Changing Climate May Doom Tigers
US - Climate change may doom Earth's last 330-371 surviving Siberian tigers. A World Wildlife Fund/University of Durham study predicts that a 2°C rise in temperature will cause Siberia's pine and broadleaf forests to collapse, stripping the tigers of their critical habitat. "Species with very specific habitat needs will undoubtedly be affected," WWF spokesman Ute Collier said.

Rainforests: More Vulnerable to Fires
BRAZIL - Small fires can spell big trouble for a rainforest, according to a report in Conservation Biology. A thin strip of ankle-high fire that might burn only 100 meters (roughly 300 feet) a day will leave 90 percent of the forest's biomass unharmed. But a year later, larger and much more damaging fires can quickly ignite in these dried and damaged areas. In a healthy rainforest, major fires erupt every 400 years or so. In Brazil's Tailándia region, some lightly scorched regions of forest are now re-igniting every three years, with the new fires destroying up to 40 percent of rainforest biomass.

A Biological Theory of War: The Young and the Restless
CANADA - Two researchers at Toronto's York University have concluded that wars are triggered whenever societies accumulate a critical mass of young unmarried and unemployed men. Graduate student Christian Mesquida and Professor Neil Wiener argue that an oversupply of young males (aged 15 to 29) is "a necessary condition for the emergence of violent conflicts." A study of world conflicts suggests that wars and internal rebellions become more likely once a population of young, unmarried men reaches 35 percent of a nation's total. This has been the case in Rwanda, Sudan, Algeria, the Congo and the former Yugoslavia. York and Mesquida note that the proportion of young men in the US is approaching 30 percent of the population. They predict trouble ahead in China, where there will soon be one million more young men than young women. The biological theory applies only to offensive wars, York and Mesquida claim. Since the days of the Crusades, nervous rulers have found foreign wars an effective means to rid their countries of the danger of large populations of young and restive men. There are other ways to deal with the problem: University of California anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon notes that the indigenous Yanomamo rainforest dwellers simply make sure that the young men are assigned a lot of exhausting work to keep them productively occupied.

UNOCAL Harries Elephants
THAILAND - Thai environmentalists armed with a video camera have stopped work on a controversial $1.2 billion pipeline that would carry natural gas from Burma to Thailand. Their video shows herds of wild elephants being driven from their forest habitat by construction. The pipeline is being built by US-based UNOCAL, France's Total, the Thailand Petroleum Authority and the military dictatorship of Burma. "UNOCAL's unwillingness to rein in its partners is part of a pattern of irresponsibility. They are showing disrespect to local people who have cherished elephants for centuries," environmentalist Bhinand Jotiroseranee reports.

How You Gonna Bring Em Up On The Farm?
US - A Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) study released last October warns that 320,000 US children under the age of six are exposed to dangerous levels of pesticides on family farms. Children are at a greater risk because they breathe, eat and drink proportionately twice as much air, food and water as do adults. The NRDC has called on states to phase out deadly farm chemicals.

Pesticides Falling Like Rain
US - Nearly 4 million Californians reside in "danger zones" where they are exposed to 152 dangerous pesticides, according to the California Public Interest Research Group report, "Poisoning the Air: Airborne Pesticides in California." Airborne pesticides can travel as far as 50 miles from the application site and have been found in snow, rain and fog. Using US Census data, Cal-PIRG [49 Powell St., No. 530, San Francisco, CA 94102, (415) 981-2727] estimated that one-fourth of the residents of Orange County - 664,000 people - live within a half mile of fields sprayed with hazardous chemicals. Residents of the heavily farmed Lompoc Valley suffer higher-than-normal rates of respiratory problems and lung cancer.

There's a Methyl to Their Madness
US - Methyl bromide (MB), a controversial pesticide that destroys nematodes in the soil and eats holes in the ozone layer, faces a recently-postponed US ban in 2005. US farmers, hoping to avoid the ban, have tried covering sprayed fields with large sheets of plastic but the September issue of Environmental Science & Technology reports that 75 percent of MB seeps through the plastic within 5 days of application. A new plastic called Hytibar (two sheets of polyethylene filled with polyvinyl alcohol) could cut the seepage to 5 percent.

Right to Life! Right to Breathe!
BRAZIL - Researchers at the University of São Paulo have found a disturbing link between fetal deaths and urban air pollution - nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulates and ozone. Environmental Health Perspectives reports that fetal deaths were found to rise three days after the worst air pollution levels. Researcher Luiz A. A. Pereira claimed that "about 20 percent of the fetal deaths may be attributed to the NO2 (nitrogen dioxide)." It is believed that a pregnant woman's exposure to high levels of carbon monoxide can reduce her fetus' ability to absorb oxygen.

No More Fish Stories?
US - The National Academy of Sciences (NAS), noting that more than one-third of the world's commercial seafood species - including rockfish, salmon, cod and squid - are overfished, has called for drastic action to preserve life in the world's oceans. The NAS is recommending an immediate reduction in commercial fishing (the Alaska fishing fleet is now 2.5 times larger than needed to land the remaining ocean stocks), the creation of marine refuges (less than one percent of the world's oceans and coasts are now protected) and the elimination of wasteful fishing practices (nearly one fourth of the 110 million tons of animals hauled from the seas each year are discarded as non-commercial "by-catch"). Environmentalists have called for a fishing ban in 20 percent of the ocean's by 2020. Fishery officials counter that onshore activities (dams, logging, sewage, agricultural runoff) are also responsible for the decline of life in the oceans. "Within five years, we're going to see big changes" in the oceans, predicts NAS biologist Tom Powell. "We're going to be pretty sorry if we don't take action now."

Burning Issues; Explosive Consequences
LEBANON - An Israeli police attack on Arab protesters during a land dispute prompted five angry Arab youths to set fires near the northern Israeli port of Haifa. The fires spread across the border into Lebanon, destroying 85 percent of that country's pine forest. Blistering summer heat and a Middle East drought fed a conflagration that the syndicated Earth Week column called "the worst wildfires in the region's history… Some of the fires caused mines to explode in abandoned minefields in Israel, as well as in areas where they were buried during Lebanon's civil war."

Escaping the Maize
GERMANY - Just as environmentalists had warned, a genetically engineered (GE) crop has escaped and cross-pollinated a nearby field of corn. A strain of BT-176 corn created in a lab by the Novartis corporation spread to a field of corn in an organic farm near Riegel. Because the GE variant grows unusually tall, it was easy to identify the spread of GE-contaminated corn. The head of Germany's family farmers' organization has asked Novartis for immediate compensation for damages and Greenpeace Germany, warning that "there are no walls in nature," has demanded a recall of all GE crops and quick government action to contain the spread of the altered corn. The Texas Organic Growers Association backed the demand for compensation: "When such contamination impacts the organic integrity of the product produced on a certified organic farm, the grower and the provider of the seed that created the contamination should be held legally liable." Neither Novartis nor German officials had alerted local farmers that GE crops were being introduced. In October, the French Ministry of Agriculture announced a recall of genetically engineered corn.

Letting the Genes Out of the Bottle
US - The US government's Human Genome Project (dedicated to "mapping" human genetic material by the year 2005) has worried environmentalists, ethicists and civil libertarians. Now there is further cause for alarm. A private corporation, Incyte Genetics, expects to beat the US to the punch by identifying, within one year, all 120,000 to 150,000 sites on the human genome. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Incyte "will specialize in selling information about gene variations [and]… will market software and data about genetic variations" that can be used to predict and manipulate human responses to diseases and drugs.

FYI: DNA & the FBI
US - On October 13, the government announced that it had opened a national database for human DNA. According to the New York Times, the database is stored "in a computer at a secret location." Each state is providing DNA samples to the national database using "common test procedures and software designed by the FBI." Civil libertarians are concerned about placing such information in the hands of the FBI. Philip Bereano, a University of Washington professor of technology and public policy, observes that "The DNA database started out with pariahs - the sex offenders - but has already been enlarged to include other felons and will probably be extended to include everyone, giving elites the power to control 'unruly' citizens."

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Blight
RUSSIA - Megafires sweeping through the Far East have burned the Sikhote-Alin wildlife reserve, the main breeding ground for the world's last 450 endangered Siberian tigers. The World Wide Fund for Nature fears that tigers driven from their sanctuary will be killed by villagers.

Vive les Ants
FRANCE - "Considering that Life is one, all living beings having a common origin and having diversified in the course of the evolution of the species…, It is hereby proclaimed: All animals have equal rights to exist within the context of biological equilibrium…." So begins the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Animal Rights. The declaration was originally enunciated on October 15, 1978. After revision by the International League of Animal Rights in 1989, it was submitted to the UNESCO General Director in 1990. The entire declaration and nine accompanying essays are now available in a new book edited by George Chapouthier and Jean-Claude Nouët [Ligue Française des Droits de L'Animal, 39, Rue Claude-Bernard, 75005 Paris, France.]

Progress Kills Two Out of Every Five
US - A study published in the October issue of BioScience concludes that 40 percent of the world's human deaths are attributable to environmental problems tied to industrial activity and population growth. The lead author, Cornell University Ecology and Agricultural Sciences Professor David Pimintel, noted that air pollution compromises the health of four to five billion people, that 10 percent of the 80,000 pesticides and chemicals released into the environment are known carcinogens, and that climate changes will only compound the effect of infectious diseases. The researchers recommend "comprehensive, fair population control policies combined with effective environmental management programs."

Save the Soil: Save the Air
US - An eight-acre plot of black loam in Pennsylvania "sucks pollution out of the air like a giant siphon," according to the Washington Post. The corn and soybean patch created by the Rodale Institute shows how organic farming can rank alongside reforestation as one of the best ways to remove carbon from the air and reduce the greenhouse effect. The Clinton Administration is warming to the idea of Corn Belt states incorporating Rodale's farming techniques to grow crops and store millions of metric tons of CO2 - equivalent to the CO2 emissions of Iraq, Egypt, Greece, Denmark and Sweden.

Petroleum Weather Accelerates
GERMANY - Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurance company, and Worldwatch Institute report that the first 11 months of 1998 set a world record for damage from violent weather. The total, as of November 25, was $89 billion - greater than the weather-related losses for all of the 1980s. Floods, storms and hurricanes claimed an estimated 32,000 lives and drove 300 million people from their homes (a number larger than the population of the US). "There's a human fingerprint in natural disasters," warned Worldwatch climate expert Seth Dunn. "We're making them more frequent and more intense and… more destructive." The $89 billion does not account for long-term damages from crop failures, environmental collapse and disease.

"Canned Lions"
SOUTH AFRICA - Last November, millionaire banana farmer Roy Plath sold 17 hand-raised lions to a game ranch in Mozambique where hunters from Germany and the US pay as much as £12,000 to shoot trophy animals. South Africa, which benefits from the business of more than 6,000 foreign hunters a year, failed to halt the sale of these so-called "canned lions."

Genetic Engineering in Your Mouth
US - Did you know that 60-70 percent of the foods on US grocery shelves now contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs)? Unlike shoppers in the European Community, where all foods containing GMOs are set to be clearly labeled, US consumers are given no warning that they may be feeding their children a dose of GMOs when they offer a bowl of cornflakes, a pizza or even baby formula. Germany and Switzerland have banned GMOs in food. Austria and Norway are considering bans. In the US, however, the FDA requires no labeling and no safety testing for GMO foods additives. "Genetic pollution is irreversible," warns Mothers for Natural Law [PO Box 1177, Fairfield, IA 52556, (515) 472-2809, fax: -2683, www.safe-food.org], "Whether we like it or not, we have all been conscripted into the largest food experiment in the history of the human race." The Mothers fought back by gathering one million signatures on their "Consumer Right to Know" petition demanding a ban on the use of GMOs until they are proven safe and clear labeling of all products that currently contain these very unnatural ingredients.