Thursday, 28 Sep 2000

The Red Barren

According to a new "red list" released today by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), 11,046 plants and animals worldwide are at risk of extinction, up by more than 200 species from the last time the list was updated, four years ago. This includes 24 percent of mammal species and 12 percent of bird species. And the IUCN cautions that its list may represent only a fraction of the number of species truly at risk because many species have yet to be discovered by scientists. Habitat loss is a factor in roughly 90 percent of the endangered listings. The IUCN also pointed to three other growing threats: the "bush meat" trade in Africa and Asia, which endangers primates; the longline fishing industry, which threatens 13 species of albatross; and the poaching of turtles and other reptiles for use in traditional Asian medicines.

Hawaii K.O.

Hawaii may seem like a tropical paradise teeming with beautiful animals and plants, but what tourists don't know is that many of the archipelago's common species are non-native, and its indigenous species are facing an extinction crisis. With less than 1 percent of the land mass in the U.S., Hawaii is home to more than 30 percent of the nation's endangered and rare species, about 360, and more than 1,000 native species are known to have gone extinct since humans arrived on the islands. Native animals and plants have been threatened by the destruction of forests, suburban sprawl, and severe ecosystem damage caused by farm animals that escaped into the wild. A few years ago, scientists working in Hawaii were hopeful that they could revive native species through restoration ecology, but now some of them are resigned to what they call "hospice ecology," or taking care of species that are surely headed toward extinction. "Depressing -- that's an optimistic way to frame it. What we're dealing with is whole suites of organisms disappearing," said Rick Marshauer, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Dorm!!!

Northland College in Ashland, Wis., is giving 90 students the chance to live in one of the most eco-friendly dorms in the U.S. The $4.1 million Environmental Living and Learning Center, opened in 1998, features waterless composting toilets and furniture and countertops made from recycled material. A 20-kilowatt wind tower and solar panels provide about 8 percent of the dorm's power and cut water-heating costs by nearly 30 percent. Meanwhile, a new green office building for San Francisco's Department of the Environment opened this week, the first city government building to be completed since San Francisco passed an ordinance in July 1999 requiring all city buildings to be eco-friendly. And on the opposite coast, in Annapolis, Md., the Chesapeake Bay Foundation is constructing a new office that it says will be one of the greenest buildings ever built. It will use unheated rainwater in bathroom sinks and include computerized red and green lights that tell employees when, in the interest of energy efficiency, they should open or close windows.

Reid It and Weep

The annual rider battle is in full swing, with a number of lawmakers in Washington., D.C, trying to attach pieces of anti-environmental legislation to large, must-pass government funding bills. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has tacked a rider onto an Interior Department spending bill that would block federal agencies from adopting tough new rules governing hard-rock mining. Another measure attached to a spending bill by Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) would create a 2.8 million-acre "Western Legacy District" in Utah, undermining efforts by enviros to get wilderness protection for parts of the area. Dozens of other anti-environmental riders are also in play, including ones that would undermine an EPA plan to restrict arsenic in drinking water, increase logging in national forests, and eliminate funding for an effort to protect children by reducing pesticide residues on food.

Heard It Through the Pipeline

With wholesale prices for natural gas doubling in the last year, environmental concerns are taking a back seat as energy companies make plans to build one, maybe two, pipelines to carry gas from beneath the Arctic Ocean to population centers. Native groups that once opposed development are now seeing economic opportunities. Greenpeace opposes the idea of gas pipelines, saying North Americans should instead invest the $10 billion or so it would take to build two pipelines in alternative energy sources like solar and wind. Other environmental groups see some advantage to increasing the continent's supply of natural gas, which when burned produces much less carbon dioxide than coal and oil. Aboriginal leaders don't much care for Greenpeace, blaming the group's anti-fur campaigns for destroying their traditional hunting and trapping economies.

The Nitro of the Living Dead

In the past few decades, industrialization, population growth, and the heavy use of chemical fertilizers have doubled the amount of nitrogen in circulation, contributing to environmental problems worldwide and possibly human health problems like cancer and memory failure, reports the Baltimore Sun in a five-day series. Hardest hit are coastal bays and oceans -- deadly algae blooms are cropping up from Finnish beaches to Hong Kong harbors, fish kills are occurring from Maryland's Chesapeake Bay to Russia's Black Sea, and coral reefs are in decline around the globe. With world population increasing and the growing preference for a North American-style meat-based diet -- which requires heavy use of fertilizers to grow large amounts of animal feed -- a solution to the problem of nitrogen pollution doesn't appear to be in the offing.