A cross-section of individuals and organizations agreed to recommend significant elimination of pesticides, and embarked on a campaign to promote community awareness and alternatives to pesticides. The first test of the privately funded Cosmos 1 project will use a converted intercontinental ballistic missile launched from a Russian submarine to carry two Russian-built sail blades aloft. The 30-minute suborbital flight is only designed to test how the blades unfurl, but it is preparation for a launch later this year of a spacecraft powered by a pinwheel of solar sail blades. A San Francisco entrepreneur has concluded an 11th-hour agreement with the Chilean government that preserves a chunk of inviolate coastal wilderness the size of Yosemite National Park.
Environmentalists hail the landmark deal as a template for international environmental accords.
Two pieces of federal legislation, as well as the banning of DDT in 1972, are credited with helping stem the great blue heron's spiral toward extinction. Despite the loss of natural wetlands and continuing problems with erosion, the remarkably adaptive birds have adjusted to some extent by carving out space in treetops. Targeted by hunters in the 19th and 20th centuries for sport and for its delicate plumage, the loss of natural wetlands and the erosion of bay islands have continued to threaten the birds' survival, because those settings provide the food and protection from predators they need as they build their nests. When Cornell pre-med student Wendy Vargas asked the local people in the eastern part of the Dominican Republic what they used to cure skin problems, they pointed out almost two dozen common plants. If Vargas comes back this summer, when the lab will be fully operational, she will be able to run the plants through a modern DNA sequencer.