I read Brendon Bosworth’s article on Fallen Leaf Lake with great interest (“The forest at the bottom of the lake,” HCN, 12/24/12). With my dive partner, John Foster, a retired California state archaeologist, I sampled sunken trees from nearby Tahoe and Donner Lake, mainly in the 1980s. In South Lake Tahoe, 16 rooted snags in ancient underwater […]
Tree tales
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
The buck stops everywhere
My response to Sarah Gilman’s opinion piece “If not here, where?” is: Nowhere. Although oil and gas exploration and recovery has advanced technologically, the basic concept of burning carbon for heat, light and more recently transportation is archaic. And now it’s evident that the resulting climate instability threatens the survival of human civilization. The series […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Love wins
On the first day marriage licenses could be issued to same-sex couples in Washington state, Laurie and I headed to our rural county courthouse.
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Independent — or subsidized — journalism?
“An Industry Funded Education” in the Jan. 12, 2013, issue should have been called, “An Industry Funded Article.” We’re informed that the Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University — bankrolled by a “self-proclaimed ‘environmentalist who hates the environmental movement’ ” — gets big funding from the extractive industry but faithfully maintains scientific objectivity. So […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Boring?!
After reading “Outward (re)Bound” (HCN, 1/21/13), I couldn’t overcome a chilly feeling in response to a student’s description of his three-day solo trip in the Rocky Mountains as “so boring.” I was saddened by this student’s inability to find entertainment in one of the most spectacular mountain ranges in Colorado, and wondered if his response […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
A world of plague and hope: A review of The Bird Saviors
The Bird SaviorsWilliam J. Cobb320 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Unbridled Books, 2012. In William J. Cobb’s lyrical novel The Bird Saviors, a mysterious virus strikes the residents of Pueblo, Colo. Some blame wild birds for spreading the disease, which leaves victims incapacitated for weeks or eventually kills them. Employees of the Department of Nuisance Animal Control, including […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
A review of An Atlas of Historic New Mexico Maps
An Atlas of Historic New Mexico Maps 1550-1941. Peter L. Eidenbach, 184 pages, hardcover: $45. University of New Mexico Press, 2012. In this colorful collection of maps, archaeologist and historian Peter L. Eidenbach presents the Land of Enchantment as seen by early conquerors, naturalists, surveyors, and railroaders. Geologically speaking, New Mexico has been mostly static […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
A new normal for snow
Idaho hydrologist Phil Morrisey has been fielding some complaints lately. Although the Natural Resources Conservation Service — the federal agency he works for — reports normal snowpack, skiers say they’re schussing through thin powder. And they have a point, Morrissey says: The agency just started using a new standard for measuring average snowfall — and […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
A lament for B.C.
Seldom have I read an article in HCN that brought a tear to my eye, but the Dec. 24 issue on the new British Columbia mines did just that (“The New Wild West“). Our family has vacationed in British Columbia and southeast Alaska many times over the past 50 years. It is perhaps the most […]
Posted inGoat
Who is writing New Mexico’s water regulations?
Updated on 5/22/13. New Mexico environmental regulators under Republican governor Susana Martinez are overseeing attempts to roll back a suite of groundwater regulations. While the administration’s argument for loosening rules on dairies, mines and oil and gas marches to the drumbeat of jobs, jobs, jobs, all they have to do is look in their own […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Art finds a place alongside science at New Mexico research station
Everywhere, cardboard was scattered across metal counters and test tube racks. Natasha Ribeiro, an exuberant photographer with a blonde pixie cut, displayed one of the finished products: a box with a tiny hole and a slot for photographic paper, sealed with black tape. “A pinhole camera!” she exclaimed. “There are enough supplies for everyone to […]
Posted inWotr
Letting go of the comfortable
In central Washington’s Douglas County you can find ghost houses worn by wind and marooned on small islands of untilled dirt. Their inhabitants once gazed out at the easternmost Cascade Mountains, their peaks just above eye level from the county’s 3,000-foot high plain. My mother’s family lived in one of those houses surrounded by wheat […]
Posted inRange
A tale of two rivers
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearinghouse Recently I came across a spectacular video on YouTube, posted by the National Park Service (NPS), called “One Day in Yosemite.” It’s the work of 30 filmmakers who fanned out across the park on one day last June. From dawn to sundown and beyond they captured day-in-the-life details of […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A twittering elk in Boulder
COLORADO Believe me, we’re as sick as you are of reading about Boulder, Colo., on this page. But, still, it might make a good reality show location, except that most viewers would doubt the reality of even a reality show set here. In early January, for instance, according to the Daily Camera, a man entered […]
Posted inGoat
Forest Service wields an uncommon mining law
The Mining Law of 1872 is famously generous to miners when it comes to granting them rights to the riches on public lands. But in northern Idaho, a scuffle between miners and the Forest Service hinges on a related, but lesser-known law: the Mining Claims Rights Restoration Act of 1955. And unlike the 1872 law, […]
Posted inGoat
Energy geeks rejoice!
So you finally went out and got a “smart” phone, figured out how to check your email, ask it inane questions and get even more inane answers and got the “app” that turns your phone’s screen into a beer mug that “empties” when you tip it. Maybe you’ve even discovered one of the applications that […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Miguel Luna gives young Los Angelenos a beaker and a job
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 […]
Posted inWotr
Our national parks need room to breathe
In just three short years, the National Park Service will celebrate its 100th birthday. In anticipation, on Aug.25 of last year, the agency released a report prepared by a special advisory committee on the role of science in the parks. That report called for more support of science, more scientists on park staffs and a […]
Posted inGoat
Wyoming windsock you in the face!
There is no shortage of Wyoming wind jokes. Google Wyoming wind, and you’ll likely stumble across an image of a “Wyoming windsock”: a length of iron chain on a post, with a sign explaining that, if said chain is cocked at a 75 degree angle, you ought to “beware of low-flying trains.” This is perhaps […]