With GIS Environmental Software, the Proof is in the Plotting This GIS map treates the Pacific Northwest as an ecosystem of varying rainforest environments. At the front lines of environmentalism, often the first and biggest challenge is proving that there is a problem. The systematic environmental poisoning Rachel Carson described in Silent Spring made headlines […]
The Pentagon Uses Radioactive Waste as Armor and Bullets As many as 700,000 American soldiers served in the 1991 Persian Gulf war, but it wasn’t until last year that the Pentagon finally admitted that some of those servicemen and women may have been exposed to chemical weapons. During the Gulf War, depleted uranium was used […]
The Rio Grande River has dried up along the US-Mexico border.
Twenty-five years after pregnant women and children were evacuated from the neighborhood bordering the Love Canal toxic waste site, environmental health pioneer Lois Gibbs is poised to launch a national campaign aimed at redirecting the way government and industry regulate environmental hazards in the United States.
Wangari Maathai’s Movement is Built on the Power of Trees On a winter day in 1999, Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai was doing what comes naturally to her: planting trees. As in Thailand, where a Buddhist monk who protected trees by ordaining them was thrown in jail, Maathai’s activities made the authorities uneasy. The seedlings […]
America’s Parks are the Scene of the Crime for Plant Theft Park biologist Mike Owen had been on the job only two months when he got a startling phone call. It was the park manager. Come to the parking lot, he said. What happened next would inspire a book and, coming this fall, a movie […]
Global Climate Change Threatens the Insurance Industry When winds reach 120 miles per hour, houses begin to crumble, walls break and roofs fly away. With global climate change, winds like this are coming more often. In the U.S. during the last three decades, the number of weather-related natural disasters has increased five-fold. Last year was […]
Green Learning Begins with Hands-On Community Experience America’s 20-somethings are well aware that we’re facing a global environmental crisis. But they grew up in an era of prosperity, peace and opportunity. How can they remain optimistic? What skills will they need to clean up the ecological mess they’re inheriting? Living Routes students in an underground […]
At the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, a conservation center run by the National Zoological Gardens, 69 elephants, 20 of them under five years old, eat, work and bathe before the eager eyes and camera lenses of local and foreign tourists. Founded in 1975, Pinnawala is home to many second- and third-generation animals, the progeny of the original adoptees.
Former tobacco growers like Sam Askins are turning to organic vegetable crops to rescue their farms.
