This week's stories on TalkingFish.org: photographer Brian Skerry writes about his experiences with bluefin tuna, an upcoming event will offer the opportunity to learn more about sustainable seafood, and a roundup of recent fish-related stories of interest. read more..

On March 30, I testified before Maine’s Legislative Joint Standing Committee on Environment and Natural Resources in opposition to LD 1853: An Act to Improve Environmental Oversight and Streamline Permitting for Mining in Maine. In my testimony (which you can read below, or as a .pdf here) I outlined the reasoning for our opposition, including: 1) Open pit mining has a track record in Maine and elsewhere of causing significant harm to Maine’s waters and natural resources, and should be subject to the review of other models, new technologies, risks and benefits. 2) The bill in its original form was poorly drafted and overreaching in many respects. CLF has made numerous recommendations that if made in their entirety would significantly improve the bill. 3) Open pit mines have left unfunded read more…

One of the most cherished natural resources Rhode Islanders have is miles and miles of coastline. Rhode Islanders take significant pride in the fact that while the State is small, people travel from all over the world to walk along our beaches. But, the beaches are in trouble. One serious coastal erosion issue in Matunuck village in South Kingstown is leading the State’s coastal resources management agency down a slippery policy slope and it doesn’t bode well for the state’s coastline. Matunuck is essentially falling into the ocean, or the ocean is coming to take Matunuck. However you look at it, the rates of coastal erosion are accelerating. The state road that provides the only evacuation route to our fellow Rhode Islanders that live in Matunuck is being undermined and read more…

Just a few weeks ago, a group of municipalities calling themselves the Great Bay Municipal Coalition – Dover, Portsmouth, Exeter, Rochester and Newmarket – took the unfortunate step of filing a lawsuit against the N.H. Department of Environmental Services, challenging its analysis of nitrogen pollution in the estuary. Despite the need for prompt action to protect the Great Bay estuary from pollution, the municipalities have chosen to attack NHDES’s nitrogen analysis on procedural grounds, claiming NHDES should have engaged in formal rule-making. The declining health of the Great Bay estuary – and the effects of nitrogen pollution – is well documented. According to the most recent State of Estuaries report, nitrogen concentrations in Great Bay have increased to unsustainable levels. And the loss of eelgrass – the cornerstone of the read more…

A couple of weeks ago I met a young farmer near Rutland, VT who was stunned to be out plowing his fields in the month of March. At that time the fields are usually knee-deep muddy, if not still covered in snow, ice or the slow-melting crust of the long winter. He was stunned:  if he plows and plants now, what’s going to happen next? How will his crops respond? Should he wait, for something more like a “normal” planting season to return? These are questions that thousands of us gardeners across New England have been struggling with lately, in the wake of an unseasonably warm spell, and a winter that broke records first for early snowfall, and then low overall snowfall and high temperatures. Looking out our windows when read more…

CLF recently teamed up with Green Fire Productions to organize premiers of the new documentary Ocean Frontiers: The Dawn of a New Era in Ocean Stewardship in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The film is an inspiring voyage to seaports and watersheds across the country. The audience was given a chance to meet industrial shippers and whale biologists, pig farmers and wetland ecologists, commercial and sport fishermen and reef snorkelers—all of them embarking on a new course of cooperation to sustain the sea and our coastal and ocean economies. CLF organized the events to raise awareness about the need for new approaches to solving the problems facing our ocean, and to highlight the success of cutting-edge ocean planning initiatives that CLF has backed in Rhode Island (the Ocean Special Areas Management read more…

We throw away a lot of food. Sometimes the scraps are inedible, like banana peels. Sometimes we forget about things in the refrigerator until we notice the smell. And sometimes our eyes are just bigger than our stomachs. Regardless of the reason, a lot of food scraps end up in our trash and ultimately the landfill. This is a wasted opportunity to realize environmental and economic benefits by using food scraps to improve soil health and generate renewable energy. By diverting food scraps to other uses, such as generating energy and creating compost, we avoid the need to expand landfills in the state or transport waste long distances to out-of-state facilities. When food scraps and other organic matter decompose in landfills, they produce methane gas, a potent contributor to climate read more…

Entergy owns a tired old nuclear plant on the banks of the Connecticut River in Vermont – a plant it wants to keep running despite escalating costs, threats to the environment and public health, and a history of false promises.  With old approvals in hand, Entergy continues to operate Vermont Yankee past its scheduled retirement date of March 21, 2012. Entergy’s view of Vermont’s authority seems to be Vermont only has authority to give it a green light.  By Entergy’s warped playbook, any condition of operation or approval would be off limits. Entergy went to Court last year to challenge Vermont’s authority to regulate that plant. The Court partly agreed with Entergy, but clearly recognized and reaffirmed that Entergy still needs approval from the Vermont Public Service Board to continue to operate Vermont read more…

Water is the essential life-giving force on Earth; we literally cannot live without it. Compared to many parts of the nation and the world, New England is blessed with an abundance of clean, fresh water. Yet in overabundance water can also be a powerfully destructive force. Tropical Storm Irene reminded Vermonters of this truism last year when flood waters washed away roads, bridges, homes, and livelihoods. Fortunately, many of the same things New Englanders can do to protect ourselves from flooding also help to keep our water clean and full of healthy aquatic wildlife. Don’t believe it? Well, to quote the John Fogerty song, “I know it’s true, oh so true, ’cause I saw it on TV.” Vermont Public Television to be exact, which is broadcasting documentary films in the Bloom series produced read more…

MIT graduate student Zach Youngerman asks an excellent question in an opinion piece in the Boston Globe: Did bad neighborhood design doom Trayvon Martin? Of course, my lawyerly impulse is to say that clearly urban planning and local culture was not the “proximate cause” of that young man’s death – clearly the man with the gun is the place to look for that. But Mr. Youngerman makes a very good point – a place that lacks the “eyes on the street” (to use the phrase that he quotes from the great urbanist writer Jane Jacobs), sidewalks and where there are few sidewalks transforms the fundamental human activity of walking into suspicious behavior. As Mr. Youngerman says, “. . . behavior is not simply a matter of character; it is also read more…