Latest Articles

Quit Your Blubbering

Norwegian whalers resumed their controversial hunt last month, despite a collapsed market for whale blubber. The International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in 1986, but Norway began hunting again in 1993, flouting the ban. Norwegians have stockpiled some 800 tons of blubber in warehouses — “blubber mountain,” they call it — in hopes that the […]

There aren't many right whales left

Chris Slay wears bib overalls and wire-rimmed glasses, occasionally recites poetry, and watches right whales for a living. Once more into the breach. David Wiley, National Marine Fisheries Service. After this year’s dismal right whale calving season, the poetry that comes to Slay’s mind is darkly pessimistic. The rarest whale of them all may be […]

Once More Into the Reach

Vice President Al Gore toured the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River in Washington state today and announced that President Clinton this morning declared the surrounding area a national monument, a designation that needs no congressional approval. The 200,000 acres to be protected include the only remaining free-flowing stretch of the Columbia River, 51 miles […]

Maples Leaving

U.S. cities will likely be hotter and more humid, sugar maples in the Northeast may disappear, and barrier islands off the Carolinas may be flooded under rising sea levels as climate change takes its toll on the U.S. over the coming century. These predictions are part of a federal government report on the likely effects […]

Wheels of Progress?

The Gray and the Blues

Some environmentalists say California Gov. Gray Davis (D) has succumbed to campaign contributions from the timber industry and is failing to push for more protections for the state’s forestland. Clear-cutting has exploded in the state in recent years, largely because of one company, Sierra Pacific Industries, which owns 1.5 million forest acres in the state, […]

Red Hot Chile Cyclists

Officials in Santiago, Chile, are struggling to deal with the city’s dirty air, so severe that it rivals the notorious pollution in Mexico City and Sao Paulo. The problem, caused mainly by auto exhaust and industrial emissions, has grown along with the nation’s economy, which has expanded 7 percent per year in the last decade. […]

Fees: "Fie," Foes Fume

This weekend, in at least 40 towns and cities across the U.S., protests are expected to draw thousands of people who oppose a federal government plan to charge user fees for access to national forests, recreation areas, and other public lands. A pilot user-fee program began in 1997, and now the U.S. Forest Service and […]

Fruit of the Doom

Apples, grapes, and other common foods often have pesticide residues that exceed safe levels for children, according to a food-safety report released this week by Consumers Union. The U.S. EPA is expected today to ban most home uses of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, commonly known as Dursban, but Consumers Union is urging the agency to go […]

Oh, Cannon Bombed

Spurred by enviros, Democrats successfully fought back a bill in the U.S. House yesterday that they said would do far too little to protect wildlands in Utah. The measure, sponsored by Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), would create a 1.3 million-acre national conservation area in the redrock country of southeastern Utah, but critics said it would […]