Freelance journalist Sara Shipley Hiles specializes in stories that illuminate the relationship between people and the environment. She also covers science, health, and other issues. In her 14 years as a reporter and writer, she has traveled from Louisiana's chemical corridor to the Douglas fir forests of the Northwest and the mining towns of Peru.
In a cloud forest in Panama, hundreds of frogs turn up dead, the life sucked out of them by a strange fungus.
In the wetlands of northwest Iowa, where hunters once collected 20 million frogs a year for their meaty legs, there is only one leopard frog left for every thousand frogs the pioneers saw.
In southern Missouri's mountain streams, scientists struggle to protect dwindling populations of the Ozark hellbender, a wrinkled, primitive salamander that can grow to two feet long.
All around the planet, amphibians such as these are in trouble. It's not just the colorful, exotic rainforest species that are disappearing, but also the common frogs, toads, newts and salamanders that people used to see in backyards across America.
Published on: 2008-05-14 - Read full story..
It's a long way from the thin air of an impoverished mountain village outside Lima, Peru, to the tony atmosphere of the Hamptons. But a group of religious leaders from Peru recently traveled to New York to tell billionaire industrialist Ira L. Rennert that even if he can sleep at night, comfortably ensconced in his 110,000-square-foot estate in Sagaponack, God is watching.
Published on: 2007-06-26 - Read full story..
Published on: 2007-01-01 - Read full story..