IN BRIEF.

THE CARIBOU'S LAST STAND?

"Most people don't realize that there are caribou in the lower 48 states," says wildlife biologist Tim Layser, "and that they are the most endangered population of large mammals in the country. Once spread throughout the West, they all but disappeared within a single lifetime."

In an attempt to save the species, a cooperative effort between the University of Idaho, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Canadian Fish and Wildlife reintroduced the caribou into the remote Selkirk Range above Priest Lake in the northern Idaho Panhandle, one of the country's wildest habitats, where endangered lynx, wolf and grizzly still roam freely.

"Our scientific team now tracks, monitors and analyzes the health of the wide-ranging herd," says John Almack of the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife. "We fit 24 animals with radio collars to follow their movements and we also fly over and follow their tracks to take a census."

The survival of the herd is at a crisis point. In the last census, conducted at the end of March, the count was 32--16 less than the census before--a devastating result. A certain number of animals will fall to predation by mountain lions and grizzlies, but the reasons for such a sizable drop are not clear. Ironically, only two with radio collars were lost.

"The tremendous increase in snowmobile use into the high country also affects the herd," says Mark Sprengel, forest program director for the Selkirk-Priest Basin Association (SPBA), an environmental activist group that works with the Caribou Recovery scientific team and obtains grants for the typically under-funded project. "Caribou are skittish. Noise and harassment could force them out of prime habitat into marginal areas."

The 32-animal herd would not be considered in a sustainable state until it reaches at least 50. "But when you lose a few out of the 50, the drop seems to be irreversible," says Layser. What can be done? If this herd--the only one in the United States--is to survive, he says, "it needs to be augmented now. Females from the outside need to be brought in to strengthen the gene pool and raise the herd to a sustainable number. It may be our only hope." CONTACT: Priest Lake Ranger Station, [phone], email: [e-mail]; Selkirk-Priest Basin Association, [phone], www.spbainc.org.

--Bob Difley

SINGING FOR SONGBIRDS

In the case of coffee production, the old ways are the best ways. Traditionally, coffee is grown in the shade of tropical overstory trees, which enrich the soil and reduce the need for chemical fertilizers. The practice preserves forest habitat for migratory songbirds, and is friendly to organic production. But by 1990, more than half of Latin America's traditional coffee farms had been converted to full-sun agriculture, with one of the highest proportions (60 percent) in large-scale producer Colombia. While very productive, full-sun coffee harvesting requires intensive use of herbicides, pesticides and artificial fertilizers (including some, like DDT and benzene hexachloride, that are banned in the U.S.). And fewer than 10 percent of the 150 species of North American songbirds that winter in Latin America can survive a season on a full-sun plantation.

Among the species threatened by full-sun coffee are the Baltimore Oriole (which suffered a 30 percent drop between 1980 and 1994, according to published reports); the Tennessee Warbler (a 70 percent drop); and the Cape May Warbler (50 percent).

The issue has only recently begun to receive the attention it deserves. The National Audubon Society briefly marketed the shade-grown Cafe Audubon, but it was not a marketing success and was discontinued last year. Other eco-friendly entrepreneurs and brokers are trying to take up the slack by importing, packaging and selling shade coffee, using guidelines developed by The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

The shade-coffee issue is dependent upon public awareness. If 10 percent of American coffee drinkers switched to shade coffee, it would take more than 300,000 acres out of full-sun production. Among the groups striving to make this happen is The Songbird Foundation, founded by singer Danny O'Keefe (best known for writing the hit "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues"). The Songbird Foundation is encouraging Americans to ask, "Is this coffee songbird safe?" as it funds on-the-ground shade tree efforts and partners with other organizations to develop a third-party certification process. It's also enlisting the support of musicians to increase public awareness.

Last year, O'Keefe organized a benefit for the foundation in Philadelphia that featured Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne, both converts to the cause. "This is something that makes a direct difference in people's lives," says O'Keefe, who is using his new album, Running From the Devil, to help drum up support. "We're empowering consumers with every cup of shade-grown coffee. And we're beginning to see the tide turning." CONTACT: The Songbird Foundation, (888)607-BIRD, www.songbird.org.

--Jim Motavalli

SEEING CLEARLY AT LAKE TAHOE

Everyone at Lake Tahoe is hoping that history--or at least a very specific historical fact--will repeat itself. Tahoe--a 23-mile-long, 12-mile wide, nearly 1,600-foot-deep lake nestled in the Sierra Nevada--regained its lost clarity after most of the surrounding forests were clear cut in the 1800s and erosion was rampant. That's particularly good news now, considering that Tahoe is again losing its famed clarity.

Alan Heyvaert, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, has taken sediment and algae samples to discover that Tahoe's clear blue water probably became significantly murkier in the late 19th century after there was considerable logging in the area. However, after the turn of the century, when the logging stopped and the impacts were gone, the lake's clarity returned.

In the 1950s and 1960s, rapid urbanization began in the Tahoe Basin. With roads crisscrossing the area and housing tracts built, Mother Nature could no longer filter out sediment and nutrients from stormwater before it hit the lake. Tahoe's famed transparency started getting worse by a rate of more than a foot a year, a trend that continues. But unlike the environmental impacts of the 1800s, urbanization isn't going to stop.

"From a medical perspective, it's a different set of symptoms," says Heyvaert. "What we have now can be looked at as a chronic illness, contrary to the period of ill health we had in the 1800s." The good news from studies about the lake's past, Heyvaert says, is that the lake can recover relatively quickly if given the opportunity.

Dave Roberts, assistant executive director of the environmental watchdog group the League to Save Lake Tahoe, would like to see history repeated. "It's really the hope we have in the Tahoe Basin, that the restoration and mitigation being proposed are going to adequately control sediment loading and arrest the decline in clarity" Roberts says.

Tahoe officials have rallied around a remedy for the endangered lake, known as the Environmental Improvement Program (EIP). The restoration effort has brought focus to lake-saving efforts throughout the Tahoe Basin, which incorporates two states, five counties and about 50,000 residents. The EIP outlines programs that will cost $900 million, with funding divided up between the federal, state and local governments.

"I don't know of any other place that has put together an environmental improvement plan that clearly identifies the roles for the various levels of government to play, as well as the private sector," says Pam Drum, spokeswoman for the bistate Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, which developed the EIP. "We can serve as a model for other areas." CONTACT: Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, [phone].

--Andy Bourelle

STARBUCKS COFFEE: PUTTING GROUNDS IN THE GROUND?

Starbucks sells more than 10 million cups of coffee worldwide every week, according to spokeswoman Helen Chung. That much coffee leaves an awful lot of grounds to dispose of, and so it was heartening to learn that the manager of a Starbucks in Freehold, New Jersey was, at least for a few months, collecting them in biodegradable garbage liners and having the residue trucked to the local composting facility.

Why Freehold? Chung explained that the initiative came from the manager, not from Starbucks' head office in Seattle. "We have Green Team members throughout our stores" she says. "They are store partners [employees] who volunteer to work on environmental projects." It's up to the individual stores to choose a project, she adds.

But in this case, there seems to have been a lack of communication between Freehold and Seattle. "We were unaware of them doing it. The manager elected to, and she no longer works for the company" says Ben Packard, Starbucks manager for environmental affairs. "It was not a pilot program, for us to adopt this system-wide."

Since the Freehold experiment was abandoned earlier this year, no Starbucks stores use biodegradable garbage liners to recycle coffee grounds. Although Starbucks recycles some solid waste, says Packard, the availability and regulation of facilities for composting varies widely between municipalities. "It's tough for one store," says another Starbucks spokesman, Alan Hilowitz. "You can't order enough [liners] to make it economical." Mike Manna, East Coast sales manager for Biocorp, maker of the Freehold liners, admitted that a company making the switch to biodegradable will find its liner bills rising two to three times. And he agreed with Packard that the infrastructure is not yet in place everywhere. "You need a compost facility nearby to make it cost-effective," he says.

So, despite the fleeting efforts of one store, organic waste composting is still not a priority for Starbucks, says Packard. "The bigger opportunity is for our customers to compost coffee grounds themselves." In a few areas, where word has gotten around that gardens love the nitrogen-rich grounds, "there's a backlog of people wanting them," he says.

But for environmentalists, if the bulk of the organic waste stream is going to a landfill, that's a wasted opportunity. CONTACT: Starbucks Customer Relations, [phone], www.starbucks.com.

--Robert Davey

AMERICAN RIVERS: DAMNING THE DAMS

North America's native freshwater species--the fish, mussels, crayfish, frogs, snails and other animals that live in rivers and streams--are going extinct as fast as species that live in tropical rainforests.

And dams are mostly to blame. That's the message of a recent report, America's Most Endangered Rivers of 2000, released by the conservation group American Rivers. The report names rivers that face the most serious and immediate environmental threats.

Of the 13 rivers on the list, eight are threatened by dams. Washington's lower Snake River tops the list for the second year in a row because four dams operated by the Army Corps of Engineers have pushed salmon and steelhead to the brink of extinction. The structures have transformed the cool free-flowing river into a series of warm slackwater pools. Migrating fish succumb to predators and disease in the reservoirs and have trouble getting around the dams.

"We have blocked the flows, straightened the curves and hardened the banks of thousands of miles of waterways" says Rebecca Wodder, president of American Rivers. "By changing the most fundamental qualities of rivers--their natural shapes and flows--we've made it difficult for them to support life."

The Clinton administration will decide this year whether to include partial removal of the dams in its salmon recovery plan. Many believe dam removal would strike a devastating blow to the regional economy, but Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber recently spoke in favor of dam removal, saying, "My choice is to reject the guiltless complacency that has permitted this drift toward extinction and to simply do what needs to be done."

The National Hydropower Association has criticized American Rivers' "most endangered" list for oversimplifying the issue. The industry group maintains that hydropower dams provide pollution-free, renewable energy, enhance biodiversity and improve habitat.

Is American Rivers' list of endangered rivers--with its focus on dams--a fair representation of the threats our nation's rivers face today? According to Anthony Ricciardi, a freshwater biologist at Canada's Dalhousie University, dams pose a major problem for the ecological health of rivers--but are not the only problem. "We also have to look at water quality, organic and chemical pollution and runoff from streets and yards" he says. "The invasion of exotic species--the zebra mussel for example--is also something that has to be addressed."

"If current trends persist, many more species will be lost over the next 100 years than during the past century" adds Ricciardi. "That would be a loss not just for the United States, but for the world." CONTACT: American Rivers, [phone], www.americanrivers.org; The Nature Conservancy, [phone], www.tnc.org (for freshwater species).

--Amy Souers