Seeding the Chesapeake Bay with disease-resistant Asian oysters could significantly boost the bay’s depleted population of the water-cleaning shellfish, according to a federal study.

But the study also warns that the foreign species also could harm what’s left of the bay’s native oyster population – and perhaps spread to threaten ecosystems all along the East Coast.

The environmental impact statement lists pros and cons of the controversial proposal to put Asian oysters in the bay, but the $17 million study does not make a recommendation about what route would be best for the bay.

[Read](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bay_environment/bal-md.oysters09oct09,0,2803524.story “Read the Article”) (Baltimore Sun)

Arrows and abandoned camps found in remote western Brazil are fresh evidence of isolated Amazon tribes fleeing Peru to escape the encroachment of illegal loggers, indigenous rights groups say.

London-based Survival International said the arrows were recovered by Brazilian authorities near a site where photos were taken earlier this year of tribal people apparently shooting arrows at the photographer’s airplane.

[Read](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081006-uncontacted-tribes.html?source=rss “Read the Article”) (National Geographic)

Newly evolved superworms that feast on toxic waste could help cleanse polluted industrial land, a new study says.

They have been unearthed at disused mining sites in England and Wales, and they devour lead, zinc, arsenic, and copper. The worms seem to be able to tolerate incredibly high concentrations of heavy metals, and the metals seem to be driving their evolution.

The earthworms excrete a slightly different version of the metals, making them easier for plants to suck up. Harvesting the plants would leave cleaner soil behind.

The long-term aim is to breed and then release the worms at polluted sites to speed up the process of soil development and help kick-start the ecosystem’s rehabilitation. Plants could be used to extract toxic metals once the superworms have got to work. This in turn could boost the development of methods for using plants to mine metals.

[Read](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081007-super-worms.html?source=rss “Read the Article”) (National Geographic)

[Ukrops Supermarkets](http://www.ukrops.com “Ukrops”) is planning to convert used soy oil from the chicken fryers in its 11 Richmond stores to [biodiesel](http://www.answers.com/topic/biodiesel “Answers.com Article”) for use in its delivery trucks. They plan to expand the program to all 28 stores, and they hope to produce 25% of the fuel that their trucks use each year.

[Read](http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news/business/more.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-06-19-0077.html “Read the Article”) (Richmond Times Dispatch)

Between a quarter and a third of the world’s wildlife has been lost since 1970, according to data compiled by the Zoological Society of London.

Populations of land-based species fell by 25%, marine by 28% and freshwater by 29%, it says.

Humans are wiping out about 1% of all other species every year, and one of the “great extinction episodes” in the Earth’s history is under way, it says.

Pollution, farming and urban expansion, over-fishing and hunting are blamed.

[Read](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7403989.stm “Read the Article”)

Conservationists swoon at the possibility of it all. In Alaska, where melting arctic ice and eroding coastlines have made global warming an urgent threat, Juneau has cut its electricity use by more than 30 percent in a matter of weeks, instantly establishing itself as a role model for how to go green, and fast.

Comfort has been recalibrated. The public sauna has been closed and the lights have been dimmed at the indoor community pool. At the library, one of the two elevators was shut down after someone figured out it cost 20 cents for each round trip. The thermostat at the convention center was dialed down eight degrees, to 60. The marquee outside is dark.

Yet even as they embrace a fluorescent future, the 31,000 residents of Juneau, the state capital, are not necessarily doing it for the greater good. They face a more local inconvenient truth. Electricity rates rocketed about 400 percent after an avalanche on April 16 destroyed several major transmission towers that delivered more than 80 percent of the city’s power from a hydroelectric dam about 40 miles south.

[Read](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/14juneau.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin “Read the Article”) (New York Times)