A barrage of 12-gauge shotguns shatters the quiet of the May dawn. Another three-month killing season at New York City’s JFK airport has begun. The marksmen work for the .S. Department of Agriculture’s controversial Animal Damage Control (ADC) program, which kills 2.5 million birds and animals each year, with public money and often on public land–but, as at JFK, without public input.
Ninety-four year old Hazel Wolf of Seattle, Washington, one of the planet’s oldest environmentalists, has some theories about why she’s been blessed with an extended life and exuberant energy. "I once told a television interviewer, ‘I’ve lived so long because I don’t have a television.’ I dared him to put it on the air, and he did." A former smoker, she now eats steamed vegetables, lives simply and stays relaxed. " I only run to catch buses. I tell the bus driver, ‘If I’d kept going, I would have beat you downtown,’" she says. "I even outlived my car."
A visit to most modern hair salons would have anyone believing that the road to beauty is paved with noxious chemicals. But two West Coast hairdressers, Jennifer Archbold and Kristin Kilian, are leading their profession down a more ecological path. In 1991 they set up shop in Albany, California and launched Elemental, one of the nation’s first "environmentally concerned" hair salons.
Animal rights activists around the country say they are under the microscope of federal grand juries and law enforcement agencies. Officials say they are simply trying to solve six break-ins at universities doing animal research during which laboratory animals were removed and research equipment destroyed. But, "The investigative tactics are represive and go beyond the scope of routine investigations," says Cres Bellucci of the Activists Legal Defense Project (ALDP). "It seems federal authorities want to pressure activists into abandoning their cause."
Shaded by hemlocks 80 feet tall, East Rock Park is a cool summer refuge for New Have, Connecticut residents who prefer quiet woods to mobbed beaches. In winter, the trees lend the city a touch of green, a reminder that spring will eventually come. But like Eastern hemlocks throughout the region, the ones here are dying, turning from green to yellow to brown. In the summer, East Rock could eventually become a sweltering, impenetrable thicket if the cool shade provided by the hemlocks disappears. In winter it could take on the same dull gray as the rest of New Haven.
The cargo handlerat Don Muang Airport in Bangkok, Thailand didn’t think much of three small wooden crates that had just arrived from Singapore until he heard cries that sounded frighteningly like human babies. Stamped "live birds," the crates were X-rayed and the contents were revealed. One box held two rare siamang gibbons, and the others had six baby orangutans stuffed inside small cells like coffins. When the boxes were pried open, all six animals appeared grey in color and desperately ill. Their stomachs bloated, the orangutans had been drugged and three shipped upside down. The discovery of "the Bangkok Six" on February 20, 1990 offered a glimpse inside the shadowy world of the international trade in endangered species.
On the Isle of Palms, a beach community near Charleston, South Carolina, sit rows of expensive new homes. The Isle is one of many ‘barrier" islands" along the nation’s coastlines–islands which absorb the brunt of winds and waves when hurricanes hit. Not surprisingly, in 1989, when Hurricane Hugo swept into South Carolina, dozens of homes on the Isle were destroyed, leaving behind only rubble. Yet within a couple of years, property owners rebuilt structures in the same vulnerable places. Such practices along our nation’s coastlines have placed enormous demands on our beaches, estuaries and saltmarshes.
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.
