A new policy from the Bush administration on endangered Pacific salmon is startling in its simplicity and brilliance. The policy cuts through all the scientific mumbo-jumbo the press repeats and puts a finger on the basic problem: Salmon are endangered because there aren’t enough of them. If there were lots of salmon in the rivers, […]
Pepper Trail
Pepper Trail is a writer and ecologist in Oregon.
Posted inWotr
The high cost of low prices
“We Sell for Less.” Every few miles of a long drive down the length of California, I passed another Wal-Mart big-rig with those words across the back. The hypnotic monotony of the interstate made the slogan a mantra for the open road, for the featureless landscape that was the only America I could see through […]
Posted inWotr
Searching for the true causes of the West’s fire problems
By now we’ve all heard — oh, how often have we heard –that a century of fire suppression has created a buildup of fuels that threatens an inferno across the forests of the West. Forest Service officials, once happy to pose for photos with Smokey Bear, now give grim news conferences to announce that natural […]