Close Encounters of the Wild Kind
"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.
Take Me To The River
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.
United Ways to Go Green
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.
Water, Water Everywhere…
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.
NRA Gets a Foothold Into Wildlife Refuges
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.
Sea Lions Under Fire
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."
Rafting with the Cree
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.
A Breakfast Among Peers
According to sterotype, the government whistleblower sits on an empty desk all day, stirring coffee, waiting for reporters to call. He or she may by dynamite on 60 Minutes, exposing dangerous fraud and incompetence, but back in the office the lonely hero is a disgruntled employee, a pariah around the water cooler, a naive moralist who won’t adapt to an imperfect world.
Gently Down the Stream?
Mother Ocean, how do we pollute thee? Let us count the ways: There’s garbage dumped and fuel that spills and toxic boatbottom paints; bathroom waste, beer cans dumped in haste and tampons on the beach… Indeed, while sailing from California to Hawaii last summer, adventure boater Bill Forrest didn’t need his compass–he just followed the highway of platic bags tossed overboard by other boaters.
1872 Mining Law: Meet 1993 Reform
One hundred and twenty-two years ago, Ulysses S. Grant was President, Charles Darwin continued work on his evolution theory, George Pullman introduced the "sleeper car," and the General Mining Law of 1872 was enacted. since then, we’ve had 24 new presidents, evolution has become a science and the sleeper car has lost out to air travel. But the mining law remains. Passed by Congress primarily to bring law and order to a 19th centruy "Wild West" shooting itself apart over mining claims, the 1872 Law also sought to lure immigrants and Easterners to settle the vast stretches of public land in the West. In 1993, however, the miners are usually wealthy and the mining companies often foreign-owned, and just about everybody–except mining companies and their powerful lobby– thinks the law has long overstayed its welcome.