Items by Jane Braxton-Little
A civil engineer battles Los Angeles over its air pollution legacy.
Martin Litton, who has spent his entire life fighting to preserve Western landscapes, is still battling to save California’s giant sequoias.
The Mountain Maidu Indians and the state Department of Fish and Game are both seeking control of California's Humbug Valley.
A rural California school builds an innovative curriculum around a nearby forest and the fire that burned it down in 2007.
Joxe Mallea-Olaetxe traces Basque history in arborglyphs on Western aspen trees.
Research hydrologist Gordon Grant is fascinated by the groundwater in the Pacific Northwest.
Controversial forestry scientist Tom Bonnicksen believes increased logging is necessary to fight global warming.
Independent radio producers Catherine Stifter and jesikah
maria ross are trying to help the Sierra Nevada by preserving the
stories of the people who live there
The federal government’s plan to sell Forest Service
land was put together so fast it includes 12 acres that I
own.
As the West’s privately owned timberlands go up for
sale, small towns like Glenwood, Wash., are working to buy local
forests and manage them for the good of the community
Attilio Genasci has devoted himself to preserving land in
Sierra Valley, Calif., where he has lived and farmed for 96
years
Lorena Gorbet, a Mountain Maidu Indian, has dedicated her
life to saving her tribal culture through forest management in the
Feather River area of Northern California
An inholding in California’s Mono Basin National
Forest Scenic Area may soon be the site of a resort-home
development
The Clinton-era Sierra Nevada Framework is being
dismantled under the Bush administration, and California spotted
owls, denied protection as endangered species, may pay the
price
Members of California’s Quincy Library Group are
fighting Forest Service plans for logging the Plumas and Lassen
national forests.
Some foresters who are using responsible environmental
practices in order to be "green-certified" are disappointed by the
lack of return for their admirable efforts.
In many Western communities, forest workers are quietly
converting their skills from industrial logging to forest
restoration.
Exotic pike have reappeared in California's Lake Davis,
just 18 months after the lake was poisoned in a controversial plan,
and now the state is considering underwater explosions to keep the
pike from heading downstream.
The Quincy Library Group plans a lawsuit to challenge the
Sierra Nevada Framework, which the group says has "killed" its own
collaborative plan for national forest management.
Supporters call Mark Rey, Bush's nominee for
undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and the
Environment, a forest management expert, but wary environmentalists
liken him to Darth Vader and Machiavelli.
The Nevada Test Site - notorious for decades of nuclear
bomb-testing - is now home to gentler science, including work on
alternative energy and the greenhouse effect, and on cleaning up
the site's radioactive contamination.
Some critics say a proposed geothermal power plant
threatens the newly designated Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon
Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area in northwestern
Nevada.
The Forest Service has released its final plan for 11
national forests in California's Sierra Nevada, but the timber
industry is already planning to appeal the Sierra
Framework.
Nevada conservationists are stunned by the recent
dismantling of the state's Division of Water Planning, largely due
to ranchers, miners and rural officials who resented the
recommendations of its recently revised state water plan.
Los Angeles has agreed to return some water to parched
Owens Valley and to begin restoring Owens Lake, which was turned
into an empty dust bowl to quench the thirst of L.A.
The Quincy Library Group sees its controversial forest
plan put into action when the Forest Service doubles logging on
California's Plumas, Lassen and Tahoe national forests while
protecting habitat for the northern spotted owl.
The California Dept. of Fish and Game plans to restore the
endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep by moving animals to the
haven of Paoha Island in Mono Lake, where they will be safe from
mountain lions.
The consensus-based Quincy Library Group has decided to
hold some of its meetings behind closed doors, to prevent what
members describe as "disruptions" from opponents of the group's
controversial forest plan.
The controversial forest management plan put together by
the Quincy Library Group in California is signed into law without
much fanfare, as members of the consensus group brace for the next
round of fighting over the forest.
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- Delaine Spilsbury on The water czar who reshaped Colorado River politics
