Articles by Grist staff

N'yuk, N'yuk, N'Yucca

All the effort by the feds to determine whether Nevada’s Yucca Mountain would be a suitable place to permanently store the country’s nuclear waste can be summed up as “a failed scientific process,” according to a draft report by the General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog agency. The report, which has been obtained by several […]

The Skipper Too?

The niftily named Carson wandering skipper — a butterfly that is no bigger than a thumbnail — has been given emergency protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The feds took the step yesterday to help preserve the butterfly’s habitat in two counties along the northern border of Nevada and California. Bob Williams of the […]

A Bitterroot to Swallow

U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth has asked his superiors in the Agriculture Department to approve a salvage-logging plan for 46,000 acres that burned in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley last year. Assuming that Agriculture Undersecretary (and former timber lobbyist) Mark Rey okays the plan, Bosworth will have skirted the administrative appeals process to which such plans […]

Help, Aquaman!

Global fish stocks are dramatically lower than reported by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, scientists at the University of British Columbia announced today in an article in the journal Nature. The scientists’ findings — that global catches are decreasing by nearly 800 million pounds per year — directly contradict those of the FAO, […]