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About Time
A press release came across my screen Wednesday afternoon announcing that a judge had found that Glen Canyon dam’s operating scheme is illegal, since it doesn’t do enough to protect endangered fish in the river. That’s putting it mildly. That dam destroyed the most beautiful, spectacular canyon country on the face of the earth. Or…
Read MoreLet's Keep Wilderness Wild
Road construction in national forests can harm fish and wildlife habitats while polluting local lakes, rivers, and streams. The Roadless Area Conservation Rule—which was made on the basis of extensive citizen input—protects 58.5 million acres of national forest from such harmful building. I will be proud to support and defend it. —Senator Barack Obama, 2008…
Read MoreGlacier N.P. Threatened by Mining: U.N. to Review Threats
Wildlife Quiz: What river valley has the most important habitat for grizzlies, wolves, wolverines and lynx in the Rocky Mountains? Hint: The river forms the western boundary of Glacier National Park, and straddles the Canadian/US border between British Columbia and Montana. Answer: The Flathead River. The Flathead was recently named British Columbia’s most endangered river,…
Read MoreMercury: It's What's For Dinner
Have you been following our Name That Fish contest? As part of our Cleaning Up Mercury, Protecting Our Health campaign, we just rechristened the Bluefin Tuna as “Blue Infection Tuna.” The timing couldn’t be more perfect… a new Federal study was just released this month on the alarming mercury levels in tuna and other fish…
Read MoreAnd Around We Go
By now, we’ve all heard the same merry-go-round arguments about why the U.S. can’t afford aggressive measures to develop clean energy and tackle climate change. And most of those arguments revolve around that other behemoth-of-a-superpower: China. We can practically roll the stats off our tongues: China’s now the #1 emitter of greenhouse gases. China is…
Read MoreEndangered Wildlife Visit Capitol Hill
The debate over climate change legislation is heating up. And as members of Congress grapple with which position to take, they’ll be bombarded with opinions from many different sides of the debate. But last week, as members of Congress arrived at work in the morning and left in the evening, they were greeted by the…
Read MoreGreen Backlash
It had to come, such things always do. We speak of a shrill attack on the very idea of green jobs, emanating this time from PERC, a collection of free-market economists and ideologues in Bozeman Montana, that was a source of some of the ideas that informed the Bush administration, especially those of Gale Norton,…
Read MoreSad Day for Appalachia: Mountaintop Removal Approved
Appalachia’s mountains never seem to get a break. First, back in 2007, a district court judge ruled in favor of a lawsuit we brought on behalf of some West Virginia groups that stopped five mountaintop removal mining permits from going forward because of the permanent destruction they would have done to Appalachian streams and headwaters.…
Read MoreFlorida Bill Greens Lawns Not The Environment
One of the most difficult things we face every legislative season is a bill that looks good on the surface but turns out to be rotten at the core. We are urging Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to veto just such a bill, deceptively titled, "Protection of Urban and Residential Environments and Water Act," right now.…
Read MoreIn Obama's Hands: The Future of the Arctic
The Beaufort Sea, off Alaska’s northernmost shores, and the Chukchi Sea, which separates Alaska from Russia, are home to one in five of the world’s remaining polar bears. These icy waters are crucial feeding and migration zones for bowhead, beluga and other whales, seals, walruses and migratory birds; for thousands of years they have also…
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