Enviros are dreaming – not of a white Christmas (which seems unlikely around most of the West, given ongoing drought) but of a greener White House. A president’s re-election often creates an exodus of Cabinet secretaries, as some decide to leave for other opportunities and others are asked to step down. Hencewith, some outright speculation […]
The name game
Posted inGoat
Dispersing the toxicity
It’s every coastal community’s nightmare. An off-shore oil rig explodes, a tanker runs aground, and the name of their town — Homer, Alaska, say — becomes synonymous with the latest disaster of our oil-besotted age. When such a disaster does happen, oil spill responders are faced with many choices about how to contain the spill […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Will Navajos approve a Grand Canyon megadevelopment?
GAP, Arizona — For over 50 years, residents of this western sliver of the Navajo Nation have watched tourist traffic zoom by on Highway 89, headed for the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell and southern Utah’s national parks. Except for a single gas station and a few ramshackle jewelry stands, there’s little here to attract vacationers’ […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
What’s wild?
I consider the recent article on wild horse management one of your best (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). It seems that some people are adamant that horses have no place in the wild. Others consider them equivalent to deer, elk and other wildlife. How long does a species have to be here to be considered […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Weird and wacky White House petitions
Last month, when the Bureau of Land Management announced the proposed lease of over 20,000 acres for gas development in Colorado’s North Fork Valley, locals took their displeasure straight to the top: They petitioned President Obama to make the BLM take the leases off the table until it’s done updating its 23-year-old land management plan. […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Up the road and a world away: A review of Elsewhere, California
Elsewhere, CaliforniaDana Johnson276 pages, softcover: $15.95.Counterpoint, 2012. Dana Johnson’s thoughtful and affecting first novel, Elsewhere, California, is narrated by a girl named Avery, whom we first meet as a child growing up in South Central Los Angeles in the ’70s and ’80s. When her brother is threatened by gangs, their parents decide to move to […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Round ’em up
The ongoing feral horse debate is a prime example of a small special-interest group getting its way and creating an unsustainable public program (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). Feral horses are a serious threat to our native ecosystems. Research has shown that areas inhabited by feral horses have fewer plant species and less grass and overall […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Of faith and frostbite: a review of True Sisters
True SistersSandra Dallas341 pages, hardcover: $24.99.St. Martin’s Press, 2012. In the 2012 presidential election, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emerged from the shadows with the first Mormon candidate for the nation’s highest office. Colorado writer Sandra Dallas’s 11th novel examines the history of a religion not widely understood outside its Utah base, […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Good news and goodbyes
HCN contributing editor Michelle Nijhuis has won a 2012 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in the magazine category. Michelle’s story “Crisis in the Caves,” published in the July/August 2011 issue of Smithsonian magazine, reported on white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has decimated bats in the northeastern U.S. and is poised to spread across the […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Distracted in Green River
Right from the title — “The outsiders: What are a bunch of hipsters doing in Green River, Utah?” — Emily Guerin establishes that her article will be concerned not with issues, but with appearances. It is a shame. Issues of acceptance and identity — persistent in small, economically downtrodden Western communities — are real and […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
BLM’s equine quagmire
It’s unconscionable that current policy has tripled the Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse and burro program budget since 2000 to a massive $76 million. Dave Philipps’ fine piece of reporting mentioned many of BLM’s management strategies, such as roundups, adoption, fertility control and sanctuaries (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). A few more were overlooked, […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
A sampler of wildlife tech
PingersRadio transmitters, sometimes called “pingers,” are a classic monitoring method. Powered by batteries, they transmit very high frequency signals that are picked up by antennas or satellites. Until recently, the batteries’ weight and size couldn’t be reduced enough to use transmitters on small animals and fish. But now, says Doug Bonham, a freelance circuit-board designer […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
A new measure of poverty shifts rankings in the West
Thumbnail photo CC via Flickr user Palmspringsdude. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A new measure of poverty shifts rankings in the West.
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
A bird in hand
(This is the editor’s note accompanying two stories on the evolution of wildlife-monitoring technology.) Nearly 40 years ago, during a college ornithology course, I helped set up a “mist net” — something like a volleyball net with nearly invisible super-fine mesh — in a spot between bushes where small birds flew. One by one, unsuspecting […]
Posted inWotr
How, 150 years ago, the Homestead Act transformed the West
All across forests of the West, 10-by-12-foot cabins stand forlorn and forgotten, many with tumbledown roofs and gaping doors. Yet these modest homesteads represent a revolution in public-land policy: They were the culmination of an American dream born of Thomas Jefferson’s belief that at our best, we would become a nation of independent farmers. This […]
Posted inGoat
West is best?
A post-Thanksgiving hike should not be too strenuous. It needs to be vigorous enough to help awaken from a food coma but not so tough as to ruin the long weekend. This year, a light stroll through nearby Dominguez Canyon, with a close group of friends, fit the bill. After just a short drive and […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
The right tributary
Yesterday I took a long walk up a cold stream in search of bull trout. I didn’t really expect to see fish. Instead, I’d come to see redds — the gravel nests in which fish lay eggs — because I’d been trying to write a story about salmon and realized I knew nothing whatsoever about […]
Posted inWotr
Here come the Super Storms
Once again, we were all New Yorkers. Watching the heartbreak that continues in Staten Island, parts of Queens and along the pummeled Jersey Shore, our sympathies turned eastward toward the victims of this unusual “Super Storm.” But just how unusual was it? Sandy’s devastation gives us the opportunity to remember another giant storm that barreled […]