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environment and social justice news stories and special environment action alerts November 1-15 2003

Arctic Wildlife Refuge is in danger Sign Petition to Save Arctic Wildlife Refuge click here Anti-Radiation Pills For Highlanders More than 1,000 people living in the west Highlands are to be issued with pills to be taken in the event of a nuclear submarine accident. The potassium iodate tablets are being given to people living near emergency berths designated for the vessels.The move is part of new regulations governing the response to a nuclear accident.  full story Global Warming 'Detected' in the US The researchers compared temperatures in North America between 1900 and 1999 with what one might expect if man had - and had not - had an influence. And In the last 50 years, the rise in temperature is just what one would predict if man-made greenhouse gases were having an impact, they claim.  full story Traces Of Banned Toxic Insecticide Found in Land Animals Traces of a banned and highly toxic insecticide that has never been used or manufactured in Japan have been found in animals such as crows and monkeys in the eastern part of the country, the Environment Ministry said Friday.The detected amounts of the organochlorine insecticide, called mirex, were extremely small and posed no direct threat to human beings, ministry officials said.  full story Climate Models Predict Wetter Winters, Warmer Summers in The West Scientists have now developed computer models that are producing the first simulations of how ecosystems and fire regimes could change in the 21st century. Some of these simulations are showing that the Western United States may get wetter during the winter and experience warmer summers throughout the 21st century. These results have been used in national and global assessments of global climate change.  full story Rainforest Action Network Attacks SFI Label Rainforest Action Network has launched a campaign called "Don’t Buy SFI." The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) is one of several organizations that certifies wood as being harvested according to good forestry practices. RAN said it would run consumer print advertisements and conduct "grassroots in-store surveys" to discredit the SFI process, which it considers to be too industry friendly.  full story GMA Confirms New Policy Of Promoting Sustainable Mining Aware of the big demand for copper, gold and nickel and their potential for creating jobs, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said she will be implementing a new policy of actively promoting, rather than just tolerating, sustainable mining.  full story Number of Endangered Species Rises Drastically in Tibetan Area "The number of wild animals is increasing and each day I now see more animals than people," said Danbaciren, a herdsman in Ker County, part of the Ali area of the Tibet Autonomous Region. "Hunting and killing still happen, but they are done by wolves and bears," said Danda. Now, the number of brown bears in Ali exceeds 700 and that of wolves 3,000. "The food chain of the whole grassland has been improved."  full story US Government Worst Ever On Environmental Issues: Greenpeace Greenpeace chief Gerd Leipold on Friday labelled US President George W. Bush's administration as the worst performer on the environment since policy on the issue began being drafted. Leipold said the United States' refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol would have disastrous effects on the rest of the world, while domestically it had enthusiastically embraced an "anti-environmental" course.  full story CCTV Reporter Attacked In Pollution Investigation Xu Xiangyu, a reporter with the News Center of CCTV, was stopped by the factory director and robbed of a video camera when he went to investigate pollution problems at Xuanbao Joint Cokeoven Plant, in Baode County, north China's Shanxi Province. The factory director threw away Xu's press card and ordered the factory workers to attack him. full story Talks Fail To Agree On Ozone Damaging Fumigant - US Environmental negotiations seen by U.S. fruit growers as critical to future profitability failed on Friday to reach consensus on a U.S. request to increase use of a fumigant known to destroy the ozone layer, delegates said. Use of the controversial fumigant methyl bromide is likely to be tackled at an extraordinary meeting next year, said delegates and environmentalists at a U.N.-sponsored negotiating conference in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.  full story Germany Starts Historic Nuclear-Power Shutdown As First Plant Switches Off Germany began phasing out nuclear power Friday when a 32-year-old power plant was switched off forever, the first step toward a historic shift in the energy supply of Europe's biggest economy. Eighteen remaining plants are to be closed over the next two decades under an accord between utilities and the government that bears the stamp of the environmentalist Greens party, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's junior partner.  full story WWF Water Quality Report Fails Two-Thirds of European Nations Efforts to keep lakes, rivers and seas clean are failing in nearly two-thirds of European nations because of political apathy, thirsty farms and urban sprawl, the World Wide Fund for Nature said Thursday. ``Excess water consumption is a problem across Europe,'' Lucia de Stefano, author of a WWF report on water management in 23 European countries, told a news conference.  full story Abu Dhabi Launches Second Phase of Air Clean-Up Project Abu Dhabi has launched the second phase of an ambitious project to reduce air pollution which officials said is affecting human health, damaging its farm and fish resources, lowering productivity and spoiling the landscape.  full story Dolphin Species Could Die Out Says Expert New Zealand is at risk of being the first country to drive a dolphin species to extinction, says the World Wildlife Fund after the discovery of a second dead Hector's dolphin within 48 hours. The butchered carcass of a Hector's dolphin was found on Monday, and another dolphin was found stranded on Tuesday, both in Kaikoura. "While autopsies had not been completed, a high number of dolphin deaths in recent years had been the result of fishing-related activity."  full story Seabird Population Hit By Oil Spill Up to 4,000 of Scotland's seabird population died following the Prestige oil tanker disaster, according to statistics. RSPB Scotland said thousands of Scottish puffins were washed up dead off the coast of Spain following the spill, which led to over 60,000 tonnes of oil seeping into the sea.  full story WRI Report Warns Of Increased Risks From Mining In Vulnerable Ecosystems A new report released today by the World Resources Institute warns of increased risks from mining in critical but unprotected ecosystems throughout the world. Mining and Critical Ecosystems: Mapping the Risks reports that three-fourths of the world’s active mines and exploratory areas are located in vulnerable watersheds and biologically-rich ecosystems.  full story WWF Urges Commercial Banks Not To Fund Controversial Pipeline WWF is urging commercial banks such as ABN Amro and Citigroup not to provide funding to the controversial Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline running through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey being driven by major oil interests led by BP. full story Road Project Environmental Rules Debated Some environmental protections in major road-building projects would be relaxed under legislation approved by a Senate committee, while states would be prevented from regulating lawn-care equipment emissions under a separate Senate provision debated Wednesday.  full story UK Cuts Rainforest Funding To Meet Iraq Costs Britain is to slash its aid programme aimed at saving the Amazon rainforest and preserving the culture of its people to meet the soaring cost of rebuilding Iraq. Environmentalists fear the Government's decision to review its £16m contribution to the international community's efforts to protect Amazonia could lead to further ecological and cultural devastation. full story Global Warming May Spur More Wildfires Drought-and-beetle-ravaged trees in this mountain community stick up like matchsticks in the San Bernardino National Forest, bypassed by the fires still smoldering, but left like kindling for the next big blaze. Welcome to the future. Fires that charred nearly three-quarters of a million acres could presage increasingly severe fire danger as global warming weakens more forests through disease and drought, experts warn.  full story Report Estimates More Than 21,000 Dead in Iraq Between 21,000 and 55,000 people have died as a direct result of the war in Iraq, most of them Iraqi soldiers and civilians, a report estimated Tuesday. A report, partly funded by the British charity Oxfam, said the war's impact on Iraqis' health and the country's environment had been enormous, although it was difficult to quantify.  full story Another Former Intelligence Official Blows the Whistle On Iraq / 9-11 Connection "The justifications for that war were completely counter to everything that I had learned in that 20-odd years of government service working on the Middle East," Molan told Democracy Now!. "I was simply outraged by the twisting and turning of intelligence information that I had helped develop to what was clearly, to my mind, a preordained policy decision that I felt to be profoundly wrong. Nothing about this suggests that Saddam Hussein was anything but a brutal dictator. He was. But that's not why we went to war."  full story Air Pollutants Alone May Cause Asthma Attacks UCLA researchers have shown for the first time that diesel exhaust particles alone may be enough to induce acute asthma attacks. A new testing method used in an animal model helped researchers better isolate effect of diesel exhaust particles, a component of air pollution, on asthma.  full story Climate Change May Endanger Monarch Butterflies Monarch butterflies, which journey hundreds of miles (kilometers) to spend the winter in a mountain forest in Mexico, may be endangered within 50 years because a changing climate could make their winter refuge too wet and cool.  full story Illegal Trade in Ozone Depleters Is Thriving Over Three Continents The illegal international trade in chemicals that deplete the ozone layer is thriving, setting back global efforts to phase out the harmful chemicals, environmentalists said Monday. Singapore and Dubai are major transit points in the illegal trade in chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are used in refrigeration and air conditioning, Ezra Clark of the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency told reporters.  full story A Natural Sanctuary For Turtles The serene stillness of the deserted beach is only disturbed by the sound of a lone green turtle making its way along the sand, searching for a place to nest. Far from the glare of distracting lights, noisy tourists and polluted beaches, the turtle is able to lay its eggs in peace at the Mak Kepit beach, a natural nesting ground for green turtles on Redang Island, Terengganu.  full story Vatican Looks To GM Food As Panacea For Hungry Global Population The Vatican opened a symposium yesterday into genetically modified organisms (GMO), which critics claim is a smokescreen for eventual endorsement of the crops. Pope John Paul II has in the past been a strong opponent of GM crops, but in August Cardinal Renato Martino, the head of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, told an Italian newspaper the Pope was interested in the new technology for food development, as part of a policy of sustainable agriculture.  full story Marine Life, National Security At Issue As Navy Trains With New Sonar System The sound was picked up by underwater microphones: a blasting shriek every 25 seconds or so. About the same time, 20 killer whales that had been quietly feeding in Haro Strait became agitated. As many as 100 porpoises leaped through the water, apparently panicked.  full story Gore Urges Repeal of Patriot Act In a blistering critique, former Vice President Al Gore accused President Bush on Sunday of eroding personal freedoms and weakening the nation's security through "mass violations of civil liberties" in the war on terrorism. "Where civil liberties are concerned, they have taken us much farther down the road to an intrusive, 'Big Brother'-style government — toward the dangers prophesized by George Orwell in his book '1984'..  full story Dutchmen Sell Australian Ground To Recover Biodiversity Recently it is possible through Internet to contribute to the recovery of nature in Queensland Australia. Green Globe offers small parcels of land for sale in that area, which will be replanted with the original vegetation. Australia treats its beautiful nature poorly. Each year more then 500.000 hectares of forest is cleared. Already 75% of the original vegetation is lost. This has a major impact on the biodiversity.  full story A Regional Solution To Climate Change While federal legislation to regulate greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming has yet to pass, several New England states are at the forefront of efforts to develop a regional solution. What's needed now is a coordinated effort to get agreement among government policy makers and private sector interests on general principles to guide development of an effective regional strategy, one that could serve as a model for the rest of the country.  full story Jakarta Promises to Tackle Loggers, But Admits Corruption Will Impede Progress The deforestation in one of Indonesia's best-known national parks has been blamed for floods that has left 113 people dead and 147 missing by yesterday and prompted an angry outburst by Jakarta against the country's rampant illegal logging. According to official figures, Indonesia's tropical forests are being lost at the rate of up to 3.8m hectares a year, an area equivalent to half the size of Switzerland.  full story Greenpeace Requests Info On Radioactive Load Greenpeace has once again requested Argentine Foreign Affairs officials to demand their Australian counterparts exact information as to the course of the “Fret Messelle” that is carrying nuclear waste, as well as evidence to support the statement “that the vessel will not be crossing Cape Horn”.  full story Harder To Show Harassment Of Marine Mammals With House Panel Sonar Bill By adding just two words to a bill reauthorizing the 31-year-old Marine Mammal Protection Act, the House Resources Committee waded into a bitter battle Wednesday between the Navy and environmentalists and perhaps gave several industries the ability to operate more freely in the oceans.  full story Don't Mention the Dead When the body of US soldier Artimus Brassfield was flown to the military mortuary at Dover, Delaware, there were no TV pictures of a flag-covered coffin and hero's salute - the White House has banned media coverage at the base. But can Bush's efforts to hide the body bags quell growing public disquiet over the death toll in Iraq?  full story Study: Texas Park Threatened by Pollution Air pollution, a dwindling water supply and staff shortages threaten the health of Big Bend National Park in West Texas, a study shows. Known for its scenic vistas, massive canyons and vast desert expanses, Big Bend is the oldest and largest national park in Texas. Its wildlife inhabitants include more than 450 species of birds, 40 species of fish and 75 species of mammals.  full story Protecting the Source of the Yangtze Over-grazing leading to desertification of the grasslands has attracted particular criticism for its contribution to environmental deterioration at the source of the Yangtze. Statistics show that these grasslands began to suffer back in the 1980s when they fell prey to the rapid growth of the human population and livestock numbers.  full story Nigeria Seeks Oil Cooperation in Clean Up Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo Friday asked oil corporations to cooperate in his efforts to clean up widespread corruption in the African country. Nigeria, a major oil producer, has been ranked the second most corrupt country in the world after Bangladesh, the BBC reported. During a Berlin meeting of the global corruption watchdog, Transparency International, Obasanjo urged oil giants to open their books.  full story Zambia's Child Poisoning Tragedy Every time children play in the dusty streets of the small Zambian town of Kabwe, they are putting their health at risk, according to environmentalists. What sets Kabwe apart from other places is the extent of its lead pollution, a grim, but for years hidden, legacy of the town's now disused lead mine. full story Thais Trying To Tame Illegal Wildlife Trade Thailand has begun a crackdown on wildlife traders after a raid last week revealed a grisly discovery which shocked the nation. The find - 21 bear paws, so recently severed that it was still dripping blood, six half-starved, emaciated live tigers in cages waiting for the slaughter and 22kg of fresh bloody tiger meat. The discovery shocked the nation and led to an unprecedented crackdown, with raids being carried out in districts known to be notorious for this kind of illegal business.  full story Deforestation in RI Could Be Worst in the World: Forest Watch Deforestation in Indonesia is very alarming and could be the worst in the world, Indonesian Forest Watch (FWI) has said. The organization has recorded that 4.1 million hectares of forests were laid waste in 2003, up from 3.8 million hectares in 2000, FWI director Togu Manurung said in Jakarta on Friday.  full story Corruption Top Threat to African Animals, Study Says A new study shows that political corruption and bad governance, rather than human population pressures and poverty, may present the greatest threat to wildlife in developing countries. The researchers found that high levels of corruption in African countries strongly correlate with declining elephant and black rhinoceros populations. full story Prestige Spill May Hurt Spain For 10 Years A huge oil spill off Spain's northwestern coast last year may damage fishing, tourism and natural habitats for the next decade at a cost of five billion euros, the WWF environmental group said on Thursday. In a hard-hitting report the WWF said the consequences of the breakup of the tanker Prestige, which created one of the world's worst oil spills, are far from over.  full story EPA Drops Its Cases Against Dozens of Alleged Polluters The Bush administration has dropped enforcement actions against dozens of coal-fired power plants that were under investigation for violating the Clean Air Act and allegedly spewing thousands of tons of illegal into the air, EPA officials said Wednesday. Until now, the Bush administration had said it would vigorously pursue the enforcement actions, which were launched by the Clinton administration. full story England Suffering Dramatic Pollution More than 90% of England is now affected by some form of pollution, a study has found. Rapidly expanding road networks and a sharp rise in flights have led to a dramatic jump in air, noise and light pollution in the past decade. Planned road developments are expected to exacerbate the problem over the next few years by generating even more noise and fumes across large swathes of the country. full story Ozone-Depleting Substances Set for Phaseout in Philippines By 2010 ODS are chemical substances used by different industries that when released in the atmosphere can cause ozone layer depletion or destruction. Some of its effects are: deterioration of the immune system, increase in eye diseases and skin cancer, low quality agricultural products, destruction of marine life, and degradation of building materials due to global warming.  full story EPA Reviews Air Pollution Investigations An EPA official said senior agency managers were told Tuesday night at a meeting in Seattle to set aside current investigations and enforcement work unless past activities violated the newly loosened pollution rules. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said such a retroactive application of new regulations to possible past violations was unprecedented.  full story Defending Nature Is Not Anti-Science When you have lost the argument, cry "foul". That is how 114 leading scientists have responded - in an open letter to Tony Blair - to their failure to win the great GM debate. During the summer, the government undertook an economic and scientific review of genetic modification, and held a public debate on the issue. Since then, the results of the field-scale trials have also been published.  full story Bush Administration Yanks Missouri River Scientists off Project The long-running dispute over management of the nation's longest river took another twist when the Bush administration yanked government scientists off a project to study the waterway's ecosystem. The team had been on the job for years and was within weeks of producing what could have been its final report. Conservation groups criticized last week's unreported decision to remove the scientists, which they said was to protect business interests at the expense of the Endangered Species Act.  full story GM Pine Trees in Disease Probe An investigation has started into possible contamination of genetically modified pine trees being grown in a field trial at Rotorua. The contamination allegations come from two former Forest Research Institute scientists, Dale Smith and John Hutcheson.  full story Scientists Warn of 'Doomsday' For Fish Scientists say they've discovered a disturbing trend in fish stocks off eastern Nova Scotia. Researchers with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have completed a complex study of the Eastern Scotian Shelf ecosystem. They looked at birds, seals, haddock, shellfish and other species. Since the mid-1980s, groundfish such as cod and haddock have been overfished and haven't made a comeback. The scientists also say fish that are growing are skinnier than before.  full story Oil Spill may Affect Marine Life For 500 Years The oil spill from Tasman Spirit may continue to affect human and marine life in the coastal areas of Karachi for up to 500 years, reveals an official document submitted to the federal government. According to the document titled "Impact of Oil Spill and Bioremedial Measures to Mitigate the Effects on Marine Environment Along the Clifton Beach and Adjoining Areas of Karachi", crude oil and its components are highly poisonous and recalcitrant, some of which may even persist for up to 500 years in soil and sediment.  full story Illegal Wildlife Trade Is At a `Dangerously High Level' In gritty cardboard boxes, exotic tortoises are stacked like saucers, their heads taped back into their shells. In rolled up socks, rare lizards are holed up in suitcases stored in an overhead flight compartment. Wildlife smuggling is on the rise, say authorities in Singapore, whose ports are increasingly used as transit points in the shuttling of endangered animals between the US and tropical Asian countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam.  full story Indonesian Loggers Called Terrorists Indonesia's environment minister on Wednesday likened illegal loggers to "terrorists" for rampant deforestation blamed for a devastating flood on Sumatra island. More than 200 people are either dead or missing after a flash flood on the western Indonesian island swept away scores of dwellings, many of which served as guesthouses for tourists visiting a famous orangutan reserve.  full story Record Loss of Ozone Over Antarctica this Year Recent analysis of satellite-based measurements by scientists from the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) shows that record amounts of ozone were destroyed over Antarctica in September this year. On each day over the period 23 to 26 September the amount of ozone lost over Antarctica exceeded the previous daily record of 45.5 million tons recorded in 2000. On 25 September this year a record loss of 47.3 million tons was reached.  full story U.N. Wants Russia and the Middle East to Monitor Nuke Waste The U.N. nuclear agency is lobbying Russia, Middle East countries, and others to join a pact to keep tabs on spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. "It is ... disappointing that more countries have not ratified the convention," Tomihiro Taniguchi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) department of nuclear safety and security, told a conference on the pact this week.  full story Environmentalists Call Energy Bill Disaster No Matter How Negotiations Go The impasse over an energy bill is music to the ears of Anna Aurilio of the environmental group USPIRG and to the Sierra Club's Debbie Boger. As lawmakers face off in Congress over the details of a national energy blueprint - the first in 10 years - environmentalists are in wide agreement on one thing: They don't like the bill that is emerging.  full story China Begins Massive Desertification Monitoring Campaign The Chinese government has launched its third and largest ever campaign to monitor desertification. Zhu Lieke, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration,told a national meeting on the launch of China's third campaign to monitor land desertification that the event was expected to last for 18 months and cover 851 counties in 30 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, confronting the problem of desertification.  full story Novo Virje Dam: an Ecological Disaster WWF, with partners Euronatur, the Drava League and Green Action, today called on the Croatian government to stop all further development on the ecologically disastrous Novo Virje hydropower dam on the Drava River, and begin a process looking for sustainable alternatives.  full story UN Calls Emergency Meeting on Great Apes The United Nations has asked 23 African and south-east Asian states to an emergency meeting in Paris to draw up a strategy to rescue the great apes, man's closest living relatives, from imminent extinction. The conservation strategy will call for survival plans to be adopted in the 21 African and two south-east Asian states with great ape populations. It will also require rich countries to help fund conservation efforts. It is hoped that Japan and the US will join Britain in taking the lead among potential donor countries.  full story $10B Lost to Illegal Logging Yearly – World Bank Forum Worldwide losses to illegal logging reached $10 billion annually in revenues and assets, based on data revealed in a two-day forum held in Washington, USA. The Forest Investment Forum also resulted in a pledge to increase responsible forest investments in developing countries and economies-in- transition as well as a global call for an end to illegal logging.  full story Deep in the Amazon Forest, Vast Questions About Global Climate Change Carbon dioxide is one of the main gases that contribute to global warming and the much-dreaded greenhouse effect. But it has never been established whether the rain forest here is in fact functioning as a giant sink that "sequesters," or traps and absorbs, carbon. Some scientists have suggested that indiscriminate deforestation has turned the Amazon into a net source of such gases, spewing huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. full story Supreme Court to Hear Western Lands Fight Environmental groups suing to keep off-road vehicles off pristine Western lands were dealt a setback Monday as the Supreme Court agreed to consider the government's argument that the case is invalid. The court's decision to hear the case jeopardizes an appeals court ruling favorable to the environmental groups.  full story Experts Call for Help to Save Water Worsening water shortages will leave Africans more dependent on aid unless governments do more to help conserve the resource, scientists said yesterday. As the continent's population rises, demand for household water is projected to grow faster than anywhere else on the planet, leaving up to 523 million people without access to clean water by 2025 unless governments invest in better infrastructure.  full story City Air Pollution Rising, Hits Health Air pollution in St. Petersburg is getting worse, becoming more dangerous to human health and the city, for the first time, entered the list of Russia's cities with the most noxious air, according to the Main Voeyikov Geophysical Observatory, which monitors the nation's air pollution  full story Clock Ticking for Indonesian Rainforest It is estimated 60% of the total forest cover in Sumatra has been destroyed over the past 100 years, with the rate of destruction increasing rapidly in the 1970s and 80s under the authoritarian regime of former President Suharto. Today it is estimated around five million acres of Indonesian forest are lost every year - an area equivalent to the size of Belgium. And the majority of the logging is believed to be illegal.  full story Inuit Battle to Shut US Air Base Inuit hunters are to ask Denmark's Supreme Court on Monday to close down one of America's most secretive and strategically important military bases. The Inuit claim they were illegally evicted from traditional grounds in northern Greenland and they are demanding the right of return. The case pits a superpower against the world's smallest indigenous people.  full story Melting Polar Ice Shelves Linked to Warmer Seas An Antarctic ice shelf the size of Scotland is rapidly disintegrating due to warmer seas, according to the second study in two days to show a dramatic thinning of polar ice. Scientists believe that the Larsen ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula may disappear altogether within 70 years, and even earlier if warming trends continue. Scientists say its loss may trigger a catastrophic release of ice on the peninsula's mainland, causing global sea levels to rise up to 1m.  full story File Sharing Pits Copyright Against Free Speech Forbidden files are circulating on the Internet and threats of lawsuits are in the air. Music trading? No, it is the growing controversy over one company’s electronic voting systems, and the issues being raised, some legal scholars say, are as fundamental as the sanctity of elections and the right to free speech. Diebold Election Systems, which makes voting machines, is waging legal war against grass-roots advocates, including dozens of college students, who are posting on the Internet copies of the company’s internal communications about its electronic voting machines.  full story New Forestry Bill has Environmentalists Worried Over the past year, the Bush administration has been pushing a plan called the Healthy Forests Initiative. It would loosen logging strictures on national forests, allowing U.S. Forest Service supervisors to approve large-scale thinning projects deemed essential for wildfire risk reduction. Such decisions would be immune to judicial review.  full story Senator's Fisheries 'Rider' Angers Green Groups The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee has slipped a provision into a key spending bill that would loosen fishing restrictions in Alaskan waters, angering environmentalists and senators who want the controversial items stripped out.  full story Old-Growth Battle Blooms in Alaska's Coral Gardens The discovery of Alaska's extensive cold-water coral gardens little more than a year ago has since garnered attention from scientists and environmentalists worldwide. At the same time, the amazing find has quickly worked its way to the center of a fight over commercial-fishing practices and the use of nets weighted with chains that drag the bottom, scraping up everything from rockfish to cod to starfish, crabs, clams and, sometimes, tons of coral.  full story French Environmentalists Remove Three Tonnes of Trash from Dhaulgiri The five-member team supported by 10 trekking staff and 20 Sherpas and porters spent nearly a month at the base camp of the 26,791-foot mountain. Breffni Bolze, 27, a recycling engineer who lives near Paris, said his team had collected empty cans, beer bottles, plastic material and highly toxic lithium batteries among other rubbish.  full story Oceans Face Danger of Overfishing Way back in August 1991, Dr Alistair Robertson, principal resident scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, warned that Malaysia faced the prospect of not having any edible fish in the next 20 years — if fishermen fail to exercise proper control over their methods and if there is no restriction on dumping of commercial waste into the sea.  full story Keep Number Rule May Send Millions of Cellphones to Landfills If predictions hold true, millions of cell phones will be put out to pasture starting in late November under a new rule allowing people to keep their phone numbers when switching cellular carriers. Though many of those phones will find a dusty home in a cluttered desk drawer, millions could wind up in landfills, leaking toxic metals and chemicals into the ground.  full story San Joaquin Valley Endures Worst Smog Season in 14 Years The San Joaquin Valley suffered its worst smog season in 14 years, air pollution officials reported, with average smog levels over eight-hour periods exceeding the federal standard on 128 days. It was the nation's worst record for the 2003 smog season, and the Valley's worst since 1989, when it exceeded federal standards in the category for 133 days.  full story Polluted 'Ghost Ships' May be Turned Back after Ruling The two highly-polluted American "ghost ships" which have courted controversy were last night facing the prospect of being turned back across the Atlantic after the Environment Agency withdrew permission for them to be dismantled in Britain. Each of the ships in the so-called "toxic fleet" is contaminated with chemicals including asbestos, heavy diesel and carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs.  full story Book Market Fire Piles on the Misery for Broken Baghdad "They are trying to destroy our history," shouted Dr Zaki Ghazi, waving his arms in anguish, as he stood by the smoldering remains of a building in an old quarter of Baghdad that is crowded with small bookshops. An explosion had torn apart and set on fire the tall houses supported by white pillars on either side of al-Mutanabi Street's book market, where Iraqi intellectuals have shopped for decades.  full story Marine Life Survival 'Responsibility of All' The protection of marine life is the responsibility of all, says a management and environment expert. People should take initiatives that would contribute to preserving the environment and enhancing the aesthetic value of our environment, said GPIC general manager and Shura Council member Dr Mustafa Al Sayed.  full story top environment news archives environment news services environment news today