Audubon articles from January 2007

Audubon archives from January 2007

Editor's note.(political campaigns)(Editorial)
January 1, 2007... "The center holds" is a popular axiom of American politics, and one that certainly applies to the recent midterm elections. While the media made much of the social conservatism (i.e., the "three G's": God, guns, and gays) espoused by many new...

Audubon view.(water pollution control)
January 1, 2007... Clean water is essential to all life. Since the Clean Water Act became law in 1972, it has been our first line of defense against water pollution and wetlands development. Some of us are old enough to remember what our lakes and rivers were...

Saving the Ghost Cat.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... The Field Note on jaguar conservation in North America ["Ghost Cat," November-December 2006] presents a misleading view of the issue. First, the Fish and Wildlife Service is not without scientific support for its judgment that the U.S. portion...

Dolphins, and manatees, too.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... In the article about swim-with-the dolphin tours [Field Notes, "Flipping Out," November-December 2006], the author mentioned that because they are not endangered, dolphins don't have the strict protections enjoyed by other cetaceans listed...

Wrecking the view.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... Re your article about wind power ["Selling the Wind," September-October 2006]: I understand your focus is primarily on birds, but most articles I have seen on this subject, including yours, miss the most important environmental concern: visual...

Energy miser.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... Your foldout on energy savings for the home ["Power to the People," September-October 2006] probably turned people off adopting more energy-efficient methods. The lack of context and differentiation between regions shows savings in no relation...

Rampaging raccoons.(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... Some residents of Olympia, Washington, have changed their minds about the "cute" raccoons that bring a little bit of nature to their city. The Olympian, a local paper, is reporting that the animals have killed several cats, attacked a small...

Safety patrol.(chimpanzees lead)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... Even chimpanzees have to cross the road to get to the other side, though sometimes, it seems, they need a crossing guard. A study published this past summer in the journal Current Biology reports that in Guinea, in West Africa, dominant male...

Changing of the guard.(effect of House and Senate Democrat capture)(Democrats Nick Rahall, John Dingell, Barbara Boxer, and Republicans Richard Pombo, Joe Barton, James Inhofe)
January 1, 2007... The Waterloo Inn proved the appropriate venue for Representative Richard Pombo (R-CA) to witness not just his reelection defeat but a resounding rejection of other politicians eager to roll back environmental regulations, ramp up oil drilling...

The endangered list.(endangered species )(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... The Endangered Species Act is no stranger to controversy. Still, since Congress passed the act in 1973, species designations have been almost as common as presidential proclamations. At least until George W. Bush took office. Under the current...

Exhibitionists.(Jacques Cousteau)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... It's the stuff of a Jacques Cousteau documentary: Last year two expeditions to the Bird's Head seascape, off Indonesia's Papua province, discovered a treasure of more than 50 new marine species, including coral, shrimp, and fish. Among the gems...

Fashionable waste.(agricultural waste to be made into environmentally friendly fabrics)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... One farmer's trash is a scientist's treasure. Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are studying agricultural waste--namely, chicken feathers and rice straw--in order to develop environmentally friendly fabrics. The textile industry...

The rarest mammal.(woodland caribou)
January 1, 2007... Like ghosts, the last of America's woodland caribou haunt the snowy mountains along the Canadian border with Idaho and northern Washington State. The herd that spends much of its time in British Columbia totals just 1,900, and is declining...

Escort service.(amphibian protection)
January 1, 2007... The temperature was hovering at about 40 degrees, and it was raining so hard that Vermont was under a flood watch. So I began to prepare: rain pants, headlamp, flashlight. I had a very special group of clients. The escort service called--a job...

A lasting Christmas gift.(Christmas trees)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... Thousands of Christmas trees will end this holiday season by being systematically dumped in lakes or placed in vacant fields. Wildlife biologists have long recognized the benefits of sinking brush piles--so-called "artificial reefs"--into the...

Pass the cocktail sauce! Boiled, sauteed, or fried, shrimp is our most popular seafood--and one of the most environmentally destructive. A new, guilt-free version should put it back on your plate.(Audobon at Home)
January 1, 2007... When I was growing up in Houston in the 1960s, my family often took day trips to Galveston's beaches. If we kids behaved, my parents would indulge us with dinner at an airy, ceiling-fan-cooled seafood place about halfway home, where our...

Stalking ghosts: etched in the snow in Maine's North Woods are signs of a phantom feline that's quietly reclaiming a swath of northeastern forest and seeding hope for its survival.(Citizen Science)
January 1, 2007... In the heart of Maine's North Woods on a bone-chilling February morning, hunched over, eyes to the ground, ankle-deep in wet snow, branches snapping in our faces, we zigzag through a thicket of white cedar and balsam. It takes a special kind of...

Where would I go? Exploring a lost civilization and the lessons it holds for our own.(Fictional work)
January 1, 2007... Dawn at the confluence of Kane Gulch and Grand Gulch, southern Utah. Mid-March. Cold. Our camp sits in the shade of cottonwoods below Junction Ruins, which perch overhead in a seam of sandstone. There is ice in the water jug, as there has been...

Sagebrush showdown.(land drillings)
January 1, 2007... In an unprecedented, pell-mell rush, oil and gas companies are having their way across the West's federal lands. But neither they nor biologists bargained on a bird whose fate, like the northern spotted owl's, may bring development to a halt...

Haunting beauty: a photographer with a heartland perspective shows Florida's everglades in a whole new light.
January 1, 2007... The Florida Everglades is not the easiest place to photograph. The landscape is tabletop flat and subtle, an inland sea of sawgrass cut by shallow-water sloughs, punctuated by tree islands, rimmed by pine and cypress and mangrove. There are no...

Cork screwed: check under the foil wrapper before you break open your next bottle of wine. No longer deemed low-class, synthetic and screw-top stoppers are replacing real cork, and threatening an entire ecosystem.(HABITAT)
January 1, 2007... Senhor Ze's cork crop matured this spring. Eleven years have passed since the last harvest--the customary 10, plus an extra on account of drought--and the silvery charcoal oaks are swollen with cork so thick and dense it splits to accommodate...

Eat my dust: the real-life roadrunner is every bit as colorful, coy, and cunning as the familiar cartoon character--and even more compelling.
January 1, 2007... The territorial call of a male roadrunner (co-coo-coo-coooooo) bounces off the walls of a canyon in the Living Desert, a 1,000-acre wilderness preserve and botanical garden on the outskirts of Palm Desert, California. These reverberating sounds...

Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird.(Brief article)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird By Andrew D. Blechman Grove Press, 239 pages, $24 To many urban dwellers, pigeons have a foul reputation as ubiquitous, feathery nuisances. Tainting park benches and...

Sensuous Seas: Tales of a Marine Biologist.(Brief article)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Sensuous Seas: Tales of a Marine Biologist By Eugene H. Kaplan Princeton University Press, 288 pages, $24.95 Hermaphroditic, sluglike bottom dwellers called sea hares wind their gelatinous bodies into a writhing mass and orgy the night away...

A ringing voice: a new book tracing Aldo Leopold's intellectual journey shows how his manifesto for modern conservationists carries the same weight today as it did 50 years ago.(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Aldo Leopold's Odyssey: Rediscovering the Author of A Sand County Almanac By Julianne Lutz Newton Island Press, 483 pages, $32.95 Memory takes me back a quarter of a century to the night I slept in Aldo Leopold's "shack." The structure was...

This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America.(Brief article)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... This Land: The Battle Over Sprawl and the Future of America By Anthony Flint The Johns Hopkins University Press, 298 pages, $22 Mark Twain once famously quipped, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." You...

Art of the wild.(Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century)(Brief article)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... First, the bad news: Our planet is severely sick, and we've got only one shot to make it better. The good news: We can do it--but we need a dramatically new model, one that "will let everyone on the planet get rich and stay rich, while healing...

I Can Name 50 Trees Today! All About Trees.(Brief article)(Children's review)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... I Can Name 50 Trees Today! All About Trees By Bonnie Worth/Illustrated by Aristides Ruiz and Joe Mathieu Random House, 45 pages, $8.99 (Ages 5-8) This lively read is bound to result in name-calling--of trees, that is. In characteristic...

Kelly of Hazel Ridge.(Brief article)(Children's review)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Kelly of Hazel Ridge By Robbyn Smith van Frankenhuyzen/Illustrated by Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen Sleeping Bear Press, 48 pages, $17.95 (Ages 4-10) Exploring nature is both fun and revitalizing, as Robbyn Smith van Frankenhuyzen reminds us...

John Muir: America's First Environmentalist.(Brief article)(Children's review)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... John Muir: America's First Environmentalist By Kathryn Lasky/Illustrated by Stan Fellows Candlewick Press, 48 pages, $16.99 (Ages 6-10) Once asked where he hoped his travels would take him, John Muir replied, "Anywhere that is wild."...

Uno's Garden.(Brief article)(Children's review)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Uno's Garden By Graeme Base Abrams Books for Young Readers, 44 pages, $19.95 (Ages preschool-8) When Uno, a smallish person with a biggish nose, first moves to the forest, he's surrounded by a cast of whimsical creatures, including...

Uncool.
January 1, 2007... The massive cooling towers and 900-foot stacks of West Virginia's notorious John E. Amos coal-fired power plant loom over neat backyards along the Kanawha River northwest of Charleston. This arresting image is from Mitch Epstein's current...