When Miguel Luna was an 8-year-old in the city of Cúcuta, Colombia, his family sometimes went days without water. The municipality would just shut it off, he recalls. “Nothing would come out of the faucets.” When the water returned, his grandmother, Hercilia, would ceremoniously drink a glass before bedtime. “She’d say to us, ‘Water is […]
Departments
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
How Outward Bound lost, and found, itself
It’s the second day of Drake Clifton’s three-day Outward Bound solo, and he’s starving. He rattles his small food bag in front of the camera: crackers, nuts, a nub of cheese. Matted blond hair pokes out of his black beanie. “It’s seriously killing me,” he says, pouring crumbs into his mouth. He’s camped in a […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
An interview with Joshua Zaffos
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, KDNK’s Nelson Harvey talks with Joshua Zaffos about his story “Oil and gas companies pour money into research universities.” Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user Striking Photography by Bo […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
A field program teaches undergrads to think differently about public lands
I am in school, watching a grown man cry. He works at a clinic in the Klamath Basin on the Oregon-California border. He tells me and 22 other visiting college students what happened to local farmers one season, when the federal government shut off their irrigation water to protect endangered fish during a drought. He […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Round River pushes kids out of their comfort zones and into the field
In 1992, four fresh-faced students joined conservationist Jim Tolisano in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains in search of grizzly bears. Grizzlies are thought to be extinct in the state, but sighting rumors circulated, and Round River Conservation Studies’ founders Dennis Sizemore and Doug Peacock — who inspired the character Hayduke in Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Sign-hating Californians
CALIFORNIA “Out here, people don’t like signs.” So said Sheriff’s Deputy Rob McDaniels to the Point Reyes Light in December, after apprehending “Sensitive Sean” for stealing more than 20 no-parking signs. This small community on the Northern California coast –– let’s just call it “Anonymous,” since the locals have asked us not to reveal its […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Great Old Broads for Wilderness laugh and learn
The pro-wilderness group teaches elders how to engage in public lands management, while having a great time.
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Oil and gas companies pour money into research universities
Northwest Colorado’s Piceance Basin — 5 million acres framed by cliffs and hogbacked mountains — overlies roughly 300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to supply the nation for 50 years. It’s also ideal mule deer habitat; state wildlife managers once called it “the deer factory.” But as drilling ramps up, deer numbers plummet. […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Education includes people, naturally
When I was 20, I joined a college-abroad program in Kenya, Africa, to study the country’s magnificent wildlife reserves. But my most memorable experience wasn’t the night I nervously watched a herd of elephants crash through our campsite (though that was pretty cool). It came in the dusty, colorful markets of Nairobi. There, walking through […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
The Power Lung Kid
At 8:30 a.m., the Power Lung Kid knocks at my trailer door. I’m eating Lucky Charms, staring out the window at the low-slung volcanic rock and aspens that rise into the ponderosa, spruce and fir of south-central Oregon. “You know why I’m called the Power Lung Kid?” he asks, leaning back in his chair. “No,” […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
A review of Utah’s Wasatch Range: Four Season Refuge
Utah’s Wasatch Range: Four Season Refuge Howie Garber 211 pages, softcover: $39.95. Peter E. Randall, 2012. Most people in Utah live within 20 miles of the Wasatch Range, whose peaks and canyons provide water for the valley while offering a welcome retreat for those seeking solitude. In Utah’s Wasatch Range: Four Season Refuge, nature photographer […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Experiential natural resource education thrives in the West
The environmental conundrums facing the West have never been more complex. How do you manage global problems like climate change locally? Is there any way to stop the cheatgrass invasion? Can the forest help our economy while protecting our watershed? And what’s going on with those bears east of town? The next generation must tackle […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
A big thank-you to our supporters
We’re growing! Congrats to the many readers who recently stepped up to nourish the HCN community. You helped us blow the doors off our holiday gift-giving goal of 500 new subscribers. As we go to press, you’ve given at least 750 new gift subscriptions to family members, friends and colleagues, who, like you, care about […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
A room with a view
I wanted to thank you for your column “If not here, where?” (HCN, 12/24/12). In mid-October, a 12-panel solar array came online in my backyard. It turns out I love to generate my own power! But there was one problem. The best place for locating the array was in the middle of my backyard — […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Collared collateral damage?
My father pioneered research on California quail in the 1940s, long before telemetry technology of any kind was available (“Wildlife Biology Goes High-Tech,” HCN, 12/10/12). I served as a small-aircraft pilot to monitor collared wolves, and to count animals from the air. More recently, I volunteered to help with a greater sage grouse study in […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Gratuitous hand-wringing
We can’t help the animals unless we understand their needs (“Wildlife Biology Goes High-Tech,” HCN, 12/10/12). In a world of ever-increasing human encroachment on the last pristine habitats, denying people their “God-given right” to property ownership requires justification, and that is why studies such as those cited in Robbins’ story are invaluable. I have marked […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
The more you know, the more you marvel
I was prepared to scowl at Jim Robbins’ article, “Wildlife Biology Goes High-Tech” (HCN, 12/10/12), after reading the subtitle — “But has our science lost its soul?” Science has no “soul.” It deals with the physical, tangible universe. As a professional ecologist and longtime teacher, I have grown impatient with the complaint that memorizing all […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Oil boom spurs a rush on extractive education programs
Last May, Russell Carr crammed his possessions into his 4Runner and drove 30 hours to North Dakota, seeking a new start. The strapping 22-year-old had just earned a degree in civil engineering at the University of Nevada, in his hometown, Reno, but the local firm he’d been courting offered a starting wage of only $17 […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A coyote chorus
NEW MEXICO Coyotes roam freely throughout New Mexico, but finding a family of five hanging out in an Albuquerque churchyard surprised Ruth Wilson, who lives across the street and enjoys watching them. The church is in a busy part of town and so whenever police or ambulance sirens sound off — which they do several […]