The Medicinal Trade in Animals and Plants Reaches Epidemic Proportions During a 1983 auction in South Korea, the bidding for an especially-prized black bear specimen grew incredibly intense, finally stopping at $55,000. The winning bidder didn't get a trophy for his den, but instead a small fleshy mass-the animal's gall bladder, believed in Asia to […]
Will Congress Reauthorize a 19th Century Giveaway? When President Clinton announced a deal last summer to prevent the New World gold mine from being developed next to Yellowstone National Park, it was widely hailed as an environmental victory. Environmentalists, though, were quick to point out that stopping the mine was only part of the battle. […]
The Prospect of Human Cloning Raises Environmental and Ethical Issues In the recent film Multiplicity, the condo contractor played by Michael Keaton discovers that having a clone of himself around to help with the heavy lifting is not quite the trouble-free experience he had imagined. So too, in real life, is the prospect of human […]
With Federal Help, Bike Paths Are Spreading Across America Picture the ecosystem of a truly sustainable community. You'll breathe air that's clean, and never hear the roar of a revved-up engine or smell the deadly fumes of a speeding semi. That's because-among other things—there's a network of bikable roads, paths and trails that will get […]
Captive breeding of an endangered species can make the difference between its success or failure. The black-footed ferret, the cheetah, the Wyoming toad and the peregrine falcon have all spent generations in captivity, where they eat, drink, sleep and mate at the direction of biologists. All four have teetered on the edge of extinction but, at least partly as a payoff for "doing time" in captivity, they’ve dodged the bullet for now.
Remember emissions trading? Six years ago, it was all the rage, a new way to reduce pollution that reconciled the seemingly intractable forces of market capitalism and environmental protection. When Congress amended the Clean Air Act in 1990, politicians, some environmentalists, and many an industry executive, proposed market incentives as a way of curbing sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, instead of the traditional (and here’s that bad word again) regulatory approach.
Armando Valbuena Gouriyu speaks with quiet pride about his people, the Wayuu, an indigenous tribe inhabiting the Guajira Peninsula in Colombia, the northernmost point in South America. With a decentralized, rural society, the Wayuu successfully resisted colonial conquest. They traded with the British, Dutch and French, fought off pirates, and stubbornly retained a barter economy, as well as their own language and customs. "That helped us to survive," Gouriyu says.
Environmentalists fight to protect the microscopic creatures that dwell on the ocean’s bottom.
Earthjustice Makes a Case for the Environment In a court of law, where rulings are often based on legal precedents, the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice often ends up citing the legal precedent of itself. The group, founded in 1971 as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, has grown and evolved along with the history […]
In the Wake of September 11, Environmental Direct-Action Groups Change Their Tactics On the morning of September 11, Congressman Don Young (R-AK) warned against a rush to judgment about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Young told a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News that responsibility could lie with groups […]
