Marine Campaigns Spotlight Wasteful Fishing Practices Thirty miles off Cape Cod, Dr. Carl Safina of the National Audubon Society’s Living Oceans Program and pilot Charlie Horton circle desert-like stretches of blue water in a single-engine Super Cub. Their object: to locate schools of bluefin tuna, 500- to 700-pound fish that are highly prized by commercial […]
Organic Foods May Be Grown with Sewage Sludge and Drugs Last December, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman made a greatly anticipated announcement that at once had farmers, consumers and organic retailers across the country holding their breath, then raising their voices in astonished protest: The proposed federal organic standards for U.S. food crops included inherently […]
A Universal Studios Theme Park in Japan Sits on Top of a Toxic Waste Site There were the usual men in suits, and there were also actors dressed as Woody Woodpecker, Marilyn Monroe, Herman Munster and Groucho Marx. The place was Osaka, Japan, two years ago, and the occasion was the signing of an agreement […]
Investigating a Food Supply Gone Haywire Like a lot of other Americans, journalist Nicols Fox, a former editor at the Washington Journalism Review and a correspondent for The Economist, first heard about the deadly E. coli O157:H7 bacteria in 1993. That was the year it attacked a group of Northwestern children, all of whom had […]
Breathing Silica, Washing Vegetables and Saving Habitat What are the health effects of clumping cat litter on humans? Are there any negative side effects from breathing the actual litter? —Andy and Taeja Klukas, Maple Grove, MN Clay-based cat litters contain crystalline silica, the main component in sand, rock and mineral ores. A possible health threat […]
Transferring a second group of wolves from Fort St. John, British Columbia to Yellowstone National Park and the Frank Church River of No Return National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho this January was a controversial move (See Latitudes, August 1995) that not only ignited sparks with ranchers near Yellowstone, but also with some Canadians, like the activist group Friends of the Wolf (FOW).
Six years after the world saw incriminating footage of a Princess Cruises ship dumping 20 plastic garbage bags into the sea (See In Brief, "Getting the Goods on Ocean Dumpers," July/August 1995), the cruise line has apparently cleaned up its act and won recognition from The Center for Marine Conservation (CMC) as a leading conservation-friendly cruise line.
How green is Hollywood? The film community’s environmental image has been endangered by its reliance on lauan, a rare tropical hardwood from Southeast Asia, popular for construction projects on Hollywood movie sets (See "Green Contradictions in Hollywood," In Brief, July/August 1995).
Ben Franklin’s choice for our national bird, the wild turkey (Meleagris Gallopavo) has not always had an easy time finding a place in its homeland.
They may not leap tall buildings in single bounds, but California grade school kids are becoming true heroes with the state’s Adopt-A-Species program. In a state that has more endangered and threatened species than any other in the continental U.S., kid volunteers have found a way to turn their youthful energies and enthusiasm into a force to save animals and rare plants.
