Audubon articles from July 2006

Audubon archives from July 2006

Editor's note.
July 1, 2006... During Al Gore's hourlong photo shoot for this issue of Audubon ("Al Gore's Second Chance," page 22) in Manhattan, he kept up a running dialogue about global warming from the time the first makeup went on till the last shutter closed. At one...

Back to the source.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... I thought you would be interested in knowing the original source of Ted Williams's sentence "As the old saw goes, 'No one's making new land these days'" [America's River, May-June]. It comes from Will Rogers, the great American humorist, who...

Keep it up.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... Kudos on the March-April Audubon. Sometimes the issues seem so filled with gloom and doom that I can hardly bear to read them. I know that we need to be aware of the problems--there certainly are enough of them--but we also need to be able to...

Fair is fair.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... Audubon and Ted Williams in his Incite column ["Public Menace," July-August 2005] have been leading the fight to kill more deer in the forests, in state game lands, and on private property throughout Pennsylvania. The reasoning goes that deer...

Beyond preservation.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... Regarding the piece on the Rockefellers' legacy ["Doing the Right Thing," November-December 2005]: Yes, it was certainly admirable to have secured and preserved the various large, treasured natural areas. However, there are things that we can...

Audobon view.(environmental protection)
July 1, 2006... On a balmy summer evening in 1987, a man fishing in Long Island Sound at New Rochelle, New York, reported an amazing sight. All along the shoreline lobsters were clambering out of the water onto the rocks. As it turned out, they were...

Buried treasure.(lake conservation)
July 1, 2006... In 1963 floodwaters from a newly constructed dam had just begun to drown one of the West's most spectacular canyons, and Sierra Club executive director David Brower was already flagellating himself for letting it happen. "Glen Canyon died, and...

Wild about organic.(field notes)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... In a crowded, increasingly urbanized world, farms and other working lands provide essential habitat for many wild animals. Organic farms are even better, according to a comprehensive study documenting how much such farms enhance biodiversity....

The Bronx is spawning.(field notes)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The alewife, one of two silvery species of river herring native to eastern North America, is back in the Bronx River after a 350-year absence caused by dams that stopped the fish from returning to their spawning grounds. In March the...

Daddy big jaws.(field notes)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Daddy longlegs are harmless, but this one might give you nightmares. Among the more than two dozen new animal species found recently in the caves of California's Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks is a bizarre version of the daddy longlegs...

Family jewels.(Q&A)(Interview)
July 1, 2006... The second book by Bob and Vera Thornton, Chasing Neotropical Birds (University of Texas Press, 2005), is not only deftly written and beautifully photographed, it's one of the most accessible works on this spectacular avian group. The Thorntons...

Last chance.(northern spotted owl preservation)
July 1, 2006... After years of political and legal wrangling, the fate of the northern spotted owl still hangs in the balance. A landmark agreement between conservationists, the timber industry, and the state of Washington is expected to strengthen protections...

Lusty whales.(field notes)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Researchers in Australia claim to have unlocked one of nature's great mysteries: Why do whales sing? it turns out that humpbacks near the Great Barrier Reef do so for one main reason--sex. Joshua Smith, a marine biologist at Australia's...

Billion-dollar building.(field notes)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Once it's finished in 2008, the Bank of America Tower, across the street from the New York Public Library's main branch, is projected to be the most environmentally responsible high-rise office building ever constructed. The $1 billion,...

Wax on, wax off.(karateists hired to distract keats)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Early this year the Vintage Car Club of New Zealand hired 40 members of a local karate club to protect vehicles participating in one of the group's rallies. The event, which took place in a mountain village near Mount Cook on New Zealand's...

As the world dries.(stream conservation )
July 1, 2006... Kenji Yoshikawa was browsing through old photos from Council, Alaska, where he was working as a research professor in water resources at the University of Alaska, Faitbanks. One from 1904 struck him as odd. When he compared a recent shot of the...

Al Gore's second chance: he may have been denied the presidency, but he might end up saving the planet.
July 1, 2006... Rush-hour Times Square is a mass of electronic billboards and idling cabs, the very essence of the fossil-fuel economy's entrenched excess. High above the noise and traffic, in a small screening room, Al Gore is in an earnest blue suit, doing...

To the shores of Montezuma.(Migrations)(Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge protects shorebirds)
July 1, 2006... On a map, the Montezuma Wetlands in upstate New York might seem insignificant next to Lake Ontario and the nearby Finger Lakes. But that impression would be deceiving. The wetlands complex, 36,000 acres of marshes, grasslands, swamps, upland...

Take the high road.(AUDUBON TRAVEL ISSUE 2006)(ecotourism)(Editorial)
July 1, 2006... In this summer's travel issue we plunge deep into the heart of the Peruvian Amazon to see some mind-boggling birdlife; splash down in southwest Alaska to rub shoulders With one of the hemisphere's most fearsome and awe-inspiring carnivores; and...

Last resort: you can join boatloads of tourists on the Tambopata River. Or you can take an eight-hour boat ride deeper into the jungle to a unique ecolodge, ecolodge, where you'll be dazzled by a chorus of howler monkeys and waves of brilliant red-and-green macaws--and by the man striving to protect their homes.(TRAVEL: PERU)(Travel narrative)
July 1, 2006... From the plane we catch glimpses of the Urubamba River, below Machu Picchu, plunging thousands of feet, then snaking through an ocean of trees that spreads east until it is lost in haze--the Amazon, the world's largest and most diverse...

Power lunch: Alaska's McNeil River is one of the few places on earth where you can sit within whispering distance of wild brown bears and watch them nurse cubs, nap, and do everything else that comes naturally.
July 1, 2006... On a late July afternoon in southwestern Alaska, 11 of us are lazing about, 10 feet above the falls of a wild river, eating our lunches and watching the drama unfold below. Suddenly, out of the foam and white noise, 1,200 pounds of male brown...

The original Oz: scorching deserts filled with birdsong, a coast dotted with life-restoring aboriginal fires, rivers pulsing with crocodiles. At once the most dangerous and beautiful place on earth, Australia's Northern Territory is the true outback that legendary explorers couldn't conquer.
July 1, 2006... The Arrernte people indigenous to central Australia call Mount Gillen Alhekulyele, after the spirit of a wild dog that sniffed around the desert here near Alice Springs, looking for a mate. "Our ancestors tell the story that dog protected this...

Suburban renewal: they traded their emerald lawn for a showy prairie loaded with native wildflowers, mastered the art of controlled burns--and never looked back.
July 1, 2006... After weeks of drought and heat, it rained hard last night on the three acres of native prairie wildflowers and bunchgrasses surrounding Bob and Carol Niendorfs home near Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Every few days this retired couple wanders along the...

American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn.
July 1, 2006... American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn By Ted Steinberg W.W. Norton & Company, 295 pages, $24.95 The bright-green, weedfree, kid-friendly yard is quintessentially American. Suburban planner and Long Island lawn pioneer Abe...

Losing it All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Losing It All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape By Bill Belleville University Press of Florida, 199 pages, $24.95 Perhaps no state suffers more from development than Florida. A real-estate agent once observed to long-time...

Appetite for destruction.(The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals)(The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter )(Book review)
July 1, 2006... If you believe eating organic foods will save the earth, think again. Two new books explore how following an ethical diet can help us create a healthier planet. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals By Michael Pollan...

Back to Earth: A Backpacker's Journey Into Self and Soul.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Back to Earth: A Backpacker's Journey Into Self and Soul By Kerry Temple Rowman & Littlefield, 201 pages, $16.95 Back to Earth is the answer to KerryTemple's question, "Where should I go now that l've lost everything? "Temple, whose essays...

Swamp muse: a seasoned Louisiana naturalist discovers a thing or two about a rare butterfly as he explores a drought-stricken wetlands near his home.
July 1, 2006... Wednesday, May 31, 2000. The Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center is now dry, according to headlines in The Advocate, the Baton Rouge newspaper. The popular urban nature preserve is described as another victim of the South's record-setting drought....

Eye appeal.(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Ichthyologists tell us that the human eye and a fish's eye have much in common. For example, the same six nerves and muscles control the eye movement of both Dutch nature photographer Dos Winkel and this blue-barred parrotfish, photographed at...