Ecology

One newly bioengineered salmon, endowed with a gene from an eel-like fish, grows five times faster than its natural cousins. Another genetically modified salmon produces antifreeze in its blood so it can survive icy waters that swirl through oceanic fish farms. A tropical zebra fish, infused with the green fluorescent gene of a jellyfish, glows in the dark -- a living novelty that promoters hope will be a must-have for the home aquarium.

Despite strong opposition from environmentalists, the state Assembly on Thursday approved controversial legislation that allows a solar energy developer to bypass local agencies in seeking to build a large-scale power plant in a valley that is home to desert tortoises, golden eagles and bighorn sheep. The nation's leading environmental groups see K Road Power's proposed 663-megawatt Calico Solar plant as one of the most ecologically damaging renewable energy projects in the California desert.

Bugs. Bugs on the sidewalks. Bugs on the street. Bugs on the lamp posts, the bridges, the boats, the cars. The landscape wrapped in a blanket of squishy, buggy fur. Piles of bugs. Sometimes it seems like miles of bugs. Bugs on your toes and your nose. Bugs on your thighs. Here's bugs in your eyes. Bugs in your mouth, too, if you are not careful. Oops! Crunch. The mayflies are back, and for many folks along the Upper Mississippi River, there is no escape.

The very title of the subversive documentary "Surviving Progress" sounds counterintuitive. Isn't progress a good thing, the sure cure for civilization's ills? What's to survive? Plenty, according to this expect-the-unexpected Canadian film based on Ronald Wright's bestselling "A Short History of Progress. " Both brainy and light on its feet, bristling with provocative insights and probing questions, this film feels like it's expanding your mind while you're watching it. The premise of "Surviving Progress," much more dystopian in its quiet way than "The Hunger Games," is that we delude ourselves if we think the seeming improvements that growth and development bring will result in quality-of-life advances or even survival of the planet.

Tom Soto's thoughtful article, "Ecological Issues Come in All Colors" (Commentary, Oct. 8), articulated a vital but little understood fact: that environmental matters are not exclusively the domain of the wealthy or of backpackers. While minorities have not been joiners of traditional environmental organizations, our environmentalism is personal and cultural. Our cultures value nature and respect the land. We are taught to venerate our elders, whether it's our grandparents or ancient trees.

Stressing the importance of the "three Rs"--reduction, reuse and recycling--Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon proposed this week that the city allocate $100,000 toward the construction of an ecology museum in the northeast Valley. A second motion by Alarcon asked for the release of $623,000 in previously allocated funds for the purchase of a 1 1/2-acre parcel at 12002 Osborne St.

Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to increase scrutiny of applications to build in 29 designated ecologically sensitive areas. The changes, proposed by Supervisor Ed Edelman in March, include hiring a county biologist to analyze all projects proposed for the zones, requiring an earlier survey of the land's biological resources and mandating a review by the county Planning Commission of any project exempted from full environmental study.

Researchers from UC Santa Barbara have been chosen by the National Science Foundation to establish a new Long-Term Ecological Research Site in Antarctica, the foundation announced last week. NSF currently has 17 such sites elsewhere to monitor slow changes in the environment, but this will be the first on the southernmost continent. The $500,000-a-year project is designed to monitor the ice-dominated marine ecosystem at the bottom of the world.

Forty third-graders from Westwood Charter School equipped with binoculars and magnifying glasses toured the Ballona Wetlands on Thursday for a lesson in ecology. They learned about invasive nonnative plants, scuttled after lizards and even saw a red-tailed hawk. "It's fun seeing all the animals and little bugs that you don't normally see," said 8-year-old Melanie Shaw.

The nation's schools are teaching students how to respect the environment, but the lessons often are inadequate because textbooks rarely explain the scientific and economic factors involved, according to a report by the Independent Commission on Environmental Education. The panel, funded by conservative groups, asserted that texts are biased, contain factual errors, lean too far into advocacy or ignore science altogether.

Just off a rutted dirt road, a beach as white as flour pops into view from behind a wall of sea grape and rustling palms. Pelicans slice over turquoise waters, and not a single person stirs the quiet. The tableau, along a little-developed segment of Mexico's Caribbean coast, is a beachgoer's fantasy of unspoiled seaside splendor. Until you look down. For as far as the eye can see, the sand glitters with bits of bright color: fragments of trash, thousands and thousands of them, strung like a vast, foul necklace.

Myanmar's president ordered a halt Friday to work on a controversial $3.6-billion hydroelectric dam backed by China, a rare concession to the political opposition and public displeasure. President Thein Sein said in a statement read out on his behalf in parliament that the Myitsone dam project in the northern state of Kachin should be terminated because it is "against the will of the people. " The reversal — if in fact it proves to be one, given Myanmar's often opaque governance — seemed somewhat surprising in a country where leaders have for decades paid limited attention to the public's concerns.

After half a century of oil spills, Nigeria's troubled Niger Delta is one of the most polluted places on Earth, and it could take $1 billion and 30 years to clean up the mess, according to a U.N. report released Thursday. A 14-month study by the United Nations Environment Program that was commissioned by the Nigerian government examined 200 locations and 75 miles of pipeline, more than 4,000 soil and water samples and the medical reports of 5,000 people. "Pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in the region has penetrated further and deeper than many may have supposed," the report says.

Beware the lionfish. The pretty-but-voracious aquarium favorite, which has been gobbling other reef fish throughout the Caribbean, is swimming up South Florida's estuaries, invading the Gulf of Mexico and spreading along the South American coast. Scientists say the East Coast has never seen a mass marine invasion of this kind before, and they worry that it will set off a cascade of ecological damage to native fish, coral reef and their delicate habitat. Lionfish have been multiplying in the Caribbean and along the Carolina coast for more than a decade, probably after a few were dumped from somebody's aquarium off the shores of South Florida and their offspring rode north and east on ocean currents.

The U.S. Forest Service is weighing tighter restrictions on aerial fire retardant drops as part of a long-running legal battle over the environmental effects of pouring millions of gallons of the chemical mixture on Western wildlands every year. Retardant use has soared in recent decades as wildfires have grown larger and more houses have been built on the wildland edge. Nationally, federal and state agencies apply an average of more than 28 million gallons a year, the vast majority of it in the West and much of that in California.

Almost two years after the Station fire scorched 161,000 acres of the Angeles National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service has embarked on a large-scale reforestation project that may re-engineer the region's historical pine and fir woodlands. The project to be unveiled Friday aims to plant 3 million pine and fir trees over 10,000 acres scarred by the fire in an attempt to restore the area and offset greenhouse-gas emissions from a refinery in El Segundo. The campaign is the first major ecological response to a historic arson fire that burned for weeks, claimed the lives of two firefighters and cost more than $95 million to battle, leaving an area roughly the size of Chicago blackened.

An experiment to save beavers, which were deliberately introduced into many parts of the San Bernardino National Forest and elsewhere in California, appears in some ways to have been entirely too successful, and that has wildlife biologists in a quandary. At least a decade ago a golden beaver stumbled into a pleasant grove of trees at the edge of the San Gorgonio Wilderness about 25 miles south of here and found a stand of aspens--its favorite food.

Thomas Eisner, who became known as the "father of chemical ecology" as a result of his pioneering studies of how insects use chemicals to mate, elude predators and capture prey, died March 25 at his home in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 81 and had Parkinson's disease. Eisner, who spent his entire professional life at Cornell University, combined the observational skills of Charles Darwin with an inquisitiveness that caused him to look far beyond superficial characteristics. At a 2000 celebration of Eisner's career, biochemist John Law of the University of Arizona said: "Thousands of people can look at the same plant or animal and see the same thing, and there is the one person, like Tom, who comes along and sees something different.

Federal supervisors would have to run the country's national forests to maintain ecological health and species diversity under a proposed Obama administration rule that also requires them to prepare environmental reviews when they update forest management plans. The 94-page document is the latest version of a forest planning rule that has gone through a decade of revision and litigation as changing administrations left their stamps on it. It would shape the future of the 193-million-acre national forest system, including more than 20 million acres in California.