Top 10 nature news sites!

Living responsibly depends on being well-informed. For nature lovers and environmentalists, the Internet provides an unprecedented wealth of up-to-date information. A notable feature is the variety of web sites presenting daily news about science and the environment.

We've never had it this good. Of course the information superhighway caters to every human interest, but general news has always been available through television, radio and print media. These traditional formats rarely devote more than a weekly program or back column to nature. Special-interest channels provide more focused information, but rarely is it this timely.

This is a recent phenomenon: for the average person to have access to current developments in biological research or progressive details about environmental issues. The only place it's available is on the Internet.

In fact it has proliferated to the point of overwhelming. Every environmental organization, however credible, has a forum in which to present its particular slant on the ways of the world. The most useful news services are those with a general focus.

I have considered a large number of these sites and chosen what I consider to be the top 10. I scored them out of 40 and ranked them on the basis of four criteria:

1. Information payload: how much information is available?
2. Broad interest: stories should be relevant to a global audience, not focused on local news, narrow political interests or regional perspectives. Sites lost marks for having too much American or EU content.
3. Timeliness: as a bare minimum, new stories are added to these sites every week day. Sites with more than one or two stories a day got high marks.
4. Design: How quickly does the site load, and how easy is it to read and find the information you want? I deducted for pop-up windows and banner ads.

The web sites fall into two general categories, although there is some content overlap:

• Human environment (E): focusing on political news, social problems and global issues, these sites will interest environmental activists.
• Science and discovery (S): presenting the latest research and discoveries about the natural world, these will appeal to ecology and nature buffs. Generally these include some geography and history items along with natural sciences.

To keep your finger on the daily pulse of news about nature around the world, these 10 sites are all worthy of your consideration. Here they are, starting with the best, with brief reviews and my scores out of 40.

World Environment (E) (37)
A comprehensive environmental news site from WorldNews.com, which gathers stories from media sources around the world. Numerous headlines are organized by topic, and there are many links to other information sites.

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