Audubon articles from January 1999

Audubon archives from January 1999

Road Block.
January 1, 1999... A YEAR AGO THIS MONTH, U.S. Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck reversed a decades-long agency policy by declaring an 18-month moratorium on road building on some 30 million acres of our national forests. Almost as much roadless forestland,...

Hot Lynx in Vail.
January 1, 1999... THE LAST TIME a wild lynx was seen in Colorado, a pelt hunter trapped two animals, then beat them to death with his cross-country ski. That was in 1974, near Vail. Now, 25 years later, the future of the rare cat and the Vail resort are...

Death by Breath.
January 1, 1999... IT MAY NOT BE that greasy burger that will do you in. Life on earth will. About 77 percent of deaths are the result of burgeoning human populations and environmental degradation, says a recent report in the journal BioScience. "It was grimmer...

The Battle of Neah Bay.(natives' right to whale under dispute)(includes related articles)(Brief Article)
January 1, 1999... A TENSE STANDOFF between a Pacific Northwest tribe and some conservationists has developed over the gray whales that migrate through Neah Bay, on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. The Makah people have been preparing to hunt whales since 1995,...

The Ghostly Green Light.(what causes the northern lights)
January 1, 1999... The earth's magnetic field and the solar wind combine to produce the heavenly show known as the northern lights. I DON'T KNOW HOW OLD I was, but I'd certainly heard the phrase "the end of the world," and that's exactly what I thought I was...

Rainforest Pharmacist.(ethnobotanist Paul Alan Cox)
January 1, 1999... Paul Alan Cox, onetime Mormon missionary, has gone from saving souls to saving plants--which could save humans. ON THE BEACH OF TAFUA, in Western Samoa, a traditional healer reaches up to pluck a couple of fronds from a fernlike plant...

Tracking in the Snow.(moose tracking)
January 1, 1999... A yearling moose can survive a collision with a car, but winter deals surprisingly cruel blows. HEADLIGHTS CAN DO just so much on a cloudy night. They peer straight ahead, but you're blind to the side. The moose, black as the inside of a...

WELCOME TO TURNER COUNTRY.(environmental efforts of Ted Turner)
January 1, 1999... THE LARGEST PRIVATE landowner in America, Ted Turner has a plan: He wants to UNDEVELOP HIS PROPERTY, acre by acre, by sponging off the human fingerprints. I'M RIDING IN A BLUE CHEVY SUBURBAN ON TED TURNER'S 107,000-acre Flying D Ranch,...

FISHING THE ANCIENT HEADWATERS.(one young man's adventures in trying to discover and document subspecies of trout in eastern Turkey and Greece and how the region's military problems impacted his trip)
January 1, 1999... {BETWEEN SWIMMING PAST LAND MINES IN BOSNIAN STREAMS AND DODGING THE TURKISH MILITARY, IT WASN'T YOUR AVERAGE FISHING TRIP.} IT WAS NOT UNTIL WE REACHED THE HOSTILITIES in the semidesert of southeastern Turkey that I fully realized I was in...

BORN TO BE WILD.(effort to protect thrushes nd other endangered birds in Hawaii)
January 1, 1999... Hawaii, once an Eden of avian diversity, has lost half its native birds. But if the captive thrushes released this month survive, scientists may be able to save others in trouble. It's late September and uncharacteristically dry in the...

LIVING WALLS.(efforts in New England to preserve stone walls)
January 1, 1999... Across New England, stone by stone, we are losing the walls that once defined this rural landscape and now from unique ecosystems of their own. On a warm October day, Jorie Hunken sits beside a stone wall in back of her Woodstock,...

Treasure Islands.(a former wilderness guide'e exploration of Everglades National Park via canoe; includes visitor information)
January 1, 1999... Canoe the wild edge of Everglades National Park, and discover a place where earth, water, and sky merge. RESISTING THE URGE TO BASK in the warm south-Florida sunshine, I tug on the broad brim of my hat and roll down my shirtsleeves to guard...

A House That Is a Home.(building a nest box for bluebirds)
January 1, 1999... The right nest box will shield bluebirds from weather and predators and will further their recovery. MY FIRST ATTEMPT at building a nest box for bluebirds was pretty crude: cardboard painted with shellac, and a hole cut out with a pair of...

Typecasting: the highly nomadic red crossbill puzzles taxonomists; are the eight types actually distinct species?
January 1, 1999... The highly nomadic red crossbill puzzles taxonomists. Are the eight types actually distinct species? THEY ARRIVE IN A RUSH, bringing the pine grove to life with their movement and their staccato calls. Two dozen little birds, colored...

Of Wonder, Land Use, and Rachel Carson.(Review)(Brief Article)
January 1, 1999... Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder By Richard Dawkins. Houghton Mifflin, 337 pages, $26. As his new book, Unweaving the Rainbow, demonstrates once again, Richard Dawkins--the Charles Simonyi Professor...

Smart Airwaves.
January 1, 1999... Tune in and turn on. People are listening to what the National Audubon Society has to say, thanks to a series of environmentally focused radio shows coproduced by Audubon's California state office and the nonprofit Science Interchange. The...

Battle Over Clear Creek.
January 1, 1999... Surrounded by lush forest, Clear Creek zigzags across the southeast side of Houston, Texas, until it spills into Galveston Bay. The creek has been under threat since 1968, when Congress authorized a channelization project that would deepen,...

IN BRIEF.
January 1, 1999... No Carnage Here When a company wanted to build a slaughterhouse next to the 20,000-acre Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, a wetland on the outskirts of New Orleans, the Orleans Audubon Society sprang into action. The chapter, along...

Count One, Count All.(second annual Great Backyard Bird Count co-sponsored by the national Audubon Society and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology)(Brief Article)
January 1, 1999... This February, bird lovers from Nome, Alaska, to Key West, Florida, to Honolulu, Hawaii, can participate in the second annual Great Backyard Bird Count, cosponsored by the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. ...

The Tree Hugger.(Oregon forest and tree preserver Jim Britell)(Brief Article)
January 1, 1999... MAMMOTH FIRS AND CEDARS--some more than 200 years old--tower above Jim Britell as he hikes through a roadless area in western Oregon's Siskiyou National Forest. Dwarfed by a Douglas fir at least 20 times his height, Britell points to a tag...

Bubble Power.
January 1, 1999... Most of us know what happens to home aquariums without an air filter: They become aquatic pea soup. Ponds encounter a similar problem. Fastgrowing algae and weedy grasses had clogged up a quarter-acre pond nestled in the heart of the 49-acre...

Ask AUDUBON.
January 1, 1999... The candiru, a tiny catfish found in South America, seems to be more feared than the piranha. Why? --Charles N. Cooper, Baltimore Maryland THE CANDIRU IS one creature you definitely don't want to get too close to. Like many of the more...

How to Shoot a Tiger.
January 1, 1999... Photographer: Michael Nichols Camera: Nikon N90 Equipment: 20mm lens, three SB25 flashes, and a Trail Master infrared triggering device Film: Kodachrome 64 Exposure: f5.6 at 1/15th of a second IT WAS AROUND 7'00 A.M. one...