I’m standing on the shores of Summer Lake, or, to be more accurate, what used to be a lakeshore but is now a dry lakebed in Oregon’s high desert. I’m here with a group of writers, scientists and artists, all of us gathered to talk about changes in the northern Great Basin. Sharp environmental contrasts, […]
Pondering change in the Great Basin
Posted inGoat
An audience for old Indians
Roland McCook wouldn’t care if he died tomorrow. Last Thursday, he stood before an amphitheater of aging white folks outside the Paonia public library. I wanted to hear what he wanted to say because most of the country doesn’t listen to old people, especially old Indians. A woman asked McCook, who is a Northern Ute […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
What about Pebble Mine?
As a recently retired U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist, I’m reassured to know that Alaska Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell appreciates the role of science in protecting the environment (“The U.S. is an ‘Arctic Nation,’ “ HCN, 8/20/12). Many decision-makers don’t. I would have been extremely interested to hear Treadwell’s position on the Pebble Mine proposed for […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Treadwell can’t have his oil and solve climate change, too
Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell is under the dangerous impression that he can have his cake and eat it too when it comes to Alaska’s non-renewable natural resources (“The U.S. is an ‘Arctic Nation,’ ” HCN, 8/20/12). We all hope for economic recovery, and oil reserves are certainly a fast path to that for Alaska. But […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
The great New Mexican juniper massacre
385,000 years: That’s the estimated collective age of old, live junipers illegally cut for firewood between July 2010 and November 2011 on Bureau of Land Management land in northern and central New Mexico. Hardest hit have been the surreally beautiful badlands west of the small town of Cuba, now stippled with freshly sawed tree stumps, […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Song of loss and redemption: A review of Theft
Theft BK Loren224 pages, softcover: $16.Counterpoint, 2012. Development’s brutal erosion of the landscape is a fact of life in the West. In the hands of lesser writers, it often becomes a cliché — shorthand for the destructive side of human nature and the grief and rage it provokes. Even when tackled by good writers, it […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
See you in October
A heads-up: High Country News staffers will be taking a much needed two-week publishing break after this issue. We’ll be catching up on work around the office as well as harvesting North Fork Valley produce and watching the aspens change. Look for our special annual books and essays issue around Oct. 15, and visit hcn.org […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Salvation for our dam nation?
On Washington’s White Salmon River last October 26th, sirens bleated, a man barked, “Fire in the hole!” and a cavity was blasted in the bottom of the 125-foot high Condit Dam. A few suspenseful seconds passed. Then, the reservoir behind the dam erupted through the hole and became a river again, although the water was […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Only more water will help the Bay Delta
Emily Green’s story, “Tunneling under California’s water wars,” reads as if it were written by Governor Jerry Brown’s office (HCN, 8/20/12). Those who extract water from the Bay Delta want a reliable supply. Unfortunately, that is not possible. We must adapt to a future with less water, not continue to demand more. Merely moving the […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Home improvement: A review of Sugarhouse
Sugarhouse: Turning the Neighborhood Crack House into Our Home Sweet HomeMatthew Batt258 pages, softcover: $14.95Mariner, 2012. Matthew Batt is a perpetual student, earning his Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah while his wife, Jenae, works — until she finally gets tired of supporting his grad-school habit. “I got home from ‘class’ one night, […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
History through a wide-angle lens
History is conveniently framed in your story about the conflict over Taos land grants (“Troubled Taos,” HCN, 8/20/12). Nowhere is the King of Spain’s right to grant the land in the first place ever questioned. One cannot argue there is a greater good in returning the land grants to Spanish grantees on the basis of […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Scientific superheroes
Other researchers investigating new tools and tricks to help suppress invasive cheatgrass: Nancy Shaw, U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Boise, Idaho Shaw’s investigation into new seed-drilling tools could mean the difference between success and failure for many native seeds. She’s been testing a minimum till drill, which reduces soil disturbance, compaction and erosion. Using it, […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Native plant growers face many challenges
Up at Jerry Benson’s native seed farm in central Washington, during harvest season, workers walk through fields sticking tiny vacuums up into what looks like a crop of bridal veils. Those veils, made out of a tulle-like netting, keep Benson’s precious phlox seeds — which tend to explode out of their seed cases — from […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Great Basin scientists unleash new weapons to fight invasive cheatgrass
This guy is lovely!” ecologist Beth Leger exclaims, falling to her knees. A tiny, energetic woman in her mid-30s, Leger hovers, bee-like, over a teensy grass with blue-green blades. It is, she tells me, a “cute” native called Poa secunda. It’s early May, and Leger, graduate student Owen Baughman and I are crouched on Peavine […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Pallid’s PR problem
For a large, ancient and extremely endangered species, the pallid sturgeon receives remarkably little respect. The fish is nobody’s poster child. Unlike trout and salmon, it has no real champions among environmental groups; it occasionally gets passing mention, but little direct advocacy, and few are actively engaged in the recovery effort. Pallids spend their entire […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Grand Canyon floods and native fish
The last time the Colorado River plunged unhindered through the Grand Canyon, swollen by snowmelt to 126,000 cubic-feet per second, was in 1957. Glen Canyon Dam rose soon after, delivering cheap hydropower and reliable water to cities, farms and industry. For native fish, the transformation was debilitating. Most of the river’s sediment — which built […]
Posted inRange
Enviros worry about Utah tar sands water pollution
By David Hasemyer, InsideClimate News The debate over whether oil sands mining should be allowed in Utah inched forward this week when an environmental group and the company that wants to open the mine both filed papers responding to a judge’s recent ruling on whether water resources will be adequately protected. Administrative Law Judge Sandra Allen ruled […]
Posted inGoat
It’s a hardrock life
South of Ouray, Colorado, dozens of abandoned gold and silver mines litter the valley below Red Mountain’s pyrite-stained slopes. Tourists clog the pullouts of US 550, the highway running through the mineral-rich San Juan Mountains, to gawk at the weathered wooden head frame of the Yankee Girl mine and the eggshell tailing piles beneath it, […]
Posted inWotr
Does taking our kids into the wild make us dangerous parents?
It began even before the kids were born, more than 20 years ago. Marypat finally got pregnant after years of miscarriages. We were halfway through winter in a cabin hundreds of miles from the nearest pavement, halfway through a 14-month canoe expedition, alone, vulnerable and perfectly content. The advice we got, from family, from friends, […]