Free Republic

People need to tell their Senators: Vote for drilling in ANWR If you listened only to the news media and environmentalists, you’d think the debate over oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was about caribou and ecology. It’s not.

A hunting lodge with antler chandeliers and stuffed ducks on the walls seems a strange place to celebrate the comeback of the ivory-billed woodpecker, but wildlife officials are doing exactly that. They credit hunters in particular with helping bring the rare bird back from presumed extinction in the Big Woods section of Arkansas. "The people of Arkansas, the hunting and fishing community, conserved these woods," Scott Simon of The Nature Conservancy told reporters on Monday at the Mallard Pointe Lodge, where a coalition of environmentalists, academics and wildlife officials rejoiced in woodpecker's return to the living. Simon said hunters and...

'Extinct' wild horse roams again By Charles Clover (Filed: 19/12/2005) The wild horse has been saved from extinction after a successful programme to reintroduce captive-bred horses to their natural habitat in Mongolia. A working group of scientists at London Zoo has now recommended that Przewalski's horse, previously characterised as "extinct" in the wild, should now be listed as "endangered". It is a rare case of a species climbing away from extinction. If the new status is accepted by IUCN, the World Conservation Union, scientists say it will be a milestone for large mammal conservation. In 1945, there were only 31...

SCIENTISTS have for the first time found evidence that polar bears are drowning because climate change is melting the Arctic ice shelf. The researchers were startled to find bears having to swim up to 60 miles across open sea to find food. They are being forced into the long voyages because the ice floes from which they feed are melting, becoming smaller and drifting farther apart. Although polar bears are strong swimmers, they are adapted for swimming close to the shore. Their sea journeys leave them them vulnerable to exhaustion, hypothermia or being swamped by waves *Snip*

THEY are called echizen kurage and they sound like monsters from the trashier reaches of Japanese science fiction. They are 6ft wide and weigh 450lb (200kg), with countless poisonous tentacles, they have drifted across the void to terrorise the people of Japan. Vast armadas of the slimy horrors have cut off the country’s food supply. As soon as one is killed more appear to take its place. Finally, the quarrelsome governments of the region are banding together to unite against the enemy. Echizen kurage is not an extraterrestrial invader, but a giant jellyfish that is devastating the livelihoods of...

GENEVA (Reuters) - Environmental researchers are preparing to capture what they call a new, mysterious species of carnivore on Borneo, the first such discovery on the wildlife-rich Indonesian island in over a century. Swiss-based environmental group WWF said on Monday its researchers photographed the strange animal, which looks like a cross between a cat and a fox, in the dense, central mountainous rainforests of Borneo.

Is it just me or are the global warming headlines starting to overheat a little? The Independent on Sunday gave its report on the Montreal climate conference the somewhat overwrought title: "What planet are you on, Mr Bush? (And do you care, Mr Blair?)" Nothing in the rather dull article underneath justified the hectoring hysteria. And, to be honest, I've no real idea what it means. Is the IoS asking whether Mr Blair cares what planet Mr Bush is on? Well, no doubt he'd be startled to hear the President's moving to Pluto, but I expect he'd take it in...

A shipment of hairy crabs imported from China, some of which have already been sold and eaten, was found to contain residues of the pesticide DDT, the Department of Health said on Wednesday. This was discovered during a random DOH inspection of aquatic products sold in markets throughout the island. The department began the inspections in September in an effort to determine whether residues of drugs or pesticides were retained in such products, and also to assess the level of metals they might contain. According to the DOH, the hairy crabs sold in three supermarkets -- Carrefour, Hsi-Mei and Hsing-Loong,...

WASHINGTON -- Toxic chemical concentrations in the Great Lakes remain a threat to humans, animals and fish, and not enough people know of the hazards, a new report concludes. The draft report was completed by the Scientific Advisory Board to the International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canada agency that oversees boundary water issues, and will be officially released next month. Every two years, the panel of scientists reviews the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the two countries, analyzing the state of the Great Lakes and recommending changes. Environmentalists say the report could be a starting point for negotiations not only...

BAUMHOLDER, Germany – If you want to increase biodiversity and protect endangered species, bring in tanks and soldiers. Not to shoot hunters and poachers, but simply to maneuver and train. That’s the finding of a new environmental study done for U.S. Army Installation Management Agency—Europe (IMA-E) by researchers at the Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands (CEMML) at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo. Those researchers reached a surprising conclusion — certain threatened and endangered species fare far better in the huge Grafenwöhr and Hohenfels military training areas in Bavaria, where thousands of troops train, firing tanks and...

LONG BEACH - A male fish off the Southern California coast is getting in touch with its feminine side. And that has some scientists worried. Kevin Kelley, a professor of environmental endocrinology at Cal State Long Beach, is part of a team studying a species of male flatfish in Southern California waters that has been found to have high levels of estrogen, which appear to be causing feminization. Kelley and other researchers believe that the treated wastewater draining through underground pipes into waters off Santa Monica, Huntington Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula contains human estrogen hormones expelled in human...

American petro-dollars continue flowing to terrorist-sponsoring oil producing states and American soldiers fight in what leftists call a “war for oil” in Iraq. In spite of this, Congressional debate on oil drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) is once again going down to the wire. A group of 24 “moderate” Republican congressmen mostly from North East states joined Democrats on November 9 in stripping the House Budget Bill of a provision opening ANWR to drilling after hordes of home-district “environmental” activists lobbied them at their Washington offices. Senators, on the other hand, have voted 51-47 November 3 against...

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Greg Sanders' otter-catching days are over. It's been years since he last snatched the animals from Southern California waters and shipped them north under an ambitious federal program to preserve an endangered species while protecting shellfish divers from natural competition. Now, in an admission that the slick-furred creatures refuse to respect boundaries imposed by man, the federal government wants officially to abandon an otter-relocation policy it effectively dumped more than a decade ago. If the government's battle of wits is at its end, the otters have won. "This concept of taking animals and putting them in...

An extensive study of malaria-carrying mosquito or "vector" populations in different ecological zones of Cameroon has documented widespread and varied resistance to insecticides, part of an alarming trend across Africa that might ultimately jeopardize efforts to control malaria with treated bed nets and indoor spraying. The study, which will be presented at a special session on insecticide resistance at the Fourth Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) Pan-African Malaria Conference, is illustrative of a growing body of research in Africa that is finding increasing mosquito resistance to pyrethroid insecticides, which are used for insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs), and DDT, which has...

If you were wondering how the planet suddenly ran out of natural gas as you sat shivering in your house with the thermostat set at 62 so you could preserve a modicum of your retirement money, just look at a 2003 study from the National Petroleum Council (www.npc.org). You'll learn that there's plenty of natural gas, much of it right here in the U.S. The problem is that environmental groups won't let us get at it. Today natural gas provides about 25 percent of U.S. energy needs, generates about 19 percent of electrical power, and is used for heating and...

Cadre of House GOP Holds Up ANWR Plan Wednesday, November 09, 2005 By Greg Simmons WASHINGTON — With Republicans in control of both chambers on Capitol Hill, issues such as cutting the budget, controlling spending and authorizing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be easy to solve. But they're not. Republicans have battled Democrats to open ANWR to oil drilling for more than a decade, but now that drilling is closer than ever with the Senate approval of petroleum exploration last week, a tiny band of moderate House Republicans stands in the way. "It is a little...

DDT Saves Lives - November 8, 2005 It's horrifying enough that malaria -- a preventable and curable disease -- claims one million lives every year and that most victims are Africa's pregnant women and children under five. Compounding this tragedy, however, is the global lobbying effort against the most effective method of combating the mosquito-borne illness: spraying outdoors and inside houses with the insecticide DDT...

Shepherdstown, W.Va. The American conservationist may be an endangered species, both in numbers and public influence. That's the bleak news suggested by some attendees at the National Conservation Learning Summit, held this weekend at the sprawling woodland campus of the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia. Some estimates indicate that as many as 60 percent of the most senior federal employees are eligible to retire in 2007. Many of those are in conservation and natural resource fields. Over one-half of the senior executives at the Department of the Interior, USDA Forest Service and Environmental Protection Agency will retire by...

AMES, Iowa, Nov. 7 (AScribe Newswire) -- All those dried up stalks, husks and cobs left in corn fields after every fall's harvest could be a key to enhancing the environment, say Iowa State University researchers. They say partially burning some of the residue left in corn fields produces products that can be used to improve soil fertility, boost in-soil storage of greenhouse gases and reduce the amount of natural gas used to produce anhydrous ammonia fertilizer. Robert C. Brown, Iowa State's Bergles Professor in Thermal Science, will lead a team of researchers studying the idea. The team includes Randy...

This last great wilderness must be preserved for wilderness values, wildlife, and traditional ways-of-life. The unprotected area of the Arctic Refuge coastal plain provides vital habitat for nearly 200 species of animals, including the 129,000 member Porcupine Caribou herd as well as polar bears, grizzlies, wolves and millions of migratory birds. Allowing this essential, eternal wilderness to be exchanged for a short-term supply of oil is totally unacceptable. Drilling in the Refuge will have no discernable short-term or long-term impact on the price of fuel and will not decrease our dependence on foreign oil. The amount of oil under the...