Suppose in addition to your blue bin for recyclables, you had a green one for kitchen scraps? And suppose that those scraps were collected and mixed with yard waste, then processed in small, low-emission factories into compost and a clean fuel that could power your car? It sounds utopian, but it’s reality in Europe, where […]
Each April, the people of Terrebonne Parish convene in Chauvin, some 80 miles south of New Orleans, for the Blessing of the Fleet, heralding the arrival of shrimp season. As spring gathers, though, a threat to this community’s traditional means of livelihood will begin to arrive. Hypoxia, or severe oxygen depletion, is forcing aquatic animals […]
A wolf howls in the autumn morning, and is joined by three other voices. It could be Alaska, but instead it’s tony Westchester County in the suburbs of New York City, where no wolves have lived for more than a century. These wolves aren’t wild; they’re residents of the Wolf Conservation Center (WCC). WCC is […]
It’s been a difficult year for opponents of whaling. In August, Iceland announced it would resume whale hunting after a 14-year hiatus. Norway—the only nation in the world that has a commercial whale hunt—killed 647 minkes, the largest catch since it resumed whaling a decade ago. Meanwhile Japan, which kills nearly 700 minkes for "scientific" […]
The Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Conventions (CERC) is a non-partisan collaboration of 60 organizations spanning the nonprofit, commercial and public sectors. "We are promoting the use of environmental best practices for the Democratic (July 26 to 29) and Republican National Conventions (August 28 to September 2) in order to showcase those practices to the political leaders and the general public," explains Executive Director Daniel Ruben. "We want to establish the role model for future conventions, political and otherwise."
The popular animated movie <I>Finding Nemo</I>, a favorite in kids" video collections, traces the exploits of the young clownfish Nemo, who is captured by divers and plopped into a dentist office aquarium. But Nemo longs to return to the ocean and his father. Overall, the movie’s message seems simple: fish are unhappy trapped in tanks.
Once thought of as a resource without end, fishermen are finally bumping up against limits in the world’s cod stocks (see "A Run on the Banks," feature, March/April 2001). In North America, the catch has declined by 90 percent since the early 1980s, forcing the closing of once-thriving fisheries. Now under threat is the stock in the Barents Sea, which is fished by Russia and Norway.
There is a new wave of activism sweeping across college campuses. Student groups are coordinating efforts to reduce fossil-fuel dependency by pushing for more renewable alternatives, and putting forth specific goals for their colleges. “This is a growing movement,” says Billy Parish, director of the Climate Campaign, a network of 10 student environmental organizations. “What’s […]
Instead of hiring guys with weed-whackers and herbicides, more and more California cities and local homeowners associations are turning to goats.
Last May, Zion National Park in Utah initiated a mandatory shuttle bus transportation system for visitors to Zion Canyon, greatly reducing auto access to the most scenic portions of one of America’s most prized national parks. A typical traffic backup at Zion National Park, which now has mandatory shuttles. “Zion,” a Hebrew word meaning a […]
