Eucalyptus trees continue to push out California natives and stir controversy over where exotic species belong. Plus, Utahans respond to EPA vehicle emissions restrictions, a New Mexican’s love of figs, and more.
Butcher of Heartache on the Bering Sea
A former newspaper copyeditor finds his way onboard a fishing boat.
Tribes struggle to house their ‘invisibly homeless’ veterans
Red tape makes it difficult for veterans in Indian Country to access a key federal assistance program.
The fignificent fig man
Lloyd Kreitzer’s journey as New Mexico’s premier fig grower.
Coalbed methane bust leaves thousands of orphaned gas wells in Wyoming
And the state is starting to come to terms with an orphaned gas well problem.
Eucalyptus: Beauty or Beast?
Restoration pits these exotics against California natives. But for some, they’re a natural.
Art and the atomic age
Radioactive disposal sites and other residuals of the bomb era.
Obama’s most effective environmental action?
Utah and other states like the new EPA regulations on vehicle emissions.
The Latest: Southern Colorado protected from proposed Army base expansion
BackstoryWhen Fort Carson proposed expanding its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in 2003, nearby ranchers worried. The 235,000-acre training ground, in southeastern Colorado, was slated to grow to more than 650,000 acres, and though the U.S. Army promised to work with “willing sellers,” locals feared land seizure through eminent domain, as happened in the 1980s when…
The peace broker
Common Ground on Hostile Turf: Stories from an Environmental MediatorLucy Moore216 pages, softcover: $19.99.Island Press, 2013. Most of us have attended public meetings where emotions run uncomfortably high. Each side is firmly, sometimes even fiercely, entrenched; voices are raised, tempers frayed. People hurl verbal grenades at each other, refusing to concede an inch. Actual communication…
Environmentalists without borders
Two winters ago, I visited California’s central coast for the first time since I was a teenager. Back then, I paid little attention to botany or landscaping. But this time, I spent the trip gripped by plant envy. In Santa Cruz, lemon trees littered yards with ripe fruit, and multi-colored aloes with fleshy leaves as…
The true story of the Apaches
In the article on the efforts of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe to build a casino in southwestern New Mexico, Jeff Haozous is quoted as saying that there were no remnant populations of Chiricahua or Warm Springs Apaches left in southwestern New Mexico after Geronimo’s surrender in 1886 (“Whose Apache Homelands?” HCN, 10/14/13). This statement…
Vital Signs, a book by Juan Delgado and Thomas McGovern
Vital Signs Juan Delgado and Thomas McGovern, 128 pages, paperback: $18.95.Heyday and the Inlandia Institute, 2013. San Bernardino, Calif., has a reputation for poverty and crime, but poet Juan Delgado and photographer Thomas McGovern offer a vibrant view of the city’s working-class Latino neighborhoods in their new book, Vital Signs. The people of this urban…
A forester searches for a kinder, gentler eucalyptus
On a drizzly winter day in San Francisco, a pickup truck loaded with eucalyptus seedlings pulls up to a bare hillside in the Presidio, a former U.S. Army base turned national park. A crew of shovel-wielding men starts moving across the slope, planting knee-high trees in tight formation. Dressed in a bright red rain suit,…
A native butterfly finds merit in a nonnative tree
Every fall, starting around October, tens of thousands of monarch butterflies from across the West make their way to eucalyptus groves along the California coast. There, in a quasi-torpid state, they clump together in clusters, dangling from high branches like living chandeliers. Early in the new year, they once again take wing, sailing inland to…
HCN takes a holiday break
With sub-zero lows and nearly a foot of fresh snow outside our Paonia, Colo., offices, it’s finally looking – and feeling – like wintertime. That means it’s time for another publishing break in our 22-issue-per-year schedule. The next HCN appears Jan. 20, but meanwhile, you can visit hcn.org for fresh news, features and opinion. Here’s…
Moving words and sacred salmon
Ray Ring’s article on the Alaska salmon ecosystem was the most moving thing I’ve ever read in HCN (“Ecosystems 101,” HCN, 11/25/13). I worked on a commercial salmon-fishing boat in Alaska one summer and have since considered these species to be absolutely sacred. It seems developers always have a price tag to put on the…
Not all kayakers oppose limitations
As an avid kayaker in Grand Teton National Park, I was surprised to see it lumped with Yellowstone in “Forbidden waters” (HCN, 11/11/13). Grand Teton does not have a “blanket ban” on kayaking. To the contrary, 36.6 miles of the Snake River in the John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway and Grand Teton National Park are…
Outlaws on the river
There are excellent reasons why paddling is not permitted in most streams in Yellowstone (“Forbidden waters,” HCN, 11/11/13). Many streams meander through large meadows replete with grazing bison and elk. Paddlers would not only disrupt wildlife feeding along the steams, but the visual pollution caused by a parade of boats would spoil the magnificent scenes visitors presently enjoy. As…
Studying – and saving – ecosystems
“Ecosystems 101” was full of exceptional details (HCN, 11/25/13). It is quite true that long-term field monitoring has until recently been the hardest research to keep funded. Thirty consecutive field seasons on glaciers in the North Cascades – which feed less-than-pristine salmon streams – and the ongoing but not particularly successful salmon restoration programs indicate…
A bighorn sheep comes through the window, $500K left in airport change buckets, and more.
MONTANAMaybe blind belligerence is just “a guy thing,” or so Lori Silcher concluded after a male bighorn sheep crashed through windows of her rural home in Hamilton, Mont. “All of a sudden, we all felt the house shake and there was a resounding thud,” recalls her husband, Peter, who at first thought someone in his…
An unvarnished view of America’s best idea
To Conserve Unimpaired: The Evolution of the National Park IdeaRobert B. Keiter368 pages, hardcover: $35.Island Press, 2013. In To Conserve Unimpaired, Professor Robert Keiter provides an unvarnished view of “America’s best idea”: the National Park System. Keiter, the country’s pre-eminent legal expert on the subject, tackles the question: Why does the park idea still evoke…
The Latest: First federal prosecution of wind farm bird deaths
BackstoryDespite their clean-energy appeal, wind farms have a reputation for mowing down birds and bats. Much of the “bird blender” blame rests with one of the first farms, poorly placed on Altamont Pass near San Francisco (“Birds, blades and bats,” HCN, 5/02/05). But even with wildlife-friendly siting and better turbine technology, hundreds of thousands of…