Latest Articles

Chairwoman of the Boardwalk

The U.S. National Wildlife Refuge System could get a $56.5 million budget increase in the next fiscal year, according to an announcement made yesterday by Interior Secretary Gale Norton. The proposed increase would represent an 18 percent budget hike and would be earmarked for maintenance and renovation of such features as boardwalks, trails, and levies. […]

Polar Bear Market

In its latest clash with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of the Interior has rejected the findings of its biological agency and concluded that oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would not violate an international treaty to protect polar bears and their habitats. A 1995 USFWS report found that the […]

Great Leap Forward

In the second move in recent weeks suggesting a heightened commitment to the environment, China called yesterday for early passage of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, saying the treaty would benefit rich and poor countries alike. The appeal was made during a meeting of European and Asian environmental ministers, who want to move ahead […]

The MLK of Human Kindness

Daily Grist won’t be published on Monday, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. See you on Tuesday.

Garden State, Meet the Cement State

Bad news on the environmental justice front: Poor and minority residents of Camden, N.J., aren’t having much luck with efforts to sue the state for allowing a cement factory to spew pollution in their neighborhood. The residents successfully convinced U.S. District Judge Stephen Orlofsky that the siting of the plant was discriminatory, but Orlofsky’s decision […]

Canary Row

Ten years ago, the nations of the European Union agreed to create Natura 2000, a continent-wide network of conservation areas designed to protect 200 habitats and 600 species. The network was supposed to be in place by 1998, but foot-dragging and local resistance gummed up the works. Now, Natura 2000 is finally becoming a reality. […]

Making History

Historian-in-the-news Stephen Ambrose has pledged to donate $250,000 to help remove an aging dam near Missoula, Mont., at the confluence of the Clark and Blackfoot rivers, and clean up the 6.6 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment behind it. The Milltown Dam and its reservoir constitute the terminus of the nation’s largest Superfund site and […]

At a sanctuary in Georgia, therapy is for the birds

Go on beautiful, get out of here,” Emmy Minor says to a brown pelican, its pouch heavy with a load of fresh fish. “Time to fly.” It’s feeding time at the Sanctuary on Sapelo (SOS), Emmy and Al Minor’s bird rehabilitation center on the Georgia Coast: time to thaw 125 pounds of fish (today it’s […]

She’s Breaking Up, She’s Breaking Up

The proposed reorganization of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which is currently in federal bankruptcy court, could spell bad news for thousands of acres of pristine landscape in the Sierra Nevada. Right now, PG&E is supervised by the California Public Utilities Commission, whose regulatory structure requires strict environmental protection and encourages public access to the […]

Long Live King County

How far would you go to stop urban sprawl? That’s the question of the hour in King County, Wash., where a private anti-sprawl proposal is pushing the conservation envelope on several fronts. At issue is a proposed $185 million purchase of second-and third-growth forest just east of Seattle. The land purchase by the Evergreen Forest […]