Let There Be Dark
AMA Links Light Pollution to Cancer, Health Woes
The American Medical Association this month passed a resolution that recognizes a host of problems with light pollution, including health issues -- such as breast cancer -- that are "associated with human eye exposure to light at night."
The AMA resolution (view it in full here) explains that the increasing amount of light in the world, including streetlight glare and intrusive light that "trespasses" into bedroom windows and homes, is linked to higher rates of cancer and other health woes. It harms wildlife as well, the medical group says.
As the AMA puts it: "Light trespass has been implicated in disruption of the human and animal circadian rhythm, and strongly suspected as an etiology of suppressed melatonin production, depressed immune systems, and increase in cancer rates such as breast cancers." In addition, it "disrupts nocturnal animal activity and results in diminished various animal populations’ survival and health," the group says.
Bones of Contention
Beloved Dino Museum to Close its Doors, Shutting Down the Public
Revolution rages in Tehran and the world is transfixed by millions of Iranians demanding free speech. Laramie, Wyoming is light years away from the Islamic world, but amid charges of repression of free speech and totalitarian decisions, a revolt is gaining momentum against the University of Wyoming (UW) trustees -- and its emblematic martyr is Big Al, the Allosaurus.
Facing an $18.3 million budget shortfall, UW decided to close the school’s Geological Museum in response to the state of Wyoming’s mandated 10 percent budget cuts. The museum will close to the public July 1; its director and assistant are among the people who will lose their jobs as a result.
Big Al -- whose incredibly-preserved bones greet museum visitors -- will become a recluse. Some researchers may be able to see him, but not the public. The same goes for other museum prizes, including one of the only mounted skeletons of an Apatosaurus (or Brontosaurus, as it was formerly called).
On the Range
Wild Bighorns Threatened by Domestic Sheep
At one point in my life I was very interested in studying wild sheep. I almost accepted a graduate research project at the U of Alaska to look at winter diet and behavior of Dall sheep in the Brooks Range. I wimped out when I realized that I’d be alone months at a time in a tiny cabin on the North Slope peering through a night vision scope to watch the animals in the near 24 hours of darkness of mid-winter forage in 50 below zero weather. It just didn’t sound like that much fun -- though definitely interesting. But for a number of years I read everything I could about wild sheep, and I continue to follow research and news about wild sheep to this date.
Wild bighorn sheep were once fairly common in the western United States and Canada. Some estimates suggest as many as 1-2 million wild sheep once roamed the West. By 1900, over-hunting, habitat degradation and perhaps most importantly disease transmission from domestic sheep to wild sheep had brought the bighorns down to an estimated 15,000. Today there are about 75,000 sheep in the western US and Canada.
While that is a significant growth from its low point, wild bighorn sheep populations are nowhere near their biological potential. There is no doubt in my mind that the West could easily support far more sheep were it not for one thing -- domestic livestock.
Herd Horrors
Wyoming’s National Elk Refuge on Ten Most Imperiled List
A grim future is predicted for the 25,000-acre National Elk Refuge in Wyoming unless the sprawling home to elk and bison gets an infusion of new policies and resources, according to a new report from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The group ranks the wildlife sanctuary -- which has one of the largest concentrations of elk in the world -- as one of America's Ten Most Imperiled Refuges.
The refuge was established in 1912 in the wilderness south of Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks in an effort to resuscitate elk herds, which had faced mass starvation after bitterly cold winters and human encroachment, PEER notes. The results have not been good.
Attention Paid
Neglected Libby Gets Government Notice, and Needed Money, at Last
Details and relief are arriving in Libby in the wake of the the Environmental Protection Agency's decision this week to declare the town a federal public health emergency, paving the way for millions of dollars of health and cleanup funds to arrive.
The federal government has announced it will provide $6 million to Lincoln County health authorities to help Libby and Troy residents get medical care for asbestos-related illnesses such as asbestosis, a scarring of the lungs, and mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer.
Of the estimated 1,200 people in Libby who have serious asbestos-related lung problems, about 70 percent of them never worked at the mine, according to the government's criminal indictment against W.R. Grace & Co. Residents inhaled asbestos fibers during everyday activities, stirring it up when they swept the floor, jogged on the local running track, played in local ball parks, or simply did the wash -- since Grace allowed employees to go home covered in dust.
The legacy of the exposures will be felt in the community for years to come, as there is often a long latency period before illness strikes.
Father's Day
Who Said Fathers Have to be Perfect?
Christopher Buckley didn’t start it. But his latest book, Losing Mum and Pup, codifies our generation’s complaint that we had less-than-perfect parents. Baby Boomers excelled at compiling lists of grievances. Our parents’ shortcomings have always been at the top of the charts. Blame it on Dr. Spock, but why is our generation -- we who led the charge for civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights, and respect for the Third World -- so singularly close-minded and judgmental when it comes to our own parents?
Like Christopher Buckley, I grew up in awe of my father. Charles Longstreet Weltner, a Democratic Congressman and Georgia Supreme Court justice, was a world away from Buckley in terms of culture and politics and fame. Tom Brokaw described my father in Boom, his book about the Sixties, as “the local Congressman, Charles Longstreet Weltner, a scion of a prominent white family, (who) was the only Southerner to vote for the Civil Rights Act in 1964.”
Yes, he was named after Civil War General James Longstreet, blamed by some historians for losing the Battle of Gettysburg. Yes, he voted his conscience in 1964, and again when he resigned from Congress in 1966 rather than comply with a Georgia Democrat Party requirement to take a “loyalty oath” to support all other Democrat nominees on the ticket. This was the year notorious segregationist Lester Maddox was the party’s nominee for governor. Maddox was famous for two things: riding a bicycle backwards and wielding an ax handle to chase African-Americans from his "whites-only" restaurant.
Larry Lasich said: "I blame the proto-ancestor who started using fire. They should have seen this coming and stopped using it."