Latest Articles

Orangu-Tangle

Two enviro groups are launching a major campaign today to halt illegal logging that is threatening endangered orangutans in Indonesian national parks. About 80 percent of the orangutans’ forest habitat has been destroyed in the last 20 years, and the animals’ numbers have been halved in the last decade to no more than 25,000, according […]

A Project Worth Its Salt

Pressure from environmentalists has led a major company in Mexico to modify a planned salt-mining operation along the Baja California coast, the first time a company in Mexico has modified a project because of public input. But a number of enviro groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, are still protesting the salt works operation, […]

Oldman River Doesn't Just Keep Rolling Along

NAFTA’s environmental watchdog, the Montreal-based Commission for Environmental Cooperation, has recommended that Canada be investigated to see whether the nation is adequately enforcing its environmental laws and protecting fish habitat. The recommendation stems from a 1996 complaint filed by the Alberta-based enviro group Friends of the Oldman River, which claimed that the Canadian government was […]

What's Next, a Swarm of Locusts?

Survivors of Turkey’s massive earthquake last week now face the prospect of acid rain caused by pollution from a large oil refinery fire, according to Turkey’s health minister. A five-day blaze at the nation’s largest oil refinery, caused by the quake, spewed flames and dense smoke into the air until it was finally extinguished on […]

Green and Pleasant Land?

The U.K. lags far behind many nations in the proportion of its land set aside for wildlife protection, according to a new report by Friends of the Earth U.K. Using World Conservation Union (IUCN) standards for protected nature areas, FoE compared the percentage of land set aside in the G8 industrialized nations and in certain […]

Raul Alvarez, PODER and Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter

Raul Alvarez is transportation coordinator for People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources (PODER), an environmental justice group based in East Austin, Texas. He is also environmental justice director for the Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter in Texas. Monday, 23 Aug 1999 AUSTIN, Texas I am happy to report that I had a […]

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How Many Scientists Does It Take to Screw in a Message?

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a marine ecologist from Oregon State University, has been elected to many scientific honors, one of which was the presidency of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. For her presidential address at the AAAS annual meeting, she looked straight out at the huge assembly of scientists and delivered an unapologetic, […]

No Frankenbeer in My Stein

Demand in Britain for organic products, including organic beer, is on the rise, spurred in part by consumer fears over the safety of genetically modified foods. Sales of organic foods in the U.K. have grown by nearly 30 percent in the last five years, and sales in the rest of Europe have grown by 14.5 […]

Doing a Double Take

The timber wars are flaring up again after an announcement on Friday that the U.S. Forest Service plans to roughly double logging on some 2.5 million acres of national forest land in Northern California. The decision is the final step in carrying out a congressionally approved compromise logging plan that was forged by locals, known […]