Puget Sound Environmental Report Yields Mixed Results

Many of Puget Sound's declining herring populations have rebounded, the acres covered by the invasive grass spartina are half what they were a few years ago and sites once contaminated with heavy metals are slowly being cleaned up, according to a biennial report by the state on Puget Sound's health. >> Read the Full Article

The Final (Probably) Word on Plastics from Umbra

Readers remain atwitter over kitchen plastics, about which eco-advice guru Umbra Fisk admits to having been less than perfectly clear in the past. To find out which plastics are OK, which aren't, and why avoiding them all might be the simplest answer, pop the top off of Ask Umbra, on the Grist Magazine website. >> Read the Full Article

Canada Can Learn from California

To mandate or not to mandate, that is the question. At least, that is the question Canada's environment minister, Stéphan Dion, is asking in regards to fuel efficiency standards for new cars sold in Canada. >> Read the Full Article

Nuclear Power Makes a Comeback

Decades after it was written off as a costly failure, the nuclear power industry is being revived with plans for new reactors in Illinois and other states. Utilities are considering building or restarting up to eight reactors in Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, and Idaho, as well as in Illinois. >> Read the Full Article

Notes from Anna: The Mailroom as Landscape

I am immensely grateful to those of you who took the time to respond to "Notes" and enlarge the discussion of environmentalism and culture that has begun to take shape on this page. I see the goal of this column as facilitating the discourse that already goes on in the environmental community, as it became clear to me from the last week's e-mail. >> Read the Full Article

Congo Police, Army Accused of Elephant Poaching

Congo's police and fractious army have been accused of involvement in rampant elephant poaching that threatens to wipe them out from a world heritage site in the east of the former Zaire, a new study has warned. >> Read the Full Article

Silt Deposits Threaten Coral Life in Tsunami-Hit Southern Indian Islands

The tsunami split coral reefs in India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands chain, burying them under sand deposits and threatening the entire marine habitat in the area, researchers said. >> Read the Full Article

US Forests Cost-Effective against Global Warming, Study Concludes

The cost of using forests to remove greenhouse gases from the air could be about the same as cutting pollution with fuel switching or energy efficiency improvements, according to a new report from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. >> Read the Full Article

Shrieking Frogs Unnerve Hawaiian Island

A tiny frog with a huge shriek has invaded the Big Island and won't shut up. Big Island Mayor Harry Kim is looking for $2 million to begin controlling the spread of the nocturnal coqui frog, a beloved native in Puerto Rico but considered an annoying pest in Hawaii since hitching a ride over in shipments of tropical plants around 1990. >> Read the Full Article

Army to Study Possibility of Weapons Move, after Assuring it Wouldn't Happen

Despite assurances given Tuesday to Colorado's U.S. senators that chemical weapons would not be moved out of the Pueblo Chemical Depot, the Army is going ahead with plans to study the possibility of shipping chemical weapons around the country and has halted all construction work on a disposal facility here. >> Read the Full Article