On April 2, President Clinton brought his traveling talk fest to Portland, Oregon for the Northwest Forest Conference, the biggest show to hit town in years. He slept at the Benson Hotel, built 80 years ago by a timber baron, took a 20 minute wakeup jog led by two stretch limousines, and sat attentively all day at a table long enough to land airplanes.
The Great Lakes, so easily taken for granted by North Americans, are a unique and awesome feature on the planet. These "sweetwater seas," as early explorers described them, stretch for over 1,000 miles and hold one-fifth of the Earth’s supply of fresh water. They are the heart of a region of forests, thousands of small lakes, and praries that once teemed with wildlife. But with all of that water, timber and rich soil, European settlers transformed the Great Lakes domain of fur trappers and Native Americans into a frontier of farming and industry after the Erie Canal opened up transportation from the east Coast in 1825. The great "heartland" cities of Chicago, Cleveland, Toronto, Milwaukee, Detriot, Toldeo, Buffalo and other sprang ip rapidly. Although the northern perimeter of the Great Lakes still remains relatively wild and forested, 35 million people live around the lakes, mostly in its lower reaches, producing goods and services that amount to roughly one-fifth of the United States economy.
According to the 1959 World Book Encyclopedia, "Chickens in the United States are raised in small flocks on farms that are raised in small flocks on farms that specialize in other crops. The farmer’s wife often cares for the chickens and uses the "egg money" as she pleases." This system, however quaint, had it’s benefits. Chickens ran, scratched and pecked in barnyards, and their waster fertilized the crops. The wholesome eggs, laid in straw nests, were sold locally.
"Help, there’s a skunk in my garage!" says the voice on the other end of the phone. She’s terrified of the little creature, and has just learned that local trappers want $75.00 to remove it.
To save a spotted owl, protect a stream. That was the message of President Clinton’s "Forest Plan" for the Pacific Northwest announced in July, though you wouldn’t know it from all the moaning about lost jobs or lost trees. In the past, forest managers mapped out plans based on the habitats of particular animals, or on the range of certain types of forest they wanted to preserve.
For years, the United Way of America has limited its financial support to charities that provide traditional health care or human services. But with heightened pressure from donors and environmental groups, many local United Ways are broadening their definition of health and human services to include organizations fighting air and water pollution.
Twenty years ago, people drank water straight from the Catskill Mountain brooks of upstate New York. Today no one dares. Catskill water is laced with pathogens that cause illness.
The next time you visit a national wildlife refuge, you may run into a gun-toting member of the National Rifle Association (NRA). Last December, the NRA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) signed a little-noticed "memorandum of understanding" encouraging refuge managers and local NRA affiliates to work on "mututally beneficial projects and activities," such as fishing and hunting. One such project, currently the NRA’s focus is "to help make hunting on refuges accessible to physically challenged sportsmen and women," says USFWS spokesperson Patricia Fisher.
In 1992, increased ocean temperatures brought more than the usualy number of hungry sea lions close to human fishing activity along California’s coast. As a result, California’s Marine Mammal Center, which rehabilitates sick and injured marine mammals, admitted a record-breaking 793 animals last year: 80 were maimed, blinded or permanently paralyzed from fishermen’s gunshot; most died or had to be euthanized. The sea lions rescued were mostly yearlings having trouble finding food. The Center’s Dr. Kimberlee Beckmen, who examined the animals, wonders "how anyone could perceive these animals–no bigger than the family dog–as a threat."
For 5,000 years, nomadic Cree natives have wandered along Canada’s Great Whale River, a subarctic land of rolling hills, peat bogs and spruce the call "The Garden." Although they have more recently settled in a village on James Bay, th Cree still subsist largely on game animals. The construction of Hydro-Quebec’s proposed Phase II dam in the Great Whale River would wipe out not only their food sources, but their lifestyles, history and ancestral home. "As long as the land is intact our culture is intact…When we say the land is our life, the developers don’t understand this," explains former chief Robbie Dick.
