Articles by Grist staff

Chances With Wolves

Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, may mean trouble for rare Alpine wolves Construction being done in the lead-up to the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in and around Turin, Italy, may be driving off the region’s rare wild wolves. Researcher Francesca Marucco has noticed a lack of lupine poop near the Alpine area hosting several Olympic […]

Better Dead Than Red-Legged

Bush admin plans to gut critical habitat for red-legged frog The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed slashing critical habitat for California’s threatened red-legged frog by over 80 percent, from 4.1 million to 737,912 acres. Why, you ask? It seems protecting the beleaguered amphibian just costs too darn much: The agency says projected economic […]

Criminal Negligee-nce

Protests target Victoria’s Secret, call for protection of boreal forest Activists took to the streets in more than 100 North American cities yesterday to protest logging of the continent’s boreal forest, a vast expanse of ancient trees that stretches from Alaska to Canada’s Atlantic coast. Demonstrators charged corporations with sacrificing the world’s third-largest intact forest […]

Senate votes to keep Arctic Refuge drilling in budget bill

The campaign to keep oil drills out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has just been dealt what could be a fatal blow. Yesterday, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) introduced an amendment to drop refuge-drilling language from a filibuster-proof federal budget bill; today, the Senate voted down that amendment, 48 to 51. "This is too important a question to slide into the budget bill," Cantwell said yesterday. "We are setting a very, very dangerous precedent." But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is psyched. "America can't afford $3-a-gallon gasoline and we can't afford to depend on sources hostile to the United States," he said today, though he failed to explain how drilling in the refuge would solve either problem. The Senate budget bill is expected to pass later this week; the House version, which also includes the drilling language, will be voted on as early as next week. The fate of the final compromise budget bill is unclear.