Audubon articles from January 2000

Audubon archives from January 2000

Our Fight for Forests.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... TOO OFTEN, POLITICIANS SEEM UNWILLING OR unable to make the hard decisions needed to protect our diminishing wetlands, forests, and grasslands. Last October, however, President Bill Clinton set in motion a truly momentous land-preservation...

LETTERS.
January 1, 2000... Back to the Fold CONGRATULATIONS on an issue that makes a member proud to be a part of Audubon. We let our earlier subscription lapse, in part because Audubon seemed to avoid serious environmental issues. This is certainly not the case...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
January 1, 2000... The telephone number printed for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in "America's Serengeti" [Going, Going... Gone?" November-December] was incorrect. It should have been 907-456-0250.

FIELD NOTES.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Cowboys Kill Cowbirds Texas ranchers are helping lasso the parasitic cowbird on several hundred thousand acres of rangeland near Fort Hood. Thirty members of the Central Texas Cattlemen's Association are setting traps built by local...

A Leap of Faith.(Colombia's U'Wa people and Occidental Petroleum)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... COLOMBIA'S INDIGENOUS U'WA PEOPLE, AN ANCIENT TRIBAL group with about 5,000 members, have threatened to commit mass suicide if an exploratory oil well is drilled on land they consider sacred. Remarkably, the suicide would be an act with...

Nature's Street Cleaners.(turkey vultures)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... FIREWORKS AND A FESTIVAL GREETED TURKEY VULTURES LAST FALL ON their way through central California to their wintering grounds in Mexico and South America. But unlike the festival, the fireworks were not in celebration of their migration. "This...

Doe, Re, Key Deer.(endangered species of the Florida Keys)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... THE KEY DEER, STANDING ABOUT TWO FEET high at the shoulder, may well be the most endearing endangered species in the Florida Keys, which is home to more than 20 imperiled animals and plants. Today it is also staging a remarkable recovery. The...

Fed-Up Fed.(employees of environmental agencies feel in danger of attack)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... IN NOVEMBER THE WATCHDOG group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility issued a report noting that "beatings, bombings, death threats, and other incidents against federal resource employees, largely in the West, have been steadily...

The Bustle Below.(life under the snowpack)
January 1, 2000... A snowpack is a pile of cold, icy crystals. It's also a vital- and warm--winter home for a variety of animals. TWO INCHES OF NEW snow has fallen overnight and swishes dryly around my skis as I cut a track across the white plain sprawling...

Planting on Barren Ground.(Scottish flora)
January 1, 2000... What could be more Scottish than heather? Try pines, birches, willows, alders, elms, ashes, oaks... I'M NOT ACCUSTOMED TO HACKING AWAY AT ICONS. Especially defenseless, shrubby icons. With every halfhearted stab of the spade my enthusiasm...

Zapped!(power lines lethal to eagles and other raptors)
January 1, 2000... For years, power lines have been electrocuting golden eagles and other raptors. Thanks to a recent court decision, utility companies are now being held liable. OF ALL THE WAYS HUMANS ACCIDENTALLY KILL BIRDS OF prey, none is more needless...

THE DAY OF THE CONDOR.(Arizona's Marble Canyon)
January 1, 2000... RED SANDSTONE CLIFFS TOWER ABOVE US, behind tamarisk-studded gravel bars along the Colorado River, creating a narrow corridor perhaps 500 feet high. This is northern Arizona's Marble Canyon, through which the deep-green river winds as it...

FISHING for EVIDENCE.(DNA identification of illegal sales of endangered species)
January 1, 2000... Powerful enough to track an individual animal from birth to marketplaces around the world, tiny twists of DNA could bust the illegal trade in protected species. A 40-FOOT THUMB CLUTCHING A GIANT CELL PHONE LOOMS on a billboard beyond the...

UNDERWATER WILDERNESS.(Channel Islands National Park)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Some 60 miles from Los Angeles lies a haven for ocean plants and animals. For a chilly month last winter, photographer JEFF ROTMAN explored this world of sea urchins and other fantastic creatures. IMAGINE SWIMMING THROUGH A FOREST--AN...

Desperately Seeking SILENCE.
January 1, 2000... Gordon Hempton has spent two decades recording natures song. Now he's launched One Square Inch of Silence, a plan to save the soundscape of our national parks. GORDON HEMPTON TIPTOES ACROSS THE COBBLES along the Hoh River in Olympic...

TWO HORNS, SIX LEGS & ONE VORACIOUS APPETITE.(Asian long-horned beetles)
January 1, 2000... Beware the ASIAN LONG HORNED BEETLE: It's big, it's bad, and it may be the most destructive insect immigrant since the gypsy moth. IN JULY 1998 A FRIEND GAVE BARRY Albach a tree limb to use as firewood. Albach, a park specialist with the...

The Winter Banquet.(bird feeding)
January 1, 2000... Is backyard bird feeding helping or hurting? New research answers this and many other questions. Plus, five feeders every yard should have. A FEW DECADES AGO, MOST OF THE BIRDS THAT fed in North America's backyards ate weed seeds and...

A Winter Wildland.(northern Wisconsin)
January 1, 2000... Aldo Leopold called it "a wilderness on its last legs" Now the North Woods of Wisconsin is a comeback site for bears, fishers, and wolves. STARS SPILLED INTO A NOTCH WHERE THE TRAIL CUT INTO THE FOREST AND GLEAMED ALL the brighter because...

Writings & Drawings.(Review)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Writings & Drawings By John James Audubon. Library America, 942 pages, $40. AS IS TRUE OF WILLIAM BARTRAM'S Travels and the journals of Lewis and Clark, a good deal of North America that has been long lost to history is preserved in the...

Wild Fruits: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript.(Review)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Wild Fruits: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript By Henry David Thoreau. W. W. Norton, 409 pages, $29.95. THE WILD FRUITS OF THE earth disappear before civilization," Thoreau notes as he catalogues the wild flavors of his New England...

Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior.(Review)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior By Jonathan Weiner. Knopf, 300 pages, $27.50. CLONING GENES HAS COME TO BE as monumental an issue as splitting atoms was 50 years ago. Jonathan Weiner, author...

Natural History of the Islands of California.(Review)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Natural History of the Islands of California By Allan Schoenherr, C. Robert Feldmeth, and Michael J. Emerson. University of California Press, 491 pages, $45. THIS WONDERFULLY ILLUSTRATED book is an extraordinary guide for visitors to these...

Ask AUDUBON.(teh tropical fish business and its environmental impact; this and other topics are covered)(Questions and Answers)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... How can I tell if the tropical fish I buy are endangered or if their capture does ecological harm? Tom Smith, Minneapolis, Minnesota ENDANGERED SPECIES CANNOT legally be sold, and most freshwater fish come from hatcheries, but...

Florida.(tourist highlight of the various sections of Florida are discussed, along with bird- and animal-waching opportunities)(incluces related article on Amelia Island)
January 1, 2000... BEAUTIFUL BEACHES AND SO MUCH MORE Juan Ponce de Leon may not have found the mythical fountain of youth when he landed in a place he called Florida in the spring of 1513, but he knew, nonetheless, that he was onto something good. From a...

Planning a Forest.(efforts to bring environmental concerns to the Superior and Chippewa national forests in Minnesota)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... FOR THE PAST DECADE THE CHIPPEWA AND THE Superior national forests in Minnesota have been managed to provide wood primarily for paper and wafer-board production. This has turned the forests into simpler, less diverse habitats. "Eighty-six...

A Whale of a Problem.(move to make the beluga whales of Alaska an endangered species)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... IN LESS THAN A DECADE THE number of beluga whales in Alaska's Cook Inlet has dropped from nearly 1,000 to about 350. So Alaska Audubon has made saving the whale a priority. "Because the population is small and isolated, it's vulnerable to a...

IN BRIEF.(limited development in Alviso, California, will help preserve nearby wetlands)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Enviros of Silicon Valley A collaboration between the Santa Clara Valley Audubon and the residents of town of Alviso, on the northern edge of San Jose, California, will help slow development in the town for about 10 years. The plan will...

Head for Cover.(saving birds around airports)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... PRIVATE PILOT TED ALLEN SPENDS A lot of time at Vermont's small airports. But he's not there just to fly. Along with Vermont Audubon, Allen, the former president of the Central Vermont Audubon Society, has initiated a plan to save birds that...

A Legacy of Sanctuaries.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... IN AUGUST AUDUBON LOST ONE OF ITS MOST dedicated leaders, John M. "Frosty" Anderson, who died at 82. Anderson was the National Audubon Society's vice president of sanctuaries from 1966 until his retirement in 1987. He joined NAS after 20 years...

One Sound Lady.(Jane-Kerin Moffat)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... ACROBATIC GULLS SCREECH OVERHEAD AS JANE-KERIN MOFFAT WALKS ALONG THE Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound. She nods approval at a pair of egrets. The shimmering expanse of salt water, which stretches 110 miles from New York City to Rhode...

Teaching About the Birds, Bees, and Trees.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... BILL STOTT IS ON A CRUSADE. "I BELIEVE that the salvation of the world and its environmental problems is education--and that the death of us all is ignorance," he says. He wages his war against environmental ignorance in part by teaching a...

Thrush Threat.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... WHAT DO THE SPRUCE forests of New York have in common with the humid rainforests of Haiti and the Dominican Republic? Answer: the Bicknell's thrush, which breeds in the U.S. Northeast and winters in the Caribbean. In the past 50 years, 92...

Earth ALMANAC.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... The Language of Chickadees Legend has it that on January 6--Twelfth Night--wild animals can speak. Certainly this is true for chickadees, not that they shut up during the rest of the year. If you learn their language, they'll even tell you...

Swimming Trunks.(elephants of Andaman Islands)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... THE IDEA OF A FIVE-TON ELEPHANT SNORKELING IN A TROPICAL LAGOON SEEMS AS Preposterous as a great white shark hitchhiking in the middle of a desert. But as you can see from this photo by Olivier Blaise, which won a 1996 World Press Photo Award,...