Free Republic

Famed for building homes for the poor from scratch, Habitat for Humanity sees a silver lining to thousands of foreclosed homes available for a pittance. ___ Shanta Brown, a nursing assistant in Charlotte, N.C., walked through her soon-to-be home in August, pointing out favorite features — the living room's vaulted ceiling, two full baths and new black countertops she chose for durability. In a few minutes, Brown would stand outside the front door and cut a ribbon, dedicating the first house in Habitat for Humanity Charlotte's ambitious new effort to rehab homes in neighborhoods decimated by foreclosures. Across the country,...

Jarvis Migratory Sanctuary is a bird sanctuary located in the Lincoln Park area of Chicago. It sits between Belmont and Sheridan right on the lake shore. It's a scenic area home to more than 100 species of birds which often use Chicago to rest and refuel on the way North or South, depending on the season. Here's how the view and activities are described. Although a fence prohibits visitors from entering the sanctuary itself, a viewing platform and peripheral wood chipped path provide ample viewing opportunities for bird watching. Additionally, during the summer months, visitors can see purple martins flying...

Purple loosestrife has raised its pretty head again this summer. But agricultural officials say the invasive and troublesome swamp plant that once threatened to choke off Garden State wetlands does not stand a chance of getting past a tiny army of weed killers New Jersey agricultural agents are releasing. While the hue of the loosestrife's magenta blooms may occasionally taint roadside ditchess and wetlands, it has faded on the landscape because of thousands of tiny beetles munching away at the weeds. "We win against the loosestrife, temporarily. Then it comes back, and we knock it down again. But the loosestrife...

Valerie Jarrett, Habitat Company, premier property managers provide residents with mice, sewer backups and collapsed roofs Mrs. Clinton assumed full taunting mode in a January Democratic presidential candidate debate. She aggressively battled “bad” Republican ideas, she told Obama, “when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slumlord business in inner-city Chicago.” Obama feebly replied he was merely an associate at a law firm that represented a church group working with “this individual” and had done a few hours legal work. Hillary could have attacked Obama for accepting political contributions from Tony Rezko at the same time...

Habitat Destruction May Wipe Out Monarch Butterfly MigrationA monarch butterfly gathering nectar from a swamp milkweed flower. (Credit: iStockphoto/Willie Manalo) ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2008) — Intense deforestation in Mexico could ruin one of North America’s most celebrated natural wonders — the mysterious 3,000-mile migration of the monarch butterfly. According to a University of Kansas researcher, the astonishing migration may collapse rapidly without urgent action to end devastation of the butterfly’s vital sources of food and shelter. “To lose something like this migration is to diminish all of us,” said Chip Taylor, KU professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “It’s so...

SAN DIEGO – Environmental groups filed 13 lawsuits Wednesday against the Bush administration, alleging that it fails to protect imperiled species because of political meddling and other inadequacies. Mentioned in the litigation were at least five species with current or former habitat in San Diego County: the spreading navarretia, thread-leaved brodiaea, San Diego ambrosia, red-legged frog and arroyo toad. Dozens of related lawsuits are in the works, signaling a heightened battle with national implications for how the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service takes care of plants and animals close to extinction. The agency already was reeling from investigations that found...

SEATTLE - A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday to stop Weyerhaeuser Co. from logging in spotted owl habitat on four parcels of private land in Washington. U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman did not grant, however, an additional request by the Seattle Audubon Society to stop the state of Washington from granting permits to log in spotted owl habitat. The injunction from logging covers spotted owl habitat within 2.7 miles of the center of four circles of land in southwestern Washington that are owned by Weyerhaeuser. "It really shows the Endangered Species Act still has some teeth in...

Conservation Group, Unions Joining Forces Saving Habitat, Ensuring Access Sought By Blaine Harden Washington Post Staff Writer SEATTLE -- In a first-of-its-kind alliance that could fundamentally reshape the environmental movement, 20 labor unions with nearly 5 million members are joining forces with a Republican-leaning umbrella group of conservationists -- the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership -- to put pressure on Congress and the Bush administration. The Union Sportsman's Alliance, to be rolled out in Washington on Tuesday after nearly three years of quiet negotiations, is to be a dues-based organization ($25 a year). Its primary goal is to increase federal funding...

A new study by NASA scientists finds that the world's temperature is reaching a level that has not been seen in thousands of years. The study, led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, N.Y., along with scientists from other organizations concludes that, because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period, which has lasted nearly 12,000 years. An "interglacial period" is a time in the Earth's history when the area of Earth covered by glaciers was similar or...

Endangered Evidence Ever wonder how all those animals, plants and bugs get on the Endangered Species List? It’s more than an academic question though that is where the answer has its roots. When a critter gets on the ESL, nothing can be done to its “habitat,” even if it is just a candidate for the list whose endangerment remains undecided. Proscribed acts include, of course, drilling for oil. Thus as gas prices soar, no refineries. Oil companies have not built a refinery in the United States in 30 years. That’s almost as long as the ESA has been, effectively, the...

MARINE CORPS RECRUITING STATION DENVER, Colo. (March 13, 2006) -- It was a perfect day in Denver to build a house for Habitat for Humanity -- assuming your idea of perfect is 12 degrees below zero. The weather factor, however, did not deter the Marines and poolees of Recruiting Substation Metro South, Recruiting Station Denver, who teamed up to build a home in the Denver area as a part of their weekly pool function. “The weather, in fact, made the experience much more memorable and rewarding,” said Staff Sgt. James D. Regan, canvassing recruiter, RSS Metro South. “When one steps...

This morning President and Mrs. Bush spent time in Covington, Louisiana, assisting in the building of a Habitat for Humanity home for victims of Hurricane Katrina. They also visited Delisle Elementary School in Pass Christian, Mississippi, spending time with the students and teachers. President Bush then went to the U.S. Naval Air Station, Joint Reserve Base in New Orleans and greeted the troops who are working with hurricane relief. First Lady Laura Bush traveled to Kansas City, Missouri, visiting the J.S. Chick Elementary School to discuss the importance of fathering with representatives from the National Center for Fathering.It's a GOOD...

The sound of hammers rang through the pitch-dark town as the brightly lit Habitat site hummed with activity. Bush, wearing a hard hat, work gloves and a large wraparound tool belt, drove nails into a sheet of plywood while the first lady, a cloth nail pouch around her waist, accompanied him. Bush spent most of his time chatting, signing autographs and posing for pictures. At one point, a woman threw him some Mardi Gras beads that fell to the ground. "I couldn't catch them during the real Mardi Gras and I can't catch them now," he quipped.

BIMINI, Bahamas — The bulldozers moved slowly at first. Picking up speed, they pressed forward into a patch of dense mangrove trees that buckled and splintered like twigs. As the machines moved on, the pieces drifted out to sea. Sitting in a small motorboat a few hundred yards offshore on a mid-July afternoon, Samuel H. Gruber — a University of Miami professor who has devoted more than two decades to studying the lemon sharks that breed here — plunged into despondency. The mangroves being ripped up to build a new resort provide food and protection that the sharks can't get...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Federal wildlife officials said Tuesday they would cut by nearly half the amount of land set aside for the California tiger salamander, saying it would be too costly to restrict development in those areas to protect the threatened amphibian. Home builders applauded the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to scale back the number of acres designated as the salamander's critical habitat, but environmentalists said it would hurt the species' recovery and accused the Bush administration of ignoring science to appease developers. The California tiger salamander a yellow-and-black amphibian that lives in woodlands, grasslands and vernal pools...

JOHANNESBURG — "Monster mice" are eating metre-high albatross chicks alive, threatening rare bird species on a remote south Atlantic island seen as the world's most important seabird colony. Conservation groups say the avian massacre is occurring on Gough Island in the South Atlantic, a British territory about 1,600 kms (1,000 miles) southwest of Cape Town and home to more than 10 million birds. "Gough Island hosts an astonishing community of seabirds and this catastrophe could make many extinct within decades," said Dr Geoff Hilton, a senior research biologist with Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). "We think...

AN ORGANIZATION THAT NORMALLY WELCOMES press coverage of its bustling worksites and sweating volunteers, Habitat for Humanity has spent recent months in the awkward role of media target. News reports have tracked every move in a seedy executive-suite scandal that led to the January firing of the 29-year-old nonprofit's founder and president Millard Fuller over accusations of sexual harassment. It wasn't the first time Fuller's hand had been slapped. When charges of unwelcome kissing and groping of female employees reached the organization's board in the early '90s, the evangelically-aligned group's most prominent supporter, former president Jimmy Carter, intervened on behalf...

SUFFOLK — Penny Wood wanted to get her hands dirty and help build somebody a house during her vacation. Instead, the first-time Habitat for Humanity volunteer from Chicago walked away from a Suffolk job site June 4 feeling less than charitable. A simmering dispute between members of South Hampton Roads Habitat for Humanity and leaders of the Suffolk chapter boiled over. Leaders from the regional group changed the locks at the almost-finished house to keep Suffolk workers out. Crews from both sides stood around in tense clumps trying to figure out what was going on and who was in charge....

Back in 1995, Craig Hohenberger had an idea. A big idea. A 10-acres-big idea. So he spent the next 10 years working singlemindedly -- but nowhere near singlehandedly -- to make it happen. And today the Hilton Bialek Biological Sciences Habitat at Carmel Middle School has become a home to ever-growing populations of native plants and wildlife -- and a "classroom away from classrooms" for 550 middle school students, as well as hundreds of others in Carmel and throughout Monterey County. "It was somebody's dream," said middle school Principal Edmund Gross, referring to Hohenberger. "Somebody who had a passion about...

A former Habitat for Humanity family that came under scrutiny two years ago when the city condemned their home has been forced out again. City inspectors condemned the home of Charles and Barbara Smith, 2517 N. Main Ave., on Friday because the double-block home didn't have heat. Mr. and Mrs. Smith and most of their 18 children moved into the home in 2000 after Habitat for Humanity of Lackawanna County helped renovate the building. The family lost that home in July 2003 when it was condemned. Habitat and the family worked on the house, and the Smiths returned six months...