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Fiji Water: Where bottled water, money, and ethics conflict

Fiji Water, one of the world's most well-promoted brands of bottled water, is also one of the most secretive and private. Owned by Lynda and Stewart Resnick, the increasingly controversial Southern California billionaires, Fiji Water is a symbol of both the bad and the good in the world of bottled water.
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History Lesson: Solutions for the Sea

Marine protected areas have made international headlines in the past week as Oregon moved closer to approving three reserves and Australia delayed plans for establishing coastal marine parks. Three marine experts and Island Press authors, Steve Palumbi, Carolyn Sotka, and Callum Roberts, have long championed reserves as critical for the health of the oceans.
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From Temples to Office Towers in Kunming

The Bamboo Temple is one of the major Buddhist shrines in Kunming. Built in the 13th century, restored in 1890, and is set high above the city surrounded by native forest and plantation. The temple is well cared for unlike some I have visited in China. Like all such sites, it is heavily visited by tourists as well as active religious practitioners. Two ancient cypress trees (said to be 450 years old) guard the entrance and carefully manicured magnolias and pear trees grace the inner courtyard.
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In the Mountains of Yunnan

Living in Kunming has its benefits:-great food; friendly people; helpful colleagues; and stimulating work. But for a city of its size, there is precious little public open space and I have yet to discover any place where one can walk on dirt or grass more than a few meters at a stretch. After two months in town, it was time to get out into the mountains.
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Wolves and the Ecology of Fear in Action

Recently, I spent time with a friend in a northern part of the Rockies with thriving wolf population. My friend was skeptical about how wolves affect ecosystems—was—because an event that morning rapidly changed his mind.
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Counting People and Cars in China's Capital

Before I left for my year in China, I took a few minutes one afternoon to fill out the federal census form that was delivered to my house. Many Americans may complain about such an “onerous” exercise, but most citizens understand the importance of being counted. Election districts, political representation in the Congress, and federal subsidies are but three of the reasons to support the census.
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Load Shedding or Load Sharing?

During a trip last week to Nepal to attend a workshop on climate change adaptation strategies across the Himalaya, I experienced darkness within darkness for several hours every night. I am not talking about visiting one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, though poverty and political dysfunction are part of the darkness I mean to describe. The dim conditions I am referring to are both figurative and literal; each night Nepal undergoes “load shedding,” the governments preferred euphemism for what I have always known as a power outage.
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Road Ecology: Making Roads Safer for Animals and Humans

Animals and cars don't go well together. Increasingly, wildlife crossings are coming into focus for many transportation departments across the country. The California Roadkill Observation System (CROS ) is the first statewide roadkill reporting web site and is a way for people throughout the state to record their observations of the dead animals and of their environmental context.
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Combating Global Warming with Wolves

I recently attended the Ecological Society of America’s annual meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the theme was global warming. Eminent ecologists presented models that projected climate change into a bleak future where species that require unique habitat may be unable to persist.

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