Global Warming Issues

Among the many bills Congress is considering before it recesses for the November elections is a proposed land swap between the State of Alaska and the federal government that would allow a gravel road to be built through a remote national wildlife refuge.

Environmental groups are lined up against the proposal, saying a road would threaten the pristine wilderness area. Building it would require cutting an approximately 200-acre strip through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge on the Alaska Peninsula, a resting place for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds and other animals.

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The eight-year-old, multibillion-dollar effort to rescue the Everglades has failed to halt the wetlands’ decline because of bureaucratic delays, a lack of financing from Congress and overdevelopment, according to a new report.

The 287-page study by the National Research Council, a biennial review required by Congress, warned that South Florida’s stunning river of grass was quickly reaching a point of no return. Without “near term progress,” the report said, more species will die off “and the Everglades ecosystem may experience irreversible losses to its character and functioning.”

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