Latest Articles
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Going Smog Wild
More than 132 million Americans live in areas that ought to receive a flunking grade for their dangerously high smog levels, according to an American Lung Association report released today. The report graded metropolitan areas based on the number of days they had unhealthy smog levels in 1996, 1997, and 1998, the most recent years […]
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They Otter Be Ashamed
Sea otters in Alaska’s Prince William Sound have experienced long-term negative effects from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In some areas polluted by the spill, otter densities are now about half what they were before the accident. Much of the apparent […]
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Up and Ad 'Em
The Sierra Club plans to spend about $250,000 over the next three weeks to air a TV ad that criticizes Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s environmental record. The ad, which will run in states that are key to the presidential election, features a pair of Texans complaining that their state is polluted and that Bush […]
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Fred Munson, Cascades Conservation Partnership
Fred Munson is the campaign director for the Cascades Conservation Partnership, an effort just being launched that aims to purchase 75,000 acres of forest to maintain and enhance a wildlife corridor between the north and central Cascade Mountains of Washington state. He just finished up a successful effort that raised $17 million to purchase and […]
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It's Report-Card Time
The timing is unbearable. Here on my desk in the middle of the blooming, buzzing month of May is the best report yet on the state of the world’s ecosystems. Best not because it contains good news — it doesn’t — but because it’s short and clear and blunt. The report evaluates the health of […]
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Making Degrade
Nearly 40 percent of the world’s agricultural land is seriously degraded due to erosion, nutrient depletion, salinization, and other problems, according to a study released yesterday by the International Food Policy Research Institute. The degradation has already significantly lowered the productivity of 16 percent of the world’s farmland, including 75 percent of farmland in Central […]
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The Chat's Meow
A group of Oregon timber executives forked over $100,000 each to the Republican Party last week in exchange for a 45-minute chat session with GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush. The executives, who have been unhappy with the Clinton-Gore administration’s forest policy, sought assurances that Bush would listen to their concerns if he becomes president. […]
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Insane Freeze
The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday approved a transportation spending bill that would continue the freeze on vehicle fuel-economy standards, a blow to environmentalists who argue that the current standards, set in 1975, are far too low. Enviros had not expected the House to vote in favor of lifting the freeze, which has been […]
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Too Much to Bear?
The Sierra Club has suggested that the U.S. government more than triple the number of acres designated as recovery areas for grizzly bear populations in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, up from 5.9 million acres to 19.9 million. A Sierra Club study indicates that grizzly bears need areas of more than 1,000 square miles in order […]
