Latest Articles

New Sue Review

Oral arguments were heard yesterday in the U.S. EPA’s lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public power provider. Lawyers for the EPA argued that the TVA violated the New Source Review rule of the Clean Air Act by failing to install state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment when upgrading its older coal-burning power plants. Lawyers […]

Miner Threat

The Bush administration canceled yesterday a two-year ban on new mining claims in roughly 1.2 million acres in and around southern Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest. The ban was imposed by the Clinton administration in response to lobbying efforts by conservationists, who wanted the area declared a national monument. Instead, former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt imposed […]

Schoolhouses Rock!

Is the Ivory Tower built from sustainable materials? Increasingly, the answer is yes. College campuses, long regarded as bastions of left-leaning life, are becoming promoters of sustainable development. Oberlin College recently completed a comprehensive study of how to reduce pollution from its operations, the State University of New York at Buffalo spent $17 million to […]

Catch a Taiga By the Toe

No one needs to tell the Amur tiger that species worldwide are endangered. A resident of Russia’s far-eastern taiga forests, the tigers are severely threatened by insatiable and generally illegal logging in the region. In theory, Russia has some of the world’s strictest logging laws, but the taiga’s old-growth trees (such as Manchurian oak and […]

The Shipping News

Salmon and other imperiled species would not be damaged by a proposed deepening of the Columbia River channel, federal scientists announced yesterday. Those findings — biological opinions required under the Endangered Species Act — will enable the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to proceed with the next steps in a $196 million project to deepen […]

Mammal-mia!

Nearly 25 percent of the world’s mammals — more than 1,000 species in total — are in danger of going extinct within 30 years, according to a report by the United Nations Environment Programme on the state of the global environment. In total, the report identifies more than 11,000 endangered species, including one in eight […]

Yosemite Slam

As the fifth highest waterfall on the planet, Yosemite Falls is one of the world’s most photographed natural wonders — and the area around it is one of the most heavily tromped, trampled, and otherwise degraded. The falls attract about 3 million visitors per year, which has lead to despoiled trails, jam-packed parking lots, and […]

The environmental movement calls it a day

Surprising both longtime allies and adversaries, the environmental movement announced yesterday that it was sick of nature’s indifference to its work, and would be wrapping things up Friday. “We’re not mad, we’re just … moving on,” a movement spokesperson said. “We’re going to buy some nice clothes and go spend a few months in the […]

Whalie Meatie — What a Treaty!

In other whale news, the Makah nation in northwestern Washington won another affirmation of its treaty rights late last week, when a U.S. district judge rejected efforts by animal rights activists to suspend Makah whaling until a lawsuit on the issue is resolved. The Makah are the only native people in the Lower 48 to […]

Great White-meat Whale

The annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission began today in Japan, with the host nation calling for an end to a 16-year ban on commercial whaling. Japanese Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Tsutomu Takebe urged IWC member nations to regard whales “in the same light as other living marine resources”– that is, edible. Japan argues […]