protect chemical plants from possible terrorist attacks. The decision, which was confirmed yesterday by U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman, came after months of administration infighting and heavy lobbying efforts against new rules by the chemical industry. […]

You Can Judge a Food By Its Label

In a big step for the organic food industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is poised to roll out an official “USDA Organic” seal and launch a long-awaited national standard to replace the existing hodgepodge of state and private certification systems. Food will have to contain 95 percent organic ingredients to be eligible for the […]

Gulf War Syndrome

Environmental damage in Kuwait stemming from Gulf War activities was far more severe than originally thought, according to a U.N.-financed study whose preliminary results were released yesterday. The study found that pollution from torched oil wells not only filled into the sky, but also seeped into the ground; further, the salt from seawater used to […]

Talk Amongst Yourselves

You have passionate feelings about sea turtles and are dying to discuss the above-mentioned article with someone — but your coworkers (or spouse or parents or children) think you’re utterly insane and would rather talk about the Diamondbacks. What’s a loquacious environmentalist to do? Announcing The Gristmill, Grist Magazine’s brand-spankin’-new discussion forum, where you can […]

My Big Fat Greek Survey

Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou now knows what we’ve known all along: An online poll conducted for a private foundation he chairs found that there’s no better place for environmental news than on the Internet. The poll on the environment, involving more than 25,000 respondents in 175 countries, was launched at last month’s World Summit […]

A Fungus Among Us

There’s no time for snails and ‘shrooms — that was the gist of an announcement Monday by the Bush administration, which is seeking to ease environmental regulations governing logging on federal land in the Pacific Northwest. The timber industry and administration officials complain that the “survey and manage” component of the regulations, which mandates detailed […]