By Harriet Blake
Green Right Now

Geoff LeBaron gets paid to count birds, among other things. And this is an especially busy time of year for him and all bird watchers. From Dec. 14 through Jan. 5 the National Audubon Society conducts its annual Christmas Bird Count. LeBaron has served as its director since 1987.

“It’s neat to be able to work for the National Audubon Society in this [endeavor] that brings birding and ornithology together,” LeBaron says, explaining that ornithologists like himself are trained scientists who study what birds do, while birders are folks, also like himself, who are captivated by watching birds. Not all ornithologists, he points out, enjoy birdwatching as a pastime.

[Read more →]

By Clint Williams
Green Right Now

Horseshoe crabs - believe it or not - scuttle about in Jamaica Bay, a 20,000-acre maze of marshland, islands and water that forms the southern boundary of Brooklyn. There would be more if they could find a place to breed.

Decades of debris have piled up on the bay’s beaches, blocking the path to egg-laying sites for the prehistoric-looking crabs. But things will soon get better for horseshoe crabs in New York City - and blue-winged warblers in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, and marbled godwits along the Mendocino Coast of northern California - because of TogetherGreen, an initiative of the National Audubon Society paid for by Toyota.

The program awarded TogetherGreen Conservation Innovation Grants totaling $1.4 million this fall. The grants, ranging from $5,000 to $68,000, will fund 41 projects in 24 states. As you might expect from Audubon, many of the funded projects benefit birds.

[Read more →]

By Diane Porter
Green Right Now

We’re too familiar with the downsides of the holiday season. Bags of new things come into the house and get hidden in already-full closets and drawers. Boxes of decorations come out of their hiding places, muscling their way into your living space. Wrapping paper and ribbons multiply like guppies, scissors and tape go missing, cookies come out of the oven and the doorbell rings. When it’s all over, we work to find places for the new stuff, stash the decorations again and vow to make next year different.

[Read more →]

By Barbara Kessler

Every spring, as sure as the sun warms the cedars and the birds flock back from Mexico, Lee Clauser leads a stealth group of intense adults dressed in khakis and boots to the edge of a wild thicket near his house in north central Texas.

They creep into the brush, quietly unloading their weapons of mass observation.

Putting binoculars to eyes, they look, and listen, for the brilliant Golden-cheeked warbler, and for the reclusive Black-capped vireo. Both songbirds are listed as endangered in the United States, their nesting grounds having been narrowed to a strip of Texas Hill Country that supplies just the right shrubbery and old-growth cedars. The birders, who come from Fort Worth, Dallas, New England, the Pacific Northwest and beyond, know that catching a glimpse of one of these delicate creatures is a rare treat.

“People have come from Europe to see those birds, both species. For birders all over the world, it’s a huge deal,” says Clauser, a retired banker and life-long bird rescue and rehabilitation expert.

[Read more →]

From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Green Power Pilot Award

The 46 environmental and social justice organizations, over 700 local groups, and tens of thousands of young people that make up the Energy Action Coalition are leading the way in addressing climate change by creating vast networks of power, winning clean energy victories on campuses and in communities, and building a cleaner, healthier, and just future. In May 2005, Energy Action Coalition launched the Campus Climate Challenge to unite students and young people in achieving 100% clean energy policies on 1,000 campuses over three years. To date, they have reached over 2 million young people through the challenge and over 760 campuses have joined the campaign.

[Read more →]

By Julie Bonnin

When Houston made headlines for abysmal recycling rates last month, it dealt a blow to the work Mayor Bill White has been doing to improve the city’s environmental reputation. White, who was Deputy Director of the U. S. Energy Department under President Bill Clinton, has pushed to clean up the city’s environmental record, with victories such as special recognition for the city’s commitment to development of a solar infrastructure (from DOE this past spring), and its designation as the nation’s top municipal purchaser of green power (from the Environmental Protection Agency).

But there may yet be hope for turning Houston a deeper shade of green. Weeks after being called the worst recycler of the country’s 30 major metropolitan areas, city officials have announced their intention to launch an ambitious pilot program that involves the latest in “single stream” recycling.

[Read more →]

By Lynette Holloway

Sean J. Hunter, director of Doggy Au Pair, with Shih Tzu Lester J. Doodles and Silla, a Mastiff
Most days, Sean J. Hunter, a jaunty dog walker, can be seen maneuvering his way along the sidewalks of Chicago’s tony Gold Coast neighborhood followed by a cavalry of his charges: pampered pooches. They range in [...]

[Read more →]

By Nima Kapadia
The United States Postal Service didn’t do it “Overnight” but it is taking steps to expressly reduce its carbon footprint by launching a “green” website. The website, which debuted June 2, helps consumers search for eco-friendly products and

[Read more →]

By Barbara Kessler
Since the first hippie incurred the nickname “tree hugger,” there remains an inescapable (but not inconvenient) truth at the core of that label: Trees are still one of the best things you can cultivate if you want to green your particular piece of paradise. They gobble CO2, emit oxygen, provide cooling [...]

[Read more →]

By Bill Marvel
Census takers trek door to door to count people. Bird watchers take to parks and woods for their annual bird count. Volunteers patrol the waters off California and Hawaii looking for whales. But you don’t have to go any farther than your own back yard to participate in this year’s GLOBE at [...]

[Read more →]

By John DeFore
Christmas is the season when all we know about conservation conflicts with our notions of festivity and warmth — when the guy down the block whose house boasts more colored lights than Broadway is viewed not as unconscionably wasteful but as a supplier of good cheer to the neighborhood.
One of the most painless [...]

[Read more →]

By Shermakaye Bass
So you’re ready to deck the halls, but you’re not sure about using real-live holly (tricky, because it can dry out and shed). Perhaps you don’t want to mess with holly or maybe you don’t feel creative enough to fashion boughs and garlands from the real stuff. But if you’re dreaming of a [...]

[Read more →]