In 1988, Kathy Elkins moved to Lompoc, a pleasant small town on the central Californian coast, with her husband and infant daughter. She thought she had found herself a little slice of paradise. That is, until she got sick. Within six months, she was finding it hard to breathe. Over time, her hair started falling […]
Bears that threaten people or wreak havoc foraging for food are a little harder to deter than the average pest. In the usual scenario, they are trapped and relocated, and if the bear returns, it must be killed—not a popular solution. It took biologist Carrie Hunt and a team of Karelian Bear Dogs to teach […]
Urban Biofiltration The concrete-and-steel of downtown Toronto is not generally thought of as environmentally friendly. But a number of office buildings in the heart of Canada's largest city have become involved in an exciting new “eco-engineering” application. The air smells sweeter at Toronto's Club Monaco after it installed a 40 square foot "living wall." Over […]
Wal-Mart’s usual procedure is to colonize open space or take over suburban shopping centers. It doesn’t usually locate in center cities, and that’s what makes its plans for New Orleans—as part of a Kabacoff master plan for replacing a demolished housing project—so unusual, and so reviled.
For many people, cacti are to plants what bulldogs are to house pets—the ugliest examples of the species. But people afflicted with cactophilia are nevertheless drawn to the plant, says Tony Mace, webmaster of the Cactus and Succulent Plant Mall. Mace estimates that there are 500 cactus clubs and over 40,000 collectors worldwide. Some enthusiasts […]
With a world population of less than 1,000, the future of the California Red-legged Frog (Rana aurora draytonni) looked bleak. The poor frog was beset by habitat destruction, harvesting, predation by non-native species (bullfrog, bluegill, mosquitofish), and drought. Things only grew worse when, in 1995, Congress voted a moratorium on any new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listing of endangered or threatened species.
Selling Sustainability Business people and environmentalists are not natural allies, but they may find common ground on 135 acres of land in Petersburg, Missouri. The site, resting along the Missouri River bottom, will be converted into the nation’s first physical location for The Institute of Ecolonomics. Alice Billings Ecolonomics, a term coined by actor and […]
Helping to save the planet’s oldest tropical rainforest is more about empowering people than rescuing trees. That’s the philosophy of Earth Island Institute’s Borneo Project, which for the past 10 years has aided indigenous peoples of the world’s third-largest island in preserving both their forests and culture. Begun as a sister-city relationship between Berkeley, California, […]
If the planned relocation of Alabama’s Greene County jail goes ahead as scheduled, prisoners may be sentenced to inhaling toxic waste as part of their incarceration.
Amid the towering, old-growth forests of British Columbia, American college students are working alongside aboriginal foresters to map the location of cedar trees that bear signs of ancestral use, a project that will help preserve the history of the Nuu-chah-nulth Indians.
