Latest Articles

Meanwhile, Baca the Ranch …

A 95,000-acre cattle ranch in northern New Mexico, home to one of the largest wild elk herds in the U.S., is poised to become public land under a deal struck yesterday. After two years of negotiations, the feds agreed to buy the scenic Baca Ranch from a Texas family for $101 million and manage it […]

Fortunately, Most Lithuanians Now Glow in the Dark

Lithuania, the most nuclear-dependent country in the world, announced plans yesterday to decommission by 2005 one of the two Soviet-era nuclear reactors at its Ignalina nuclear power plant. No decisions have been made about how to replace the plant, which currently provides the country with 80 percent of its electricity. The move to shut down […]

Trickle-Down Oceanographics

Creatures that dwell on the deep ocean floor are suffering from a long-lasting and worsening food shortage, which may be due to increases in the temperature of the ocean’s surface, according to a study of the California coast conducted by researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Last year, a separate Scripps study found a […]

Meanwhile, GM Proceeds with Plans for New 18-Wheel SUV

An effort to raise fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks may be gaining momentum in the Senate, where Sens. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Richard Bryan (D-Nev.) are considering offering a non-binding resolution in support of a new government look at the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. For five years in a […]

Specious Species Spanking Sponsored

Hoping to expedite logging in the Northwest, the Senate voted this morning to exempt the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management from conducting detailed species surveys of land before it can be logged. Sens. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho) sponsored the rider on the Interior Department appropriations bill, while Sen. Charles Robb […]

Paper Company Voluntarily Does Good Thing

The Westvaco papermaking company today will announce a five-year deal with the Nature Conservancy that will let the environmental group inspect all of the company’s 1.3 million acres of forestland and help designate areas where logging will be restricted. The two parties will agree jointly on a management plan for the land, including the amount […]

Carcinogens Without Borders

Latin American nations are gradually restricting or banning use of the most dangerous pesticides, but enforcement of rules is lax. For example, in Colombia, the hazardous insecticide endosulfan used in coffee production was prohibited in 1995, but officials say it is still widely used. In Brazil, which has one of the strictest pesticide laws in […]

Oh, That? It Was an April Fool's Joke on GM

A federal judge ruled yesterday that a website has the right to publish information from confidential Ford documents about the automaker’s efforts to build vehicles that emit far less pollution and have significantly better fuel efficiency than current models. The case is awkward for Ford because the company is now lobbying against tighter emissions and […]

Absolut Geneophobia

In another blow to biotechnology in Britain, one of a small group of farmers set to participate in trial plantings of genetically modified crops has dropped out of the project. The farmer changed his tune after meeting with local residents and members of Friends of the Earth, which has gone to court to try to […]

WWF Body Slams DDT

A study released yesterday by the World Wildlife Fund argues that innovative methods can be used to fight malaria-carrying mosquitoes just as effectively as the dangerous insecticide DDT, and that such methods would be cheaper and safer than spraying DDT. WWF is pushing for a phaseout of DDT and 11 other persistent organic pollutants (POPs) […]