High above West Africa’s Upper Guinean rain forest, tourists on gently swaying walkways stroll cautiously through the forest canopy. It is a nature experience still rare even in the realms of eco-tourism. Kakum National Park, the 140-square-mile preserve where the walkway is located, is home to several endangered species including the forest elephant. It isContinue reading “Treetop Walkway”
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Looks Like Wood
The picnic table, the park bench and the boardwalk look like wood, but they are actually made from plastic. Impervious to water, salt, oil, chemicals, and insects, the building material comes from chipped and melted milk jugs and detergent bottles. This new use for high-density polyethylene is making profits for outdoor furniture manufacturers and checkingContinue reading “Looks Like Wood”
Forest Of Toyota
A group of researchers at Japan’s largest car manufacturer are concentrating on designer trees rather than fuel efficiency. This odd turn for Toyota is an effort to develop a new tree with a ravenous appetite for the noxious gases produced by gasoline-powered automobile engines. Since 1991, the company has been working on biology- based methodsContinue reading “Forest Of Toyota”
Bilge Pill
To Preserve It, Buy It
Tacoma News Tribune August 13, 1998 By Matthew Brown and Jane S. Shaw Chaining yourself to a tree in the forest just doesn’t work any more. Environmentalists who want to save forests have found a less confrontational way to achieve their goals–and a more effective one, too. They reach for their checkbooks. Abandoning court battlesContinue reading “To Preserve It, Buy It”
Rangers On Tour
While ecotourism has been touted as a way to save everything from tigers to sea turtles, it might also prove an economic boon to the financially beleaguered U.S. Forest Service. Heritage Expeditions is part of the user-fee demonstration program that allows federal land management agencies to charge fees for recreation on public lands. A recentContinue reading “Rangers On Tour”
Make Forest Service Pay Its Own Way
Rocky Mountain NewsJune 7, 1998 By Terry L. Anderson The threat of budget cuts for the Forest Service is some of the best fiscal and environmental news yet out of this congress. Angered by years of declining timber sales, Western conservatives are threatening to wield the budget ax. The net result could be a breathContinue reading “Make Forest Service Pay Its Own Way”
Pallets To Butcher-Block
Deep in the South Bronx a small company is making a big impact on forest preservation, waste reduction, and furniture design. And that’s only part of the story. Every year in the United States 1.5 billion wooden pallets are used in the shipment of consumer goods. Those pallets account for nearly half of the annualContinue reading “Pallets To Butcher-Block”
Getting Around the “Takings” Problem
This year, the ESA is once again on the legislative calendar, and deadlock is likely. But there is a possible solution that would get around the “takings” problem, allow economic growth, and still protect land and species-perhaps more effectively than the current law does. Congress should simply require that, for every new acre of landContinue reading “Getting Around the “Takings” Problem”
Common-Law Protection
Unless you are well into middle age or were a precocious student, you probably have little memory of the United States without the Environmental Protection Agency and the host of federal statutes it implements. You may not be aware of the long history of environmental controls through common-law protections. (Common law is the term weContinue reading “Common-Law Protection”