Articles by Grist staff

Free Bird

In happier news from the animal kingdom, a California condor hatched in the wild late last week, offering a rare moment of optimism for a species teetering on the edge of extinction. If the chick survives, it will mark the first time in 18 years that adult condors in the wild successfully conceived, hatched, and […]

Been Caught Steeling

In an effort to rustle up enough votes to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling, outspoken drilling advocate Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) tried to sweeten the deal by offering to add a bailout for steelworkers to the energy bill. But the move appears to have backfired, with Rust-Belt Democrats supporting steelworkers but […]

True Grit

For the third year in a row, massive dust storms from China have blown into South Korea, closing schools, canceling flights, and creating a run on facemasks and respiratory medication. The storms are the result of severe desertification in China, where the Gobi Desert grew by 20,000 square miles from 1994 to 1999; the desertification […]

Parking Is Expensive

Today is tax day in the U.S. (need we remind you?), but not many of your tax dollars will go to support the national park system — and certainly not enough, conservationists say. The system is suffering from a $4.9 billion backlog in maintenance and improvement projects, a 40 percent shortfall for interpretive and educational […]