The first and only time I spoke with Donella Meadows, I was a sophomore studying in Dartmouth College’s Environmental Studies Program — and very nervous to be sitting in the office of one of the school’s most famous professors. I had developed an interest in writing about the environment and asked if she had any […]
The thick chaparral of a remote region in the Sespe Wilderness, part of the Los Padres National Forest, in Ventura, California, has concealed a lost herd of desert bighorn sheep for more than five years. But now they’re out in the open. The desert bighorn sheep of the Sespe Wilderness in California had been given […]
How would you like to be a worm for a day? Or have refuse dumped on your head? Such things happen when people visit garbage museums, interactive learning centers that teach kids why "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" is an important philosophy for the 1990s.
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 […]
