It was an ambitious plan: Ban the sale of individual plastic water bottles in the Grand Canyon to cut waste in the nation’s second-most visited national park. But in December 2010, just two weeks before the prohibition was to take effect, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis postponed it indefinitely, citing impacts to concessionaires and […]
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Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
A ‘ragtag team’ of scientists, rangers and citizens works to save whitebarks
Our management of whitebark pine has a melancholy history, shaped by ignorance and mistakes as well as by the determination to rescue a species we have sent into a downward spiral. Foresters accidentally introduced white pine blister rust, an Asian fungous disease, to North America around 1900, by importing infected pine seedlings for tree plantations. […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
How private efforts and economic troubles have combined to support conservation
Produced in collaboration with the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Inside the world of whitebarks
The climbers Whitebark pinecone-pickers are working in at least 19 national forests, three national parks and some wildlife refuges, as well as some Canadian forests, in the hope that the seeds they obtain can be used to grow whitebark pines that are resistant to white pine blister rust — and perhaps, if the research progresses […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
The man beneath the hat: Ken Salazar’s search for middle ground
Nearly every story about Ken Salazar mentions his cowboy hat. It’s hard not to; there aren’t a lot of politicians or bureaucrats — particularly Democrats — in D.C. who can get away with wearing one and not come off as a wannabe. Today, though, Salazar’s white hat and blue, pearl-buttoned ranch shirt fit right in. […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
A celebration of Cascadia: A review of Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest
Open Spaces: Voices from the NorthwestPenny Harrison, ed. 252 pages, softcover: $22.50.University of Washington Press, 2011. I read Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest over two weeks, setting it down still open so that its pages made a neat tent on my coffee table, returning to it over morning coffee, between garden chores, after dinner […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
California chronicles: A review of New California Writing: 2011
New California Writing: 2011Gayle Wattawa, ed. 320 pages, softcover: $20.Heyday, 2011. Most anthologies possess a ready-made but sometimes narrow audience. Readers come to these single-subject, multi-authored books with an already established connection and desire to know more. What, then, does a book focused on California offer to those who live outside the Golden State? Plenty, […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Environmentalists may have to take what they can get
For those of you who had hoped that the Obama administration would oversee the boldest conservation initiatives this country has seen since the days of Richard Milhous Nixon (who signed many of our country’s most important environmental laws), you can now cease hoping. The Great Recession, combined with a resurgent right wing that has exploited […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Bearly hanging on in the North Cascades
The following two comments were posted at hcn.org in response to Nathan Rice’s feature story, “The Forgotten Grizzlies” (HCN, 11/14/11). “The forgotten grizzlies” seems to suggest two things: (1) More research would somehow improve the chance for the grizzly bear to come in to the North Cascades. (2) More money would somehow allow the introduction […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
In appreciation of simplicity
What could be better than harvesting your own wild game without consuming gas by the minute and purchasing hundreds of dollars worth of gadgets to augment the “hunting experience” (HCN, 11/14/11, “Food and friendship, fossil-fuel free”)? Keep it simple. It helps that Nadia and Andrew live practically in the lap of a game reserve. But […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Mountain bikes are vehicles, too
Mountain bikes are vehicles, and like all vehicle access, Nadia White and her partner got into a landscape they probably wouldn’t have if they had to walk (HCN, 11/14/11, “Food and friendship, fossil-fuel free”). That’s what happens when someone uses mechanical advantage to further access, and like all motorized and mechanical access, it degrades the […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Polluted air, coming soon to Glacier National Park
Glacier National Park is next in line for hazy, polluted air (HCN, 11/14/11, “Out of the haze”). Oil and gas development along Glacier’s eastern border with the Blackfeet Reservation is increasing drastically. Nearly all of the Blackfeet land is leased to oil and gas companies. Park officials and Superintendent Chas Cartwright are concerned with potential […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Vagabond visitors
Mark Winkler stopped by our western Colorado office while visiting his mother in nearby Montrose and touring the North Fork Valley. He’s a homemaker and freelance writer in Redwood Valley, Calif. When he got to Paonia, he first dropped by KVNF, our local community radio station, which sent him to tour our local movie theater, […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
The trouble with transmission
New transmission lines are just another way to steal natural resources from low-population states (HCN, 11/14/11, “A transmission transformation”). The residents of these states have to live with the infrastructure required to create and transmit energy — whether it’s generated by coal, solar or wind – but we only see the returns during the initial […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
When a bear drives a Prius
CALIFORNIA A black bear in Lake Tahoe broke into a Toyota Prius parked at a cabin and then “went into a rampage” when he realized he was trapped inside it, reports the Contra Costa Times. The animal kicked, bit and tore at the seats and the steering wheel, and finally managed to shift the car […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Hersh Saunders’ transformation from prosthodontist to kosher slaughterer
In a barn on his 400-acre ranch south of Pueblo, Colo., Hersh Saunders sharpens a long blunt-end knife called a halaf. A blue crocheted kippah, a Jewish skullcap, covers the bearded rabbi’s silver hair. Outside the barn, sheep graze and chickens peck near a small synagogue and rows of organic vegetables. Saunders has spent the […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
A citizen activist forces New Mexico’s dairies to clean up their act
Jerry Nivens lives in a trailer in Caballo, N.M., 165 miles south of Albuquerque. A bulky Texas transplant who chain-smokes American Spirits, Nivens cares as deeply for his mesquite-speckled patch of ground as any rural New Mexican. He enjoys driving into the mountains, where he used to while away afternoons panning for gold. He goes […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Can an old mine become a work of art?
As I wander past a scrawled “NO TRESSPASSING: SHOTGUN ENFORCED” sign, I can’t help but recoil and glance around. I am, after all, on private property, and instinct is instinct. My safety at this particular mining site, however, is assured: I’m with a bunch of internationally acclaimed artists and a slew of locals. Even the […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
“Wear a condom now, save the spotted owl”
THE NATION “Wear a condom now, save the spotted owl,” reads one of the labels on a condom distributed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the feisty and litigious conservation nonprofit that has offices throughout the West. While other environmental groups dodge the sticky issue of over-population, the center — run by Kierán Suckling — […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
The Southwest’s population and housing booms bite the dust
If you want to see the dried-up husk of the New West’s latest incarnation, just go to Maricopa, Ariz., and visit one of the half-built suburbs on its fringe. You’ll see earth scraped bare and a tumbleweed or two, and even a few ghosts: The phantoms of streets mapped but never built, lots subdivided but […]