In the March 2004 issue of Environmental Practice, this page discussed the intensification of resource use as an ethical issue of considerable importance. Matters of process, time, and justice were particularly significant in terms of whether a particular pattern of resource use was moral or not.

I have been struggling with this topic for quite a while. It seems like I am always receiving a comment about how poor our education system has become and shouldn't I be able to write a motivating piece on the ethics of education. Because I thought I should be able to do that, it has bothered me that I could not. Today I deduced that I could not write this because there are no ethics of education.

The terms “liberal” and “conservative” are abused, scorned, and defamed to the point of uselessness. Liberals are pilloried for big government, high taxes, corrosive relativism, and moral permissiveness. Conservatives are damned as those who opportunistically honor only the strong and powerful while brutalizing the poor, the helpless, and minorities. Two words that once were not ideological have become lost in ideology. It may now be impossible to escape the ideology, but the ideology should be seen as a constraint, not a condition. We are in serious trouble with this loss of credible meaning to our language. We are overdue to recover the actual meanings of Liberal and Conservative. Both have historical origins and classical definitions that might be surprising in light of today's polarization. Not the least, it becomes clear that environmental science is not inherently liberal, as some critics complain; instead, it reflects the best of both Classical Liberalism and Classical conservatism.

Today, as never before, the United States Army faces significant challenges to conducting the realistic training necessary to produce combat-ready forces. Public concern, manifested in environmental laws and regulations concerning pollution, endangered species, competition for resources, and land use has already caused military training to either be constrained—at a cost to training realism—or halted completely.

Many northwesterners can probably cite the latest economic trends: how the Dow is doing, whether consumer confidence is up or down, whether GDP grew last year. But few could tell you about the state of other areas we care deeply about—such as the integrity of nature and human health—because there are few regularly published metrics on environmental and social trends.

Escherichia coli is a ubiquitous bacterium that lives commensally in the guts of most mammals, including man; however, some types of E. coli are pathogenic to humans, including the enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), of which E. coli 0157:H7 is the most well-known member. Escherichia coli 0157:H7 is a natural member of the gastrointestinal microflora of domestic ruminants (e.g., cattle, goats, sheep) and has been isolated from several wildlife species (e.g., deer, rabbits), and transmission may occur from any of these reservoirs. Although E. coli 0157:H7 is primarily thought of as a foodborne pathogen, recent outbreaks have demonstrated other important routes that lead to human exposure, such as contaminated water and dust. Because E. coli 0157:H7 represents a significant and widespread environmental health hazard, much effort has been directed toward the development of intervention strategies. Because of the relationship between ruminant animals, wildlife, and E. coli 0157:H7, many of the strategies have focused on reducing levels in live animals. In this review article, we examine this virulent pathogen and explore several of the recently developed pre-harvest intervention strategies (including pro-biotic and anti-pathogen strategies, as well as environmental/management changes) and their potential to reduce zoonotic transmission of E. coli 0157:H7 and other EHEC to man.

San Diego County is attempting a proactive conservation planning effort to protect endangered, threatened, and other sensitive species at the landscape level. This plan is being completed under the State of California's Natural Community Conservation Planning (NCCP) program. When completed, a series of individual Habitat Conservation Plans (HCPs) will provide a system of interconnected reserves designed and managed for biological conservation. The NCCP program has been the center of significant controversy since its inception, yet it has been touted as a national model. This paper explores some of the key lessons that have been learned during implementation of the largest and most complex HCP approved under the NCCP—the Multiple Species Conservation Program—since its adoption five years ago. The exploration of the successes and impediments faced by the Multiple Species Conservation Program should help others developing habitat conservation programs in their future efforts to protect endangered species and their habitats.

Since 1940, Native Americans have been required to apply to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to obtain eagle carcasses or other parts. An increase in tribal populations and a revitalization of cultural practices has increased the demand for eagle parts and led to delays in filling requests. In a cooperative effort with the USFWS, the Pueblo of Zuni Indian Tribe recently revived the ancient Zuni practice of live eagle husbandry in order to both maintain this cultural practice and make eagle feathers more widely available to tribal members. This is being accomplished in a manner consistent with modern raptor husbandry techniques, but in a Zuni-based context. Environmental professionals have assisted the project greatly, especially concerning the life history and behavioral needs of the birds and the implications for eagle conservation. Although we have explored and decided against the idea of breeding captive eagles so that their young may be released into the wild (because it goes against traditional Zuni beliefs), this is certainly a feasible option for other, similar facilities and would be strongly supported by the USFWS, conservation groups, and wildlife professionals.

This article reports on a content analysis of newspaper coverage of a wildfire on the Hanford nuclear site in the summer of 2000. The risk and mass communication literatures suggest that newspaper coverage of such fires would frame the event in dread terms, with some variation in the framing depending on the community diversity of the home market. We found that newspapers did vary in their framing of the fire, and that vigilance and confidence were more common framings of the fire. Our tentative explanation is that key risk communicators and reporters adhered to their professional ethics and relied on one another to develop a frame for Hanford hazards and risks.