marine life

Sleep With the Fishes

At least 20,000 chinook salmon and other fish have died in Northern California’s Klamath River in the last two weeks, but federal officials are unwilling to attribute the deaths to the Bush administration’s decision to divert water away from the river this year and into an irrigation project in southern Oregon. U.S. Fish and Wildlife […]

Coral-ations

98,572 — square miles of coral reef in the world 1 97,100 — square miles of the state of Wyoming 2 58 — percentage of the world’s reefs that are potentially threatened by human activities 1 34 — percentage of the world’s reefs that are off the shores of Southeast Asia 3 88 — percentage […]

12-Step Salmon Recovery

David Brower leaves a legacy for dolphins

The one-year anniversary of the death of environmental legend David Brower has come and gone, just a week after the U.S. Department of Justice decided not to appeal a dolphin protection lawsuit the Earth Island Institute filed with Dave back in 1999. Dolphins on the run. Photo: NOAA. For reasons that are still unknown, a […]

Pulling Back the Rains

A single rainstorm can whisk 10,000 tons of dirt and grit and millions of pounds of toxics and nutrient pollution into the Chesapeake Bay. Officials from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the District of Columbia are unveiling plans today to rein in rain-related pollution problems, in the first major restoration effort they’ve announced since pledging well […]

An excerpt from Blue Frontier

Predictable but unreported impacts from this spring's flooding on the Mississippi River will be an expanded dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, more southern beach closures, and more dying coral in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

The Customer is Always Right

Why do we compete even though we know it hurts us?

Not beary funny. Photo: Art Wolfe, Inc. I’ve heard the joke about the bear before, and so, probably, have you. Two guys are sitting outside their tent in a forest campsite when they see a huge angry bear charging toward them. One starts lacing up his running shoes. The other says, “Are you crazy? You’ll […]

This Georgia riverkeeper has a red neck and a green heart

James Holland was a crabber for more than 30 years. Now he’s the president and full-time field director of the Altamaha Riverkeeper, an activist group he founded to clean up Georgia’s biggest river basin. James Holland — he doesn’t wear fleece. The rough-hewn Holland — with his missing front teeth, ninth-grade education, and fierce determination […]