In 1992, Alabama faced a unique situation—a surplus of income from offshore drilling. Voters overwhelmingly backed a plan that would use the money to save the state’s rapidly vanishing landscape. The program was called Forever Wild and since its inception it has purchased more than 100,000 acres of land and wetlands.

Another prenatal precaution has been added to the running list: don’t breathe! A number of studies have concluded exposure to air pollution, such as that found routinely in major American cities, can adversely affect fetal development (see "Womb Pollution?" In Brief, November/December 2004). 

Prairie dogs are keystone species that endangered black-footed ferrets depend on for survival. But a century of mismanagement has reduced prairie dogs to five percent of their historic numbers (see "Open Season on "Varmints,"" cover story, July/August 2004). "The political climate for prairie dog conservation remains abysmal," says Erin Robertson of Center for Native Ecosystems.

Record gas prices have prompted heated debate about the root causes, leading some to point their fingers at ethanol, which in the U.S. is usually made from corn (see "Grass to Gas," Currents, May/June 2005). Congress had recently mandated replacement of the groundwater pollutant methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) with ethanol, another additive that decreases pollution when blended with gasoline.

Anthropologist Elizabeth Guillette found a community of farmers in the Yaqui Valley of Mexico that was divided by geography and culture. Farmers living in the lower lands of the valley adopted modern fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, while their counterparts living on the mountain continued farming without commercial chemicals. Guillette found that children of farmers who use chemicals produce less-detailed and less-accurate drawings than those raised by indigenous farmers who use natural agricultural practices.