habitat protection

Bush may designate large marine reserves

Hoping to burnish President Bush’s conservation legacy, the White House is considering creating some of the largest marine reserves in the world, NPR reports. The plan — now being discussed, but not a sure thing — would have Bush use his powers under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create “marine monuments,” which would not […]

Bush admin debuts final recovery plan for spotted owl

The Bush administration has released a final plan for helping out the northern spotted owl, after a prior plan was deemed to have been watered down by political interference. Critics admit the plan is an improvement over last year’s draft — which relied heavily on, ahem, taking out predator barred owls with shotguns — but […]

Unprecedented land conservation deal

The biggest land conservation deal in California's history was announced yesterday, totaling nearly 240,000 acres in Southern California.

A couple of features, while not entirely new, are worth pointing out:

1. The deal involved allowing the owners to develop about 10 percent of the area pretty intensely and maintain some natural resource extraction while preserving as wilderness the overwhelming majority -- a good example of making a trade-off that doesn't pit economic and environmental interests against each other and allows for much greater public access at the same time.
2. New wildlife corridors are being constructed to allow animals and plants the ability to migrate; I have written about this before, since this type of flexibility will be crucial to ensure that species can adapt to climate change.

All in all, a good deal for California and the country. Something to celebrate.

Stressed by housing slump, developers sell land to conservationists

Looking for a bright side to the real-estate crunch? Look no further: Some developers, financially stressed by the housing slump, are selling land to folks who want to conserve it. It’s a win-win situation: developers aren’t stuck building expensive real estate that no one wants to buy, and conservation groups like the Trust for Public […]

Unilever supports rainforest destruction moratorium

Greenpeace just announced a big win in its anti-palm oil campaign: just five days after launching a campaign to pressure food and cosmetics giant Unilever to stop purchasing palm oil from rainforest destroyers, Unilever met Greenpeace halfway. Apparently nervous about the prospect of orangutan-suited activists continuing to scale their corporate headquarters (see picture), the company agreed to support a legal moratorium on rainforest destruction. Given that Unilever uses five percent of the world's palm oil and chairs the so-called Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, that's big news!

One of the West Coast’s most iconic species feeling the heat

California's outdoors industry -- wildlife watching, hunting, and fishing -- is an $8.2 billion-a-year business. That's roughly equivalent to the GDP of Cambodia.

So imagine the shock waves sent by the state's first salmon shutdown:

Salmon fishing was banned along the West Coast for the first time in 160 years Thursday, a decision that is expected to have a devastating economic impact on fishermen, dozens of businesses, tourism and boating.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez immediately declared a commercial fishery disaster, opening the door for Congress to appropriate money for anyone who will be economically harmed.

Unfortunately, the forecast for salmon doesn't get much better from there, according to a new report released Thursday by the National Wildlife Federation and Planning and Conservation League Foundation. With salmon habitat already decimated by dams, climate change now threatens to warm their remaining cold water spawning grounds.

What can be done to reverse the trend?

National parks will get spruced up

The National Park Centennial Initiative has announced its first round of funding for various projects and programs in — surprise! — national parks. Seventy-six parks in 38 states will see a total $51 million in federal and privately donated funding. The projects will run the gamut of everything from hiking-shelter improvements to wildlife protection to […]

On the Bush administration’s deal for Columbia and Snake River salmon and steelhead

Recently news broke in Grist of an agreement brokered by the Bush administration and several Northwest tribes affecting endangered salmon, litigation, and dam operations on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Now that the dust has settled, here is one view of this deal's details and implications.

First, it is worth highlighting that this deal came during the same week that a government council decided on unprecedented closures for salmon fishing on the West Coast in response to another precipitous drop in salmon stocks, this time on the Sacramento River.

Salmon populations and coastal communities have suffered under the current administration's science-free salmon policy. This year's declines on the Sacramento, like recent declines on the other big salmon rivers -- the Klamath and Columbia-Snake -- can be traced to harmful dams, habitat destruction, and politically driven management decisions and illegal plans by our federal government.

So, what will this agreement mean for Columbia Basin populations and the decades-long courtroom battles?

Beaches strewn with a lot of trash, says report

Six million pounds of trash were picked up in a one-day global beach cleanup last September, according to a new report from the Ocean Conservancy. In one day, beachcombers covering 33,000 miles of shoreline in 76 countries found an average 182 pounds of trash per mile. That was comprised of 7.2 million items of garbage […]