Audubon articles from September 2006

Audubon archives from September 2006

Audubon view.
September 1, 2006... It's official. The first six months of 2006 made up the hottest first half of any year on record. By itself, that may not sound like a big deal. But 2005 was tied with 1998 as the hottest year ever, and nine of the 10 hottest years on record...

Go neutral.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... I found it an ironic juxtaposition--the article on Al Gore and global warming in the same issue with articles encouraging people to travel to Peru, Australia, and Alaska. Airplane travel is a major contributor to global warming. Until we are...

Al Gore, movie star.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... I was pleased to see the profile on Al Gore ["Al Gore's Second Chance," July-August] and his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, arguably the most important film ever made. Hopefully, Mr. Gore will expand his vision to incorporate two glaring...

Mississippi special.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... Thank you for the excellent special issue on America's River. The organization, conceptualization, and quality of the writing was so good that I could not put it down until I finished it. DICK EDWARDS EAST HARTFORD, CT

Ted rules.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... I've seen that you've printed a number of letters to the editor that are negative responses to Ted Williams's Incite column, so I'm writing to express my approval of his work. I love Audubon magazine, and I read it cover to cover when it...

Corrections.(Letter from our readers)(Correction notice)
September 1, 2006... A photograph in "So Lawn" [May-June] was misidentified as clover; it was wood sorrel. The statement that Adrian Block would have seen coyotes on Long Island 400 years ago ["Audubon View," May-June] is in error. Coyotes lived only in western...

Cactus huggers.(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... There seems no end to the steady march of subdivisions and strip malls across southern Arizona's Sonoran Desert. Every week greater Tucson grows by approximately 500 people, and in the course of a year nearly 5,000 acres of the area's desert...

Small men on campus.(Oklahoma University conducts event on global warming)(College Republican National Committee urges to conduct more )(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... This past spring, even as ice caps were melting, Republican college students defiantly licked snow cones at an Oklahoma University event held to "debunk" global warming. The College Republicans National Committee (CRNC) is urging its 1,775...

No escape.(landscape arch at Arches National Park)
September 1, 2006... Landscape Arch is an amazing thread of redrock in southern Utah's Arches National Park. From a distance you might even think the 290-foot-long arch is floating over the desert, suspended by high wires. Today that's just a mirage, but in a year...

Sasquatch's cousin.(mystery beast to be reported )(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... Sightings of a "mystery beast" have generated a lot of buzz outside Raleigh, North Carolina. Curious onlookers snapped clear photos that reveal a slender, nearly hairless creature with upright ears, a long neck, a kangaroo-shaped head, and a...

True believer.(Bobby Harrison)(Interview)
September 1, 2006... Of the seven people in the world who insist on having seen the ivory-billed woodpecker since its controversial rediscovery in eastern Arkansas in 2004, only one earned the nickname "Sobbing Bobby" for breaking down and weeping during his...

Coral choir.(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... This scene plays out every week in parts of Fiji: A local villager, standing in a clear turquoise lagoon beneath azure skies, swings a crowbar and hacks off a piece of the reef just offshore this small island nation in the South Pacific. The...

Waste wanted.(bird conservation )(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... To humans, bird poop is noxious, especially when it accumulates in copious amounts near public places that double as roosting areas. But to underwater seagrass beds, phosphorus-rich guano has been found to be a nourishing food, helping them...

Tracking dragonflies.(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... Tiny radio transmitters that weigh less than a paper clip have thrilled a team of Princeton University researchers. Led by ecologist Martin Wikelski, the team used eyelash adhesive reinforced with super glue to attach the diminutive devices to...

Last refuge.(Fringillidae nesting )(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... Blackbirds nesting in a southern California wheat field were granted a reprieve this spring--at least for a month. Audubon California and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society united to pay a farmer to delay his harvest on 13 acres so that...

Do something!(Teshekpuk lake protection )
September 1, 2006... When Audubon published "Cry of the Loon" in March 2004, readers rallied in droves to the cause of saving the western Arctic from oil and gas development. More than 300 of them wrote personal notes to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, urging her...

Beach blanket: coastal dunes are more than essential habitat for ghost crabs and rare beach mice. They help blunt the force of onshore winds and repel powerful storm surges.
September 1, 2006... On the top of a sandy ridge the tracks of a fox join the prints of a mouse, and for a few dozen feet we walk the dunes together--the fox, the mouse, and I. It's easy to guess what was on the fox's mind, so I scan the hummocky dunes and...

Graveyard shift: as the sun goes down, Brazilian free-tailed bats start streaming from hideouts in underground caves and beneath bridges to report for work, sweeping up the insect pests that give Texas corn and cotton farmers nightmares.
September 1, 2006... Just a few feet above our heads, one of the world's great wildlife spectacles unfolds on leathery wings. Tom Kunz spends much of the evening watching it on a video screen. The June night is soft and warm, just the way Brazilian free-tailed...

Selling the wind: wind power is pollution-free, combats global warming, and is a boon to small farmers. The biggest drawback--its lethal impact on birds and bats--is driving creative ways to ensure that this fast-growing energy source can coexist with wildlife.
September 1, 2006... ON THE EMICK FAMILY RANCH IN FAR southeastern Colorado, a row of antique windmills adorn the entrance road, their delicate wooden blades stilled for the moment. These windmills, some more than a century old, once helped prairie homesteaders...

Power to the people: how to fight global warming, lower your utility bills, and take a stand for a more sustainable future.
September 1, 2006... Leaders from around the world are calling global warming the biggest environmental challenge we race. Ice caps are melting; sea levels are rising; birds are returning from their wintering grounds to find their breeding areas transformed; and...

On thin ice: researchers zero in on a little-known landscape that offers some chilling lessons on the future of global warming.
September 1, 2006... Let's face it. Look on any world map and Greenland is pretty nondescript, a featureless white plain neatly bordered by a rocky fringe. Although scientific papers may dutifully warn us that Greenland's ice sheet is melting, for most of us...

Treasure island: a group of dedicated scientists has succeeded in reviving the health of fragile islands off the coasts of California and Mexico as well as the endangered species that rely on them--leaving little doubt that the ends justify their lethal means.
September 1, 2006... Shaye Wolf is perched atop a wind-whipped volcanic outcrop on a remote Mexican island. Pacific waves are crashing against boulders on the shore 100 feet below her, where elephant seals are bellowing at the surf. Watching from a lower, safer...

Playing defense: each year doe-eyed marauders lay waste to America's backyards, devouring everything from flowers to vegetables and saplings. Here's how to protect your precious plants.
September 1, 2006... Karen Rohovsky has thought about giving up gardening. "I don't know what else to do," says the certified master gardener, who grows wildflowers, shrubs, and shade plants on her three-and-a-half-acre property in Solbury, Pennsylvania. The source...

Birding Babylon: A Soldier's Journal From Iraq.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2006... Birding Babylon: A Soldier's Journal From Iraq By Jonathan Trouern-Trend Sierra Club Books, 80 pages, $9.95 Only a lifelong birder could spend a year as a soldier in Iraq and see "sublime natural beauty" amid the chaos and carnage of that...

Last Great Wilderness: The Campaign to Establish the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2006... Last Great Wilderness: The Campaign to Establish the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge By Roger Kaye, University of Alaska Press, 269 pages, $29.95 Olaus Murie knelt in the Alaskan tundra and made plaster casts of animal prints, catalogued...

Hot book: a must read on global warming lays out climate change's causes and effects in a clear and gripping fashion.(The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth)(Book review)
September 1, 2006... The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth By Tim Flannery Atlantic Monthly Press, 384 pages, $24 Carbon dioxide is difficult to visualize, but picture this: 1.3 billion 53-gallon drums, stacked...

Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2006... Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future By Jeff Goodell Houghton Mifflin, 324 pages, $25.95 It powered our way West, heated our homes, and ran the factories that created our unprecedented wealth. At a time when so many...

Art of the wild.(Galen Rowell: A Retrospective)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2006... Galen Rowell knew where the power of his pictures originated. "He understood that nature, in all of its glory and heart-stopping capacity, truly is an intricate tribute to the many forces, seen and unseen, that shape the world around us,"...

Best view in town.(Keith Carter's photographes)(Brief article)
September 1, 2006... A great horned owl's nest in a scraggly mesquite is the most prominent object on a desolate stretch of ranchland in the Big Bend country of West Texas. The nest was empty at the time, but the stark scene and late-afternoon light caught the...