San Francisco – A number of significant developments and milestones in environmental progress took place in 2006 but were largely drowned out by the media attention devoted to climate change, according to the 12th edition of the Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, released today by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). As it has done over the past dozen years, the Index shines a spotlight on, and deepens Americans’ understanding of, environmental progress—the side of the environmental story that is seldom told. Positive trends occurring in key areas such as national forests, air quality, toxic chemicals, and biodiversity include:

• The 2005 Global Forests Resources Assessment found that the annual net loss of forests has fallen from about 8.9 million hectares per year over the period 1990-2000 to 7.3 million hectares per year over the last five years
• Between 1982 and 2003, estimated soil-erosion rates decreased by 43 percent
• The U.S. has enjoyed substantial success in lowering methane emissions—by 12.8 percent—from the 1990 baseline year used in the Kyoto Protocol. This is significant because methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 -- 23 times more potent, according to most estimates.
• The U.S. continues to make progress on reducing ozone levels. In the greater Los Angeles basin, the worst location recorded 69 exceedences of the eight-hour ozone standard of .085 parts per million (ppm) in 2005 (with an average July temperature of 68.6 degrees F), but only 59 in 2006 (with an average July temperature of 74.3 degrees F). To put this in perspective, in 1988 Los Angeles recorded nearly 175 exceedences.
• The EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) shows a 45 percent decline in the last seven years. The latest TRI reveals a decline in toxic releases in 2004 of 180 million tons, or about 4 percent.
• The number of bald-eagle nests in Wisconsin has grown from 108 in 1973 to 1,020 in 2005.
• In the early 1970s, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game reports there were as few as 2,654 red salmon counted running up the Russian River in Kenai Peninsula to spawn. In recent years the count has exceeded 60,000 surpassing the number biologists thought was possible in the best of conditions.

Global Warming DVD Challenges Alarmists
For the first time, the Index is complemented with a DVD documentary – An Inconvenient Truth…or Convenient Fiction? – that presents an alternative to the climate extremism that is popular with Hollywood and other pessimistic enclaves. (the trailer is available at www.aconvenientfiction.com).

“We must wonder whether climate change should eclipse other environmental issues to the extent that it currently does,” said Dr. Steven Hayward, author of the Index, senior fellow at PRI, and F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at AEI. “The language of ‘skeptics versus alarmists’ has put the issue of climate change into a straightjacket, leaving little room for a reasonable middle ground, or for people who believe our reach exceeds our grasp, in science and especially policy.”

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