"WAGENINGEN, The Netherlands, December 13, 2006 (ENS) - Current rates
of tapping frankincense are endangering the fragrant resin's sustained production,
ecologists from the Netherlands and Eritrea warned today.

Frankincense is an aromatic hardened wood resin obtained by tapping Boswellia trees.
For 2000 years, the resin has been important as an ingredient in incense and perfumes,
especially popular in Christian communities at Christmas.

But ecologists say frankincense production in the Horn of Africa is declining because
Boswellia woodlands are failing to regenerate." [...]

"[Note: Marla Cone's book, Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic,
is now available at online stores. It hits regular bookstores in May.]

ON A SHEET OF ICE where the Arctic Ocean meets the North Atlantic in the
territorial waters of Greenland, Mamarut Kristiansen kneels beside the carcass of a
narwhal, the elusive animal sometimes known as "the unicorn of the sea" for its
spiraled ivory tusk. He slices off a piece of mattak, the whale's raw pink blubber
and mottled gray skin, and bites into it. "Peqqinnartoq," he says in Greenlandic.
Healthy food. Nearby, Mamarut's wife, Tukummeq Peary, a descendant of North
Pole explorer Robert Peary, is boiling the main entrée on a camp stove. She, Mamarut,
and his brother Gedion dip their hunting knives into the kettle and pull out steaming
ribs of ringed seal." [...]

The Planet's Chemical Trash Can
http://www.motherjones.com/

"As Marla Cone writes in her article, "Dozens of Words for Snow, None for Pollution,"
in the current issue of Mother Jones, the Arctic has become the final destination for toxic
waste -- industrial chemicals, pesticides, power plant emissions -- that originates thousands
of miles away. Each one of the "dirty dozen" chemicals, from PCBs to chlordane and DDT,
have found their way into the region's food chain and consequently into the native people.

A population accustomed to eating the whale that has sustained them for centuries is now
being asked, for the good of their health, to switch to more expensive, imported foods, ones
that may have preservatives, but at least don't have high levels of toxaphene." [...]