Environment
ArchiveGuess who's hot in Hollywood? Will Steger. With producers suddenly primed to make environmental films, the legendary polar explorer hit L.A. with a scary pitch about global warming—and he was a smash. In this podcast, Senior Editor, Stephanie Pearson, reads her profile of Minnesota's Will…
Sylvia Earle on stage during Session 1 on the Mission Blue Voyage in the Galapagos. Credit: TED/James Duncan Davidson Sylvia Earle dives into all things blue. She moves equally well through conversations on ocean technology, ocean politics, ocean lifestyle, ocean science, and ocean exploration. In 1966,…
Patagonia has released its Environmental Initiatives 2010 E-book, and you should check it out. It's not just a place for the company to geek out about how many tons of clothing it has recycled since the start of its Common Threads program…
Sometimes, when there's a big environmental problem that defies immediate understanding, it helps to resort to fourth grade science experiments. In June, Carl Safina pointed out during a TED talk that he believed bombarding oil with dispersants near the spill likely helped…
An Australian company has developed a new, Earth-friendly way to dispose of human corpses, New Scientist reports. Aquamation, a process where the body is placed in a steel container with potassium and water heated to about 200-degrees Fahrenheit, decomposes the body…
The Peruvian health ministry sent emergency teams to a remote region of the Amazon last week after vampire bats bit 500 people and started a rabies outbreak, the BBC reports. The community of Urakusa in the north-eastern Peruvian…
Photo Courtesy of Flickr Worldwide CO2 emissions dropped by 1.3 percent in 2009, German-based renewable energy institute IWR told Reuters last week. The institute cited two reasons for the drop in emissions from 2008: the weak status of…
A piece of ice roughly four times the size of Manhattan island broke free of the Petermann Glacier in Greenland yesterday, according to the University of Delaware. The last time the Arctic lost a…
Hatching now in a national forest near you: Dendroctonus ponderosae, the ravenous insect destroying every tree in its path.
Volunteers and Nature Conservancy staffers counted bighorn sheep this July to see if efforts to conserve the endangered species' population are working. The 40th annual bighorn sheep census took place in triple-digit heat at California's Anza-Borrego…
He glanced through the glass and saw Tilikum staring back, with what appeared to be two human feet hanging down his side. There was a nude body draped across Tilikum’s back.
Navigating the politics of river conservation can be tricky. Here's what's going on now.
The fabled giant catfish of the Mekong River will soon be driven to extinction if hydropower dams planned for the Mekong River go ahead, ENN reports. The giant catfish is one of the largest freshwater fish…
A donkey-zebra hybrid was born at a Georgia wildlife preserve about a week ago, the Gainesville Times reports. The Chestatee Wildlife Preserve usually attracts visitors with its white tigers, but the zedonk is the new sensation. Only…
Courtesy of shaferiens on Flickr. Commercial and academic laboratories across the country are making significant investments in engineering algae to produce fuel, the New York Times reports. The goal is to develop a variety of…
Reports from China's Ministry of Environmental Protection released on Monday show that almost 25 percent of China's surface water is unfit for even industrial use, according to Reuters. Inspectors took samples taken from major…
Global warming gets a lot of bad press, but the news isn't all bad for yellow-bellied marmots in the Colorado Rockies, according to the New York Times. Scientists there observed that with warmer temperatures,…
Brazilian native Indians took 100 workers hostage on Sunday at a construction site for a hydroelectric plant in the southern Amazon region, Reuters reports. The Indians–as many…
The Plastiki, a catamaran built out of 12,500 plastic bottles, ended its voyage from San Francisco to Sydney on Monday, the New York Times reports. The boat was the brainchild of European banking heir, David de Rothschild. He's on…
A unmanned solar drone, the Zephyr, stands to set records in a test flight over Arizona's Yuma Proving Ground, the New York Times reports. A representative from QinetiQ, the British company that developed the drone, says that the plan is to land the aircraft…
A Citybank in Hong Kong got a quick lesson in environmental issues when it ran an add offering credit cardholders 15 percent off a “shark's fin and garoupa dinner,” the New York Times reports. Citybank Hong Kong withdrew the promotion last week…
Arizona's Tempe Town Lake, home to several multisport events including November's Ironman Arizona, drained almost entirely last night after the lake's inflatable dam burst, the Arizona Republic reports. An estimated one billion gallons of water poured into the Salt River bed overnight,…
Google Energy, a subsidiary of Google, signed a deal on Tuesday to purchase 114 megawatts of energy from a wind farm in Iowa, CNET News reports. The deal is the first for Google Energy, which was created last December. The…
What does a double rainbow mean? Watch this nature video, and you won't find out. You'll just hear the question asked with a sense of awe—accompanied by healthy scoops of exclamation and crying. It's worth watching anyway. Special thanks to The…
In an 88-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler banned personal watercraft (i.e. Jet Skis) from Gulf Islands National Seashore and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, according to NationalParksTraveler.com. Motorized recreation…
Today, BP began testing another cap designed to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, according to the New York Times. Once the new cap is in place, BP officials will conduct a 48-hour test to see if the…
In our June issue, senior editor Grayson Schaffer profiled Summit Series, a group of young CEOs looking to build community through adventure outings. Recently, the group traveled to Haiti to deliver aid to the…
Courtesy of NOAA. Two new species of pancake batfishes have been discovered by researchers in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Reuters. The population of one of…
tedxoilspill on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free TEDx dedicated a special conference to the oil spill. They sent videographers, photographers, and specialists to the Gulf of Mexico for a week to document the disaster, so they…
Courtesy of NOAA. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will coordinate the collection of 70,000 turtle eggs from 800 nests on Alabama and Florida beaches within the next two weeks, according to the Associated Press. If left in place, hatchlings from the eggs…
NRDC put out this video on the spill featuring surfer Laird Hamilton and volleyball star Gabrielle Reece. The two recently visited the Gulf of Mexico and spoke about how they reacted to the…
The New York Power Authority announced Wednesday that it will be applying for a lease from federal regulators to build one of the nation's first offshore wind farms, according to…
For the local surf community in Louisiana, conditions are grim, reports Surfer Magazine. At nearly three hundred miles wide and two hundred miles long, the BP oil spill that first began to escape from the pipes of the Deep…
In an attempt to reduce backcountry bear/human encounters, the U.S. Forest Service is renting bear canisters to campers for $2.50 a day, according to backcountry.com. The Carson RangerDistrict of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest has…
The Federal Trade Commission announced last Friday that lightbulb packaging will have to include a new label – though in a format familiar to anyone who's been to a grocery store – by the middle of next year. The “Lighting Facts”…
New research suggests that the flight pattern of a starling flock reaches beyond the usual rules of biology, Wired News reports. Mathematical analysis of starling flocks show that it does not matter how far away one…
ALLAH WAS INVOKED THAT DAY, after a wood-fired breakfast in an 18-degree dawn. The earth was cloaked anew; hoarfrost made the grass crunch under my boots. Wind ripped away the plume of Daniel González’s breath. Winter in southern Chile, one of the southernmost places on earth. The pickup truck, already…
The chart says it all. The website of the automated river gage on the Little Missouri River near Langley, Arkansas, operated by the United States Geological Survey, is bookmarked by…
Photo Courtesy of Flickr Humpback whales are the first baleen whales found to form lasting friendships, Treehugger reports. Using photographic identification techniques, scientists have discovered that females reunite each summer to swim and feed alongside one another in the…
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is on the move, the Environmental News Network reports. Currently caught in the Loopt, a clockwise current that originates in the Caribbean and travels along the Yucatan, the oil spill will likely travel up to the tip of Florida…
A Southern California freeway 20 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles was temporarily closed when an adult black bear wandered into the lanes early Sunday morning, according to Yahoo! News. The 250-pound animal was spotted roaming the Foothill Freeway in Duarte just after midnight, says Lt. Kerry…
The U.S. Forest Service in Colorado may charge people to climb four of the fourteeners in the state's Sangre de Cristo mountains. Reportedly, the Forest Service spent a cool million on…
Save Wild Salmon from Epicocity Project on Vimeo. On May 20th, the Obama administration will announce a revamped salmon plan for the Columbia and Snake Rivers, according to wildsalmon.org. Some environmentalists worry the…
Think you live in a clean country? Think again. Yale, in conjunction with Columbia, recently released their annual EPI (Environmental Performance Index). The U.S. dropped 22 spots in just one year (now ranked at 61, compared to…
On Saturday, a modern-day William Tell shot an arrow tipped with four razor blades in Cape Cod Bay. The target? A right whale with rope stuck around its jaw. But because this is 2010, not 1810, the goal was to sever the rope from the ensnared whale, who, according to…
Biologists recently discovered a beaver damin Alberta's remote Wood Buffalo National Park stretching for more than half amile and visible from space, according to backpacker.com. Scientists think the beaversspent over 20 years building their palatial digs from sticks, rocks,and…
Glacier National Park turns 100 tomorrow and is still looking good, states backpacker.com.Glacier was founded exactly 100 years ago on May 11, and to commemorate theevent, the park…
NASA satellite image acquired May 4, 2010. Two weeks after the April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, an oil slick lingered not far from the Mississippi Delta. On May 4, 2010, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured…
Mount Margherita (right); photo by sylweczka The ice cap on Mount Margherita, Africa's second-highest mountain, has split. Wildlife authorities in Uganda say the 20-foot-wide crevasse was caused by global warming,…
ϳԹ has a history of covering big environmental disasters. To understand the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it helps to have an understanding of where it stands in the history of oil spills. That's not to say…
The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20 has ballooned into an environmental and economic issue of extreme importance. What was at first reported as one of the worst oil drilling accidents of the last 50 years has evolved into an economic…
The Colorado Division of Wildlife has found higher numbers of mountain lions passing through urban areas, according to backcountry.com. Using city greenbelts, mountain lions mostly feed…
The conservationists fighting renewable-energy development need to wake up and smell the wind and solar power. Now.
Remember the climate bill? The one that the House passed last year, before all eyes in DC turned to health care reform? Well, it's inching back into the legislative spotlight. A new (and, based on the looks of things today, very weakened) version of the bill could be heard…
Our favorite New Mexico llama/wilderness guide is coming to L.A. Stuart Wilde will lead his team of llamas–of the animal variety–around the city to extol the virtues of walking, in honor of…
Coincidence or high-minded planning? Free National Park week now coincides with 4/20, the counterculture holiday devoted to all things cannabis, according to backcountry.com. So, if you're one to grab the…
An agricultural revolution is in the works in Cuba, aided in part by the scientist and biodiversity researcher Humberto Ríos Labrada. The standard sugarcane monoculture has proven unsustainable, and Labrada saw an alternative: local farms thriving via pre-industrial farming techniques, such as crop…
President Obama began a drive today to both conserve more of America's wild lands, and get Americans to get outside and enjoy it more. It's called the Great Outdoors Initiative. Here is a full transcript of the President's remarks from the conference where…
On Friday, President Obama will be speaking at a conference on the status of America's outdoors—addressing “the challenges, opportunities and innovations surrounding modern-day land conservation and the importance of reconnecting Americans and American families to the outdoors.” You can watch live Friday morning at 9 am. Eastern time, on the…
In a startling discovery, scientists havestumbled upon the first animal that can survive without oxygen, a featthat until now was thought only possible in bacteria, according to treehugger.com. This has a number ofimplications: both regarding the possibility that life may yet adapt tomore severe conditions…
photo by hermanusbackpackers; used under CC license A great white shark near New Zealand has set the world record for deepest known dive for a shark, according to…
The Eyjafjallajokull volcano, dormant for 200 years, began erupting in Iceland last week. While those living nearby have been allowed back into their homes, there's still enough action to…
President Obama’s decision to open up the Southeast Atlantic coast to offshore oil drilling begs the question of how significantly, if at all, ocean tourism and activities like surfing and fishing will be affected. Not surprisingly, environmental groups such as Surfrider oppose the plans, citing the…
The US Mint recently announced the first five quarters in the “America the Beautiful Quarters Program”. The Mint will release five quarters each year until 56 National Parks are represented. This year's…
Park rangers are finding measurablespikes in groundwater bacteria as a result of human waste near popular hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park, according to backcountry.com. Thesolution? Handing out free poop bags at the trailhead and asking people to pack it out. The good…
Photograph by Kyle Dickman Environmentalists, supported by the U.S., have won a key victory in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, a 175-nation affair held for two weeks in Doha, Qatar. The…
Last Thursday, I had an early morning flight to San Francisco. I left my home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, without my morning coffee but remembered my reusable cup. (I’m patting my back right now, by the way.) The coffee shack at the airport told me if…
Over at The Cleanest Line, Patagonia's do-good blog, you can track the progress of team Rios Libres, a pack of writers (including Greg Childs), photographers, guides and general adventure types who are have traveled to South America in an effort…
I just returned from Thailand where I spent two weeks working with Trip Jennings, one of the athletes feature in this month’s ϳԹ Issue, on his Elephant Ivory Project. The 27-year-old filmmaker is…
by ltshears Afghanistan recently moved to protect a number of rare species that live within its borders. Among them, the large-billed reed warbler, the markhor, and the Snow Leopard. For those unfamiliar with the snow…
The ban on firearms in the national parks has been lifted as of yesterday. Visitors must still comply with all state laws regarding their firearms, but this is a big day for those who have advocated to carry weapons…
Otero Mesa Otero Mesa, in New Mexico. Photo by Paul Garland; used under CC license The Department of Interior is considering…
With all eyes on Vancouver and the Winter Olympics, the Sierra Club is taking an opportunity to call attention to the environmentally destructive practice of oil sands mining. It has launched a campaign called Love Winter, Hate Oil Sands and partnered with three winter athletes–skier (and…
Between now and the end of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver, athletes will receive a total of 1014 medals. All that bling represents a goodly amount of the Earth's minerals. But this year, and for the first time, a percentage of the metals used to forge…
The Richmond Olympic Oval, the arena for speed-skating at the Vancouver Olympics, is getting a thumbs up from athletes for its environmentally conscious design and its beauty, Reuters reports. The roof was made from…
The Center for Biological Diversity is distributing 100,000 free Endangered Species Condoms in all 50 states for Valentine's Day to underscore how unsustainable human population growth is driving species extinct at a cataclysmic rate,…
We don’t know where this video was taken or how Backpacker found it, but it’s pretty cool. The video features a three-legged black bear and her cub. All is normal until the bear stands up on two legs and walks…
Kick Kennedy The dynastic brothers are gone, but up comes the next generation. Kick, 21, a senior at Stanford, has quietly built a résumé fighting for water conservation. In 2006, she joined an Imax crew filming Grand Canyon ϳԹ: River at Risk and became…
Courtesy of Flickr Punxsutawney Phil, a.k.a. Mr. Groundhog of Groundhog Day, has seen his shadow this morning in Pennsylvania, the AP reports. That means six more weeks of winter, so you’ve…