ABSTRACT
“Nobody wins the games if nature loses!” is the slogan of Guard Fox Watch, an organization that Peter Berg cofounded with Kimiharu To of Japan to monitor and report on the ecological damage caused by the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. Berg and To draw a set of guidelines to avoid negative impacts on future Olympics and suggest beneficial ways to create the means for future sustainability. The pair of press releases reprinted here calls the Nagano Games’ theme of “Respect for the Beauty and Bounty of Nature” an “empty promise,” itemizes the negative ecological impacts of the event, and recommends specific steps for post-Games remediation of natural systems of the Nagano Bioregion and local human ecology. Guard Fox Watch articles on Nagano and subsequent Winter Olympics are available on Planet Drum’s Eco-Eye on the Olympics webpage. Given their enormous popularity and the media fest surrounding the Olympics, Guard Fox Watch’s position will strike many readers as cantankerous and misguided—that is, until they allow themselves to consider the justice of the cause.
