Despite backing from the majority of the G8 nations currently meeting in Derby, UK, the United States is opposing a British proposal calling on industrialized nations to combat illegal logging in the world’s threatened rainforests by banning the purchase of timber harvested in unsustainable manners.
A magnificent natural phenomenon is slowly vanishing right above our heads. The great North-South bird migration, which stitches the skies each autumn and spring, is steadily subsiding. Scientists blame the decline of migratory birds on habitat loss throughout the Americas.
Millions of Americans were shocked to find out last Wednesday that their Senators had approved oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) by a vote of 51-49. Knowing they didn’t have the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster, pro-drilling Senators tacked the drilling provision onto the filibuster-proof budget resolution proposal for 2006.
Canada’s British Columbia is a region of stunning national beauty. The Pacific Northwest city of Vancouver, nestled between coastal mountains, the calm waters of English Bay, and the Burrard Inlet, is in many ways an ideal place to settle. Vancouverites are always ready to extol the virtues of their home – its gentle climate and its wealth of recreational options: You can ski, you can sunbathe, you can take a walk on the seawall around Stanley Park, or you can simply enjoy breathtaking views from any number of spots in and around the city.
You’re sitting at your desk, slightly stiff from a long session starting at the comptuer screen. It’s 4 p.m. and that headache is back. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if your weren’t so unusually fatigued and didn’ t have that tinge of nausea and slight dizziness – and that terrible stuffy nose.
The 60s have turned into the 90s. Ken Kesey’s magic bus sits up to its axles in an Oregon field, looking more like rusty graffitti than history. Communes have become Intentional Communities with their own trade association, the Federation of Egalltarian Communities.
The Kennecott copper mine in Binham Canyon in the mountains southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah is a National Historic Landmark. And it should be. As the largest open-pit mine in the world, it gapes as if a giant pyramid were pulled from the gray-and-brown earth, a monument to our consumer civilization. Some 200,00 tourists a year drive up the winding canyon creek road, beneath the high ridges covered with waste rock from the pit as if sand dunes had spilled across the mountains. They park at the vista view on the rim and admire Kennecott’s answer to a volcano. Even through the public 25-cent binoculars, the heavy dump trucks on the spiralling road to the bottom look like matchbox toys and the drilling rills like penny nails.
Eating chocolate may be one of America’s favorite sins. We have carried it along in deep space on NASA flights and into combat – during Desert Storm, soldiers were issued special bars that wouldn’t melt in the Saudia Arabian heat. Perhaps because we open the wrapper already feeling guilty, we rarely ask the hard questions about popular food: Where is it from? How is it farmed? Josh Taylor, president of Cloud Nine company, has an easy answer for our guilt. "Get as much fat out of your diet as you can, so you can put a little back in with our chocolate bars."
Adrian Wydeven spreads his feet, tips his head back, and howls long and low into the summer night. His mimicry is perfect – plaintive, mournful, stirring. As the last notes fade into the Wisconsin woods, he waits, listening for a reply from the wolves he knows are near. As a timber wolf biologist from Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Wydeven and his colleagues trap, radio collar and monitor wolves in remote areas of northwestern Wisconsin. During the day, they check traps and track animals by telemetry; at night they howl.
On the cold deserts of the Colorado Plateau, Dr. Jayne Belnap, research ecologist for the National Biological Survey, scours the ground for footprints. Not for Coyote or dinosaur footprints, but for the markings of hiking boots and cloven hoofs. She’s looking for damage to the desert’s "cryptobiotic" crust – the dark brown, almost black layer of soil. Composed of bacteria, lichen, moss, and microfungi, this protective cover, just two to four inches thick, prevents wind and water erosion, absorbs moisture and provides nitrogen and other important nutrients to plants in an otherwise harsh environment. But a footprint or tire track can do the damage that the harsh weather can’t.
