Articles by Grist staff

Ba Ha, Ahab!

Bowing to international outrage, Russia last week agreed to stop commercial whaling. A few days previously, a Russian ship carrying the meat of 36 beluga whales had arrived in Japan, the first time in 13 years that international trade in whales had been conducted. But when word of the sale leaked out, the U.S. government […]

I've Seen Floyd and I've Seen Rain

Hurricane Floyd brought serious environmental damage to a number of areas along the East Coast, officials are warning. In North Carolina, wastewater treatment plants have been flooded, and industrial facilities and warehouses are leaking chemicals and contaminants that could get into water supplies. In the Chesapeake Bay area, a great deal of pollution-laden sediment, much […]

Survey Says …

The flora and fauna of the Northwest are in serious decline because of human influences, according to a report released on Friday by the U.S. Geological Survey, the first large-scale assessment of such trends by the feds. Species declines are blamed on urban sprawl, population growth, the consumption of water for industry and agriculture, global […]

Wake Up and Smell the Biodiversity

El Salvador hopes to protect its wildlife and boost its income by charging a 5 percent premium for “biodiversity-friendly” coffee grown in the shade of native plants. While many other Central and South American countries switched in the 1970s to the pesticide-dependent method of growing coffee in direct sunlight, El Salvador stuck to the more […]