Publication archives

The Amazonian rainforest is being destroyed at double the rate of all previous estimates, according to research published today in the journal Science. The destruction is leaving the forest more prone to fires and allowing more carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere, according to scientists.

The US Senate Energy Committee voted on Wednesday to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling as part of a broad budget bill to fund the federal government.

The retreat of coastlines due to rising sea levels may be accelerated by wildfires, a Duke University researcher has discovered. In the absence of such fires, forests can slow the encroachment, he found. At such fire scenes, though, finger-like patches of marshlands can extend into former forest by as much as several hundred yards.

Minnesota has met its goal of cutting home-grown mercury emissions by 70 percent since 1990, but must cut more to make state fish safe to eat. That's the report of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to the Minnesota Legislature released Tuesday. The 1990 Legislature set a goal of cutting mercury emissions from state sources by60 percent by 2000 and 70 percent by 2005.

Hiking along the small, purling Blacktail Deer Creek, Douglas W. Smith, a wolf biologist, makes his way through a lush curtain of willows. Nearly absent for decades, willows have roared back to life in Yellowstone, and the reason, Mr. Smith believes, is that 10 years after wolves were introduced to Yellowstone, the park is full of them, dispersed across 13 packs.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Agriculture Department will abandon plans to close more than 700 local Farm Service Agency offices across the country because of widespread opposition in Congress, an official said Tuesday.

Wild Ennerdale aims to reduce human intervention to allow natural processes to shape the landscape and ecology in this part of the Lake District. It will take decades for nature to completely take over the valley. Those behind the project will address a meeting of global experts next week to look at how forests are managed.