Audubon articles from December 2003

Audubon archives from December 2003

Editor's note.(Editorial)
December 1, 2003... IN THE COMING ELECTION YEAR, YOU'RE APT TO HEAR POLITICAL candidates speechifying about Unprecedented Times and New Eras as proof that our age occupies a unique niche in history. Such sentiments hardly ring hollow since 9/11. But one issue that...

Audubon view.(President's Page)
December 1, 2003... I HAVE OFTEN USED THIS COLUMN TO ASK YOUR HELP IN PROTECTING critical habitat for birds and wildlife in many places, from the Everglades to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Now I want to ask your help in maintaining important habitat much...

Swimming with the current.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... THANK YOU FOR YOUR ARTICLE ON the Dungeness River ("Spawning Hope," September). I worked for the Jamestown S'Klallam tribe from 1992 to 2001 and was a part of this exciting and rewarding project. As a member of Audubon since 1972, I was pleased...

Norton's bona fides.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... LET ME EXPRESS APPRECIATION FOR your coverage of the National Wildlife Refuge System's Centennial (June). I hope many of your readers will take time to visit a refuge to see the great work folks are doing day in and day out to conserve these...

Safe passage?(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... IT SEEMS IRONIC THAT AUDUBON IS Featuring an article about roads and their impact on wildlife ("Right of Way," June) as the House Appropriations subcommittee on transportation has put forward a bill that will get rid of the "transportation...

Corrections.(letters)(Correction Notice)
December 1, 2003... In "An Underwater Ark" (September), seagrass scientist Sandy Wyllie-Echeverria was incorrectly identified as a woman. In "Land of the Giants" (September), the name of the director of the Alaska Forest Association was incorrect. His name is Owen...

The acid test.(politics of air pollution control)
December 1, 2003... LAST FALL IN MONROE, MICHIGAN, PRESIDENT George W. Bush donned a white hard hat, toured Detroit Edison's vast coal-fired power plant, and defended his administration's controversial overhaul of the nation's landmark antipollution law, the Clean...

The gas tax.(Reports)(gas emitted from livestock to be taxed)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Farmers and ranchers in New Zealand took to the streets earlier this year to protest the government's plans to impose a tax on gas emitted from livestock. The world's first "fart tax," as it has become known, was proposed earlier this year by...

Wild reality TV.(Field Notes)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Sam Easterson calls himself a "videonaturalist." His first foray into his chosen field came in 1998, while, as a graduate student in landscape architecture, he outfitted sheep with video-cameras. Since then he has attached small cameras--some...

Saving Nemo.(Field Notes)(protecting aquarium fish)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... When the Disney flick Finding Nemo became a hit over the summer, there was a run on clownfish and blue tangs (a.k.a. Nemo and Dory) at pet stores nationwide. Now that the video and DVD have been released for this holiday season,...

The comeback kids.(Bird Recovery)(Jan Wasserman helps tree swallows)
December 1, 2003... WITNESS ONCE MORE THE ACHIEVEMENT of a dedicated amateur: Jan Wasserman, a bird bander from Camarillo, California, is largely responsible far reversing the almost total extirpation of the tree swallow--one of America's most popular and...

Leaky fix.(Field Notes)(storing carbon dioxide)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... A simple collective swig of Maalox isn't about to relieve the planet's excess gas, so the U.S. Department of Energy is exploring the idea of storing carbon dioxide emissions in layers of rock beneath oceans and riverbeds. Injected into porous...

Stay of execution.(Reprieve)(coyote snaring moratorium)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... FOR YEARS BIOLOGISTS, CONSERVATIONISTS, and animal advocates have condemned Maine's snaring of coyotes by the neck as cruel and unnecessary (see "Maine's War on Coyotes," Audubon, September 2002). Since the early 1980s the state's Department of...

Carbon bloat.(global warming)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... What countries are the biggest global warmers? It's no surprise that the industrialized nations, such as Japan and the United States, are among the leaders, accounting for nearly 28 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions between them. But...

The real playboy bunny.(Field Notes)(Sylvilagus palustris hefneri)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Fame is all well and good, but Harrison Ford and Sting may one day be best remembered for the species scientists have named after them. If so, these celebrities will not be alone, says biologist Mark Isaak, who has compiled a website called...

Answering a call.(Progress)(impact of communications towers on birds)
December 1, 2003... MAYBE THE MESSAGE IS GETTING THROUGH, after all. The government's communications czar says his agency, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), will finally take a closer look at the impact television, radio, and cell phone towers are...

The puffin man: a project that began modestly on a small island in Maine is today helping to save seabirds all over the world.(milestone)(Steve Kress)
December 1, 2003... ON THIS 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF AUDUBON'S PROJECT PUFFIN, MEMORY GOES BACK TO A cool, misty July night when Steve Kress landed by boat on a small Maine island at the end of an improbable journey from Newfoundland, carrying a suitcase full of...

The great Florida birding trail: a birder's eye view of the state.(Advertisement)
December 1, 2003... The Great Florida Birding Trail is a 2000-mile highway trail which unifies existing and new birding sites throughout Florida. Special highway signs identify Birding Trail sites, which have been selected for their excellent birdwatching and...

Meltdown: to see how fast the earth's glaciers are vanishing, look no farther than Glacier National Park, where ice formations thousands of years old may be gone in 30.(true nature)
December 1, 2003... WITH ITS APRON OF ICE SPRAWLING ACROSS 175 ACRES, Grinnell Glacier in Montana's Glacier National Park should, by all rights, refrigerate its surroundings. But even though we are mere yards from the ice in a cliff-encircled basin at 6,500 feet,...

Global warning: the White House may be dragging its heels on The Greatest Environmental Threat facing the planet today. But across the political spectrum, Republicans, Democrats, governors, senators, and industry leaders agree that climate change is for real and must be dealt with--now.(Introduction)
December 1, 2003... A DECADE AGO A SMALL CROWD OF POLITICIANS and environmentalists gathered on a steamy summer day outside the alabaster dome of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and peered into a hole in the ground. The earthen cavity was cool and soothing,...

The hottest spot: as the Arctic warms faster than any other place on earth, habitats are either melting or growing like crazy. And that's just the beginning. Researchers fear the impact may open a Pandora's box for climate change, affecting weather and ecosystems the world over.(Artic Tundra)
December 1, 2003... IN JULY THE ALASKAN ARCTIC LOOKS NOTHING LIKE THE ICEBOX THE IMAGINATION CONJURES up.The tundra--frozen and drifted with snow just a month earlier--has thawed by now. It rolls out in a spongy, greengold carpet, mottled by splotches of...

Pots of gold: for years farmers in the Upper Midwest have been plowing up prairie potholes, the tiny seasonal wetlands that dot their fields. But now that scientists have discovered that potholes can reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, farmers and businessmen are eyeing the wetlands as the region's newest cash crop.(Prairie Potholes)
December 1, 2003... On Tom Wiley's 3,000-acre farm, as in much of North Dakota, an early afternoon wind whistles across a grassy checkerboard of wheat, corn, and soybean fields. It's the same steady gale that Wiley's grandfather and uncles endured a hundred years...

Color blindness: the brilliant beauty of coral reefs has begun to disappear before our eyes, along with the incredible variety of marine life that surrounds them. It has taken only a slight increase in sea-surface temperatures to unravel one of the earth's most ancient ecosystems.(Coral Reefs)
December 1, 2003... IN STILL DAZZLING LATE-AFTERNOON LIGHT, A SMALLISH SCHOOL OF MARINE biologists snorkels out over the reef flat at Heron Island, a speck of white sand and guano anchoring the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, 50 miles off Australia's...

Playing it cool: stop the finger pointing and start the problem solving. Here's what you, and the government, can do to stop global warming.(Solutions)
December 1, 2003... BIBLICAL FLOODS, ENDLESS HEAT WAVES, MELTED GLACIERS, RAMPANT MALARIA... IF, over the next century, the earth's temperature rises the 2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit that's predicted, those apocalyptic scenarios could come frighteningly true....

On thin ice: Adelie penguins are proving to be Antarctica's most sensitive indicators of climate shifts. Their falling population portends a multitude of changes that will reverberate throughout the region.(birds)
December 1, 2003... BILL FRASER'S INFLATABLE DINGHY IS NOT MUCH BIGGER than a bathtub, but it plows easily through jagged ice blocks the size of basketballs on the Bellingshausen Sea. If anything, his biggest worries, besides the surging currents, are the leopard...

New chair in charge.(Movers & Shakers)(Interview)
December 1, 2003... This December Carol Browner takes over as chair of Audubon's Board of Directors from Donal C. O'Brien Jr., who is retiring after 15 years in the position. Browner headed the US. Environmental Protection Agency from 1993 through 2001, the...

The San Diego Audubon Society joined environmental and labor groups and Chula Vista citizens to fight Bayfront Village, a commercial and residential development along San Diego Bay.(California)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... The San Diego Audubon Society joined environmental and labor groups and Chula Vista citizens to fight Bayfront Village, a commercial and residential development along San Diego Bay. The disputed 126-acre parcel, the only unpaved developable...

Plans for a 24-hour Wal-Mart Supercenter adjacent to Penjajawoc Marsh in Maine have finally been put to rest, along with concerns first raised two years ago by the Penobscot Valley Audubon chapter.(Maine)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Plans for a 24-hour Wal-Mart Supercenter adjacent to Penjajawoc Marsh in Maine have finally been put to rest, along with concerns first raised two years ago by the Penobscot Valley Audubon chapter. The marsh, nominated as an Important Bird...

Eastern bluebirds have successfully nested in Yonkers for the first time in more than 50 years, thanks to the efforts of the Hudson River Audubon Society.(New York)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Eastern bluebirds have successfully nested in Yonkers for the first time in more than 50 years, thanks to the efforts of the Hudson River Audubon Society. These cavity nesters' disappearance coincided with the loss of the area's open space, so...

Going to bat for bats.(Chapter Spotlight)
December 1, 2003... The BOXED BAT GUANO--collected, sanitized, and given away each week--is a gift from Ann Francis Ford. "Best fertilizer around," she declares. Ford snaps down her bicycle kickstand and starts working the crowd. Never one to miss an opportunity,...

Pawnee National Grasslands.(Important Bird Areas)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... The Pawnee National Grasslands, 193,060 acres of shortgrass prairie in northeastern Colorado, was designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) in 2000, largely as a historic stronghold and breeding site for the mountain plover. [paragraph] This...

Last February, as she watched the earth roll by from inside the spacecraft Columbia, Dr. Kalpana Chawla--the first Indian to fly on a U.S. shuttle--told the world of her determination to protect our fragile planet.(Tributes)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Last February, as she watched the earth roll by from inside the spacecraft Columbia, Dr. Kalpana Chawla--the first Indian to fly on a U.S. shuttle--told the world of her determination to protect our fragile planet. Sadly, Dr. Chawla never had...

After graduating from the Audubon Expedition Institute with a master's in education, Rick Ylagan went on to spend more than a third of his 39 summers teaching at Audubon's Hog Island camp in Maine.(Tributes)(Rick Ylagan)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
December 1, 2003... After graduating from the Audubon Expedition Institute with a master's in education, Rick Ylagan went on to spend more than a third of his 39 summers teaching at Audubon's Hog Island camp in Maine. His sudden death this past January was a shock...

The Audubon Directory: your quick guide to the resources of the National Audubon Society.(Directory)
December 1, 2003... BOARD OF DIRECTORS DONAL C. O'BRIEN JR. Chair of the Board CAROL M. BROWNER Chair of the Board-elect LESLIE DACH W. HARDY ESHBAUGH RUTH O. RUSSELL Vice-Chairs JACK J. DEMPSEY Secretary JOHN L....

Hot air and green dreams: between the ends of the global warming debate, a consensus begins to emerge.(Thermageddon: Countdown to 2030)(Reconstructing Climate Policy: Beyond Kyoto)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Thermageddon: Countdown to 2030 By Robert Hunter Arcade, 276 pages, $24.95 Reconstructing Climate Policy: Beyond Kyoto By Richard B. Stewart and Jonathan B. Weisner AEI Press, 193 pages, $20 ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES ARE easy targets for...

Art of the wild.(Urban Forest: Images of Trees in the Human Landscape)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... For the majority of us who live in cities or suburbs, nature is often an invisible backdrop. In his ethereal and amusing new book, Urban Forest: Images of Trees in the Human Landscape, photographer David Paul Bayles shows the different trees...

Audubon: Painter of Birds in the Wild Frontier.(Brief Article)(Children's Review)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Jennifer Armstrong/Illustrations by Joseph A. Smith Harry N. Abrams, 38 pages, $17.95, ages 5-9 HIGHLIGHTING JOHN JAMES Audubon's fledgling career as a painter in the early 1800s, Armstrong brings to life both the man and the uncharted...

Life Under Ice.(Brief Article)(Children's Review)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Mary M. Cerullo/ Photographs by Bill Curtsinger Tilbury House, 40 pages, $16.95, grades 3-7 AT ONE POINT, EARLY IN THIS enchanting glimpse of life under the Antarctic ice, Curtsinger, a veteran nature photographer and frequent visitor...

Compost, By Gosh!(Brief Article)(Children's Review)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Written and Illustration by Michelle Eva Portman Flower Press, 42 pages, $16.95,ages 4-9 THE ENVIRONMENTAL REASONS FOR composting household food scraps are self-evident: Composting lowers municipal waste and reduces reliance on pesticides...

Raptor! A Kid's Guide to Birds of Prey.(Brief Article)(Children's Review)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Christyna M. and Rene Laubach and Charles W. G. Smith Storey Publishing, 118 pages, $14.95, ages 7-12 NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE IN North America, raptors are living nearby. Peregrine falcons nest on skyscraper ledges in our cities; bald...