Earth Island Journal articles from June 2005

Earth Island Journal archives from June 2005

From the editor.(Editorial)
June 22, 2005... From the effects of the tsunami in December to the renewed Bush administration assault on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the world has been awash in very bad news these days. We should know Our jobs here at Earth Island Journal...

Unfair to Kerry?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 22, 2005... Chris Clarke is right to suggest that "Red-state voters face environmental threats" ("Bushed Again," Spring 2005 EIJ) but he's dead wrong when he suggests that John Kerry "assiduously avoided statements on such crucial issues." Mr. Clarke...

Lonely activist.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 22, 2005... I tried to get people into trying to help animals, but nothing worked. Not even my mother would listen to me. Everybody at my school thinks I'm a freak so they won't listen. I tried everything! Our teacher showed us a movie about what's...

Waste not.(AFRICA)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... As if grappling with the mountains of sand that desertification has cast down on them were not enough, the people of Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott, are now also faced with ever-growing seas of refuse. As the nation's traditionally nomadic...

Island earth.(AFRICA)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... Seventy-five percent of the world's most threatened mammals, birds, and amphibians are surviving in areas that, added together, cover 2.3 percent of the Earth's total land surface, a mere speck of consolidated biodiversity only a little larger...

BBQ-ed forest.(AFRICA)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... According to its Department of Forestry, Malawi has the highest deforestation rate of 14 Southern African nations. With 55 percent of the 12 million Malawians living below the poverty level, and a mere four percent with access to electricity,...

Sands slipping away.(AFRICA)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... It's not just elephants, monkeys, or leopards that are getting poached in Africa anymore. Now, according to an article in the Zimbabwe Standard, the land itself is getting poached for its sand. Sand excavators are digging huge holes around...

UN scientists" warning: change or die.(Around the world)(ecosystems)
June 22, 2005... The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), an unprecedented report on the Earth's natural systems compiled by 1,300 international scientists, warns of the emergence of new diseases, sudden changes in water quality, creation of coastal "dead...

Non-stick glaciers.(ARCTIC)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... Industrial chemicals--including flame retardants and substances used in making non-stick cookware, such as PDBE--are increasingly drifting north on sea currents and becoming trapped in Arctic ice sheets. Recent research has found higher...

Fauxntasy Island.(ASIA)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... A $14 billion construction project in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to construct luxury villas, clubs, and hotels on miles of human-made islands is continuing as planned despite growing concern from environmentalists. Since the plans were...

Oceans half-empty.(EUROPE)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organizations warns that 52 percent of the world's fish stocks are fully exploited, up from 47 percent in 2002 The biannual report by the UN agency forecasts that world consumption of fish may grow by...

Cuisine jeune.(EUROPE)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... As child obesity rates rise m Italy, France, and Britain, legislators across Europe are calling for higher nutrition standards in school meals. France has taken the lead by banning vending machines from primary schools; the ban will extend to...

Short of breath.(EUROPE)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... A report sponsored by the European Commission stated that air pollution has cut life expectancy by an average of nine months throughout the European Union. The high pollution levels, caused by vehicular traffic, industry, and domestic heating,...

Great horny owl.(NORTH AMERICA)
June 22, 2005... Without the option of personals ads, online dating, or a thriving bar scene, nonhuman creatures don't always have much help when it comes to hooking up. Take, for example, one determined ferruginous pygmy-owl (Glaucidium brasilianum) who went...

Caffeine troubles for fish?(NORTH AMERICA)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... Tests of male bass with female reproductive organs in two West Virginia rivers showed that fish there were contaminated with chicken manure, human hormones, and caffeine. Yes, caffeine. It's well known that byproducts of everyday activities...

Oil rigs to fish farms.(NORTH AMERICA)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... Looking to pump up Louisiana's economy, a task force released a plan to convert hundreds of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico into offshore fish farms. The vision includes rigging giant net enclosures around the drill platforms. The plan has...

Hg up, smarts down.(NORTH AMERICA)(mercury poisoning)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... A study by scientists at Mount Sinai Center for Children's Health and Environment in New York shows that between 316,000 and 637,000 American children experience reductions in intelligence each year due to mercury pollution. What is unique...

Philippine logging.(OCEANIA)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... Yet another official in the Philippine government will be investigated for involvement in the rampant illegal logging that has contributed to the devastation of Philippine forests. Governor Maria Elena Palma Gil--from the province of Davao...

Peru's black market threatening alpaca.(SOUTH AMERICA)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... Peru is struggling to crack down on its estimated $2-billion-a-year black market, which is endangering much of the country's precious wildlife and livestock. One of the most visible victims of the contraband trade is Peru's alpaca, sought after...

Shrinking wetlands.(SOUTH AMERICA)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... Large South American wetlands are under threat from farming and house building. "When you talk about environmental problems in Brazil, you think about the Amazon. But people underestimate the importance of the Pantanal [wetlands]," said Paulo...

Earth Island project reports.(Earth Island in the news)
June 22, 2005... Earth Island Institute welcomes a new project, Friends of Sierra Gorda. The project's primary mission is to support and promote the work of the Grupo Ecologico Sierra Gorda (GESG) in Queretaro, Mexico. Founded in 1987, GESG was founded by a...

Staff and projects.(Earth Island Institute)(Directory)
June 22, 2005... Earth Island Institute Life on Earth is imperiled by human degradation of the biosphere. Earth Island Institute develops and supports projects that counteract threats to the biological and cultural diversity that sustains the environment...

International Marine Mammal Project.(Earth Island in the news)
June 22, 2005... Dolphin-Safe in the Maldives The Maldivian tuna fishery in the Indian Ocean has been a part of International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP)'s Dolphin-Safe program almost from its inception. The country's economically dominant fishery,...

Baikal watch: the Great Baikal Trail.(Earth Island in the news)
June 22, 2005... Two years ago, a handful of volunteers broke ground on a proposed network of ecotrails circumscribing Lake Baikal in Siberia. The idea for the Great Baikal Trail (GBT) had existed for over three decades, explains project leader Andrei Suknyov,...

Global Service Corps.(Earth Island in the news)
June 22, 2005... After much anticipation, Global Service Corps (GSC) proudly completed its first six-month Seeds of Survival (SOS) Fellowship Program. The program, which ran from Oct. 18, 2004 to April 18, 2005, brought together organizations and practitioners...

Sacred land film project.(Earth Island in the news)(Winnemem Wintu)
June 22, 2005... Dancing for peace At dusk, eight Winnemem Wintu dancers emerged along the edge of the Shasta Dam, a massive reservoir that has flooded their ancestral homeland Eagle, turkey, and heron feathers adorned their headdresses and skirts, and...

Campaign to safeguard America's waters: cruise ship initiative sets sail.(Earth Island in the news)
June 22, 2005... C-SAW has been charting a course towards a pollution-free cruise future since 1999, leading the effort towards passage of the only federal rule restricting cruise ship pollution in 2000, the first state statute (in Alaska) in 2001, and working...

Everyone's got a story.(Sue Reid)(Interview)
June 22, 2005... As New England emerged from yet another series of winter storms in February, the US Department of Homeland Security was quite possibly the last thing on Sue Reid's mind. Though she'd labored for months to get the Oil Spill Prevention and...

New nukes is bad nukes: Bush's plan for your radioactive future.
June 22, 2005... "To keep our economy growing, we also need reliable supplies of affordable, environmentally responsible energy (Applause.) Nearly four years ago, I submitted a comprehensive energy strategy that encourages conservation, alternative sources, a...

Getting poverty's goat.
June 22, 2005... You don't see many water buffalo in central Arkansas. The one gazing benignly over the fence or its colleague enjoying a cool mud wallow outside Perryville, an hour west of Little Rock, has doubtless evoked more than one hasty U-turn for a long...

Not a drop to drink: natural and unnatural disasters leave millions without clean water.
June 22, 2005... December 26, 2004 will remain in the minds of many as the day the world was swept away by water. The 9.0 earthquake originating in the Indian Ocean sent waves to spill over shorelines in South and Southeast Asia and East Africa, carrying more...

A democracy of water: farmers and big-city progressives made a grand coalition. Now that civility is coming undone.
June 22, 2005... Six weeks after I finished walking and kayaking Portland's 260-mile Urban Growth Boundary (UGB), a statewide vote apparently repealed the whole thing. It had taken me a leisurely two years. But by the second-to-last day, when I followed...

Energy Secretary's dirty resume: this guy ran a Texas-based chemical company that was one of the country's worst polluters.
June 22, 2005... In President Bush's world, it pays--literally--to be a miserable failure, a criminal and a corporate con man. Those are just some of the characteristics of the men and women tapped recently to fill the vacancies in Bush's second-term cabinet....

Tsunami and environment: along with ensuring that aid gets to tsunami victims, we must make sure that the fragile ecosystems in affected areas have the chance to recover fully.
June 22, 2005... Even countries were hit by the December 26 tsunami Scores of other countries lost citizens, making this a worldwide catastrophe. Legions of aid workers ale now helping people in the worst-hit areas of Indonesia, Sri Lanka India, and Thailand....

Is environmentalism dead? A response to the recent essay "The Death of Environmentalism".
June 22, 2005... The election of that very problematic George carried an expensive lesson: that in spite of all the tremendous organizing, new strategies, and rallying 'round that environmentalists did to defeat the Bush agenda--we need to get bigger, be...

Voices.
June 22, 2005... "Our oceans would be opened up to a wide range of other industrial development." For close to four years, the Cape Wind offshore wind project proposal (see Spring, 2005 EIJ) has been making its tortured way through the Army Corps of...