There’s good news on the Maine coast! Atlantic puffins and three species of terns – including the endagered roseate tern – have come back to breed in record numbers on former nesting islands. Sea Bird biologists working for the National Audubon Society counted 4,500 pairs of common, artic, and roseate terns on the five islands they currently manage, as well as 38 pairs of puffins at two recently re-established colony sites.
In the summer of 1992 the South Korean firm Hyundai was about to clearcut the remote Bikin River Basin of the Russian Far East, forest home of the rare Siberian tiger. In a country where mail delivery is spotty at best, FAX is unreliable, and the telephone is about as useful as two tin cans tied with a string, contacting the international environmental community in time for help was a near impossibility. But help arrived in this primitive outpost in an unexpectedly high-tech form – electronic mail.
The high water marks are clearly visible on the red rock formations that tower over the wild lands of the Utah desert. Millions of years ago the ocean receded, leaving the wind and rain to complete the subtle sculpture that is the landscape of southern Utah.
In an effort to save the endangered South American vicuna from poachers, as well as Peru’s indigenous people from extreme poverty, communities in the High Andes have begun to live-shear this endangered South American relative to the IIama and reap the profits from its much sought after wool.
Is the auto industry working with antiquated technology? Energy guru Amory Lovins, co-founder of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Institute, this so. Lovins envisions a futurecar that is neither exclusively gas nor electric powered, but a hybrid car of both. He calls this hybird car a "hypercar," and is one of his strongest champions. He predicts that hypercars "will be able to drive from New York to Los Angeles on one tank of any fuel. They’ll get 150 to 400 miles per gallon, and could possibly get much more." The hypercar, he says, will be "studier, safer, sportier, more comfortable, beautiful, durable, and quiet – and just nice than present cars. They may even cost less."
The smell is pungent, a mix of manure and sawdust. Past the domed silos and chicken wire fences, a hilly patchwork of fields and tilled earth stretches into the distance. Humps appear and disappear behind the row of mooing cows, as a large fluffy animal darts in front of the silos. Something tha looks more like a muppet than a mare is lazily lying in the grass.
By the end of the decade, the word "green" may have a whole new meaning when applied to the environmental world. This green refers to money and economic growth, and environmentalists are out to prove that it is not as incompatible with its agenda as the business press, right wing think thanks and anti-green movements would make you think.
In the weeks after the Exxon Valdez struck in Bligh Reef and spilled 11 million gallons of oil across the Prince William Sound, who could doubt that this drunk boating accident was anything less than a horrific disaster? Jeff Wheelwright, for one.
The market for environmental books has changed considerably since the surge of green books sales that followed the watershed of Earth Day 1990. While the large New York trade book companies have withdrawn from what they see as a glutted market, specialty houses are thriving by filling a niche that has branched into a diverse array of topical estuaries.
Giggling and nervous, the young boys in eagle headdresses, feathers, and jingling deerskin boots swooped across the makeshift stage. At their backs, a diffident corps of Walatowan drummers pounded out a thudding beat on their massive instruments. Mischievous four-year-olds slipped on the roadie’s headphones and bobbed their heads to the music. Across the gym, a passing boy playfully mugged for a string of Nikons and videocams, while others flashed peace signs to the crowd. The kids were clearly amused by the media attention, the famous rock stars and their musical gear. But to the New Mexican pueblo village, the concert promised much more: Folk-rockers the Indigo Girls and Native American activist Winona LaDuke were there to help them raise money for consciousness, and to defend their land and culture from a new form of cavalry charge.
