Human caused climate change can seem like an abstract global problem, but when it begins to affect our food supply things get real, real quick. For the latest edition of Sounds of the High Country, KDNK’s collaboration with the magazine HCN, Nelson Harvey spoke to writer Elizabeth Grossman about how native Alaskan tribes are seeing […]
Climate threats to Alaska food security
Posted inWotr
A day on the river that ended in a death
I keep thinking about Mary, a woman I never met. I Googled her name looking for her obituary, but I kept getting the same headlines of the articles I’ve already read too many times: “Woman dies in Pine Creek rafting accident.” “Texas woman drowns while rafting the Arkansas River.” When her obituary is posted, I’m […]
Posted inGoat
Closure of federal sheep facility would be a victory for grizzlies
On the last day of August, 2012, a collared grizzly bear dubbed 726 by federal wildlife biologists vanished into the rugged Centennial Mountains on the Idaho-Montana border. A few weeks later, they recovered his collar near an established campsite. It appeared to have been cut, stoking suspicions that hunters may have shot the bear, a […]
Posted inGoat
Summer rains in a drought-plagued state
How much does a monsoon season relieve drought?
Posted inWotr
Don’t pick up the leaverite!
Ranger Maureen McLean relies on her overwhelmingly gregarious nature to help visitors enjoy wildflower season at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington. And the wildflowers depend on that good nature to survive being enjoyed by the visitors. Ranger McLean heads the Meadow Rovers, a volunteer group that patrols the most crowded parts of the Paradise […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Boreal burning
Canada’s Northwest Territory goes up in flames, releasing massive amounts of carbon.
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Wolf pups, and the return of wild wonder
California’s fall from grace hit me in 2007, at around 9,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada. A friend and I were returning from a backpacking trip, still about a mile-and-a-half deep in the Mokelumne Wilderness, when a stroller rattled around a bend in the trail, its tiny passenger jabbering away as Dad navigated the rocky […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Wild ambitions
The environmental movement continues to dispirit me with the way it eats its young (“Wild paradox,” HCN, 7/21/14). Why we in that movement talk down our successes and accept the claims of others whose analysis is uninformed, I do not know. Paul Larmer, in his editor’s note, states that some “no longer see wilderness protection […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
The prickly pear as California crop
Can an overlooked succulent help salvage toxic soils?
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
The Latest: Wild Mexican wolf pups born in Sierra Madre
The species still struggles on both sides of the border.
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
The Latest: EPA cuts pollution at the Navajo Generating Station
BackstoryBad air from coal-fired power plants not only causes health problems for the locals; it also ruins the scenery. In 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency began addressing the visual impacts of air pollution from power plants, developing plans to reduce haze around national parks and wilderness areas. (“Clean air regulations protect views by targeting coal […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Reinventing the Sundance Kid
Sundance: A NovelDavid Fuller352 pages, hardcover: $27.95.Riverhead, 2014. What if an Old West legend left the outlaw life behind to embark on a mission to find his lost love? David Fuller’s second novel recasts the fate of Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known to history and movie fans as the Sundance Kid, who allegedly perished along […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Metamorphosis in Winnemucca
The Days Of Anna MadrigalArmistead Maupin288 pages, hardcover:$26.99. Harper Collins, 2014. California author Armistead Maupin has returned with the ninth and final volume in his much-loved Tales of the City series. Maupin, who has long refused to be pigeonholed as a “gay writer,” writes about contemporary San Francisco and the love lives of both gays […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Long live backpacking
Christopher Ketcham’s essay is one long misunderstanding of the trends in outdoor recreation (“The death of backpacking?” HCN, 7/21/14). Backpacking is not dead, and it’s not dying. It’s different, yes, thanks to a revolution in lighter and more versatile gear, as well as an ethos of carrying less gear. And while weeklong treks are less […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Hunger pangs
Here in western Colorado, we usually have great food year-round. Local farmers grow squash, peppers, tomatoes and corn, and their orchards produce cherries, apples and peaches. Cattle and sheep fatten in pastures. In the last few years, though, weird weather has affected agriculture more and more often. Hard frosts murder fruit blossoms in May, grape […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
How to publish a newspaper in the midst of wildfire
Rural weekly newspapers remain vital to their communities, and as a publisher-editor, it’s my job to keep readers informed about and connected around the things that are important to them. So how do you respond when nearly every means of doing that job is wiped out in one superheated burst of flame? In mid-July, what […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
How much water goes into your food?
Growing everyday food items requires a surprising amount of water.
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
George Harrison’s tree is killed by beetles, and more
UTAHIf you’re an education blogger in Utah, don’t try to tell your online students that English words that sound the same sometimes mean different things – i.e., “for,” “four” and “fore.” The technical term for this confusing aspect of the language is “homophone” – but when Tim Torkildson tried explaining this to his mostly foreign […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Dirty Snake
Thank you for the tremendous article on the lax rules and pollution of the Snake River in southern Idaho (“Idaho’s Sewer System,” HCN, 8/4/14). I live near the infamous Simplot fertilizer plant in eastern Idaho and have personally witnessed algal blooms in American Falls Reservoir caused by phosphate leaching from the plant and the agricultural […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Climate canary
Greenhouse gases are changing the way we talk about coal.