Our management of whitebark pine has a melancholy history, shaped by ignorance and mistakes as well as by the determination to rescue a species we have sent into a downward spiral. Foresters accidentally introduced white pine blister rust, an Asian fungous disease, to North America around 1900, by importing infected pine seedlings for tree plantations. […]
A ‘ragtag team’ of scientists, rangers and citizens works to save whitebarks
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
A celebration of Cascadia: A review of Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest
Open Spaces: Voices from the NorthwestPenny Harrison, ed. 252 pages, softcover: $22.50.University of Washington Press, 2011. I read Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest over two weeks, setting it down still open so that its pages made a neat tent on my coffee table, returning to it over morning coffee, between garden chores, after dinner […]
Posted inArticles
Feds Link Water Contamination to Fracking for the First Time
In a first, federal environment officials today scientifically linked underground water pollution with hydraulic fracturing, concluding that contaminants found in central Wyoming were likely caused by the gas drilling process. The findings by the Environmental Protection Agency come partway through a separate national study by the agency to determine whether fracking presents a risk to […]
Posted inGoat
Friday News Roundup: Nuclear uncertainty
The American nuclear industry had some serious shade thrown its way in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant disaster. Almost a year later, U.S. nuclear still can’t seem to catch a break. On Wednesday, Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, announced that the agency will likely face delays in renewing […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
When a bear drives a Prius
CALIFORNIA A black bear in Lake Tahoe broke into a Toyota Prius parked at a cabin and then “went into a rampage” when he realized he was trapped inside it, reports the Contra Costa Times. The animal kicked, bit and tore at the seats and the steering wheel, and finally managed to shift the car […]
Posted inGoat
Renting a riverbed
A land ownership case is in deep water, bringing property rights, public domain and commerce into question. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in PPL Montana vs. Montana yesterday, in a fight over who owns title to riverbeds in the state. In 2010, the Montana Supreme Court ruled the state held title to land beneath […]
Posted inWotr
The Forest Service discriminates against poor kids
The summer before last, I took a four-day hike through the backcountry of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in the Washington Cascades. I’m accustomed to rugged terrain and steep slopes, so I was impressed when, after miles of travel off the trail, I heard the voices of teenagers wafting toward me. I met the intrepid boys […]
Posted inGoat
The bright side of the Berkeley Pit
Updated Jan. 5, 2012 It is a dead place. Stitched with skeletal plants and sentinel tree trunks, riven by rills of cloudy, unspeakably polluted water, laid bare against a paste sky. There is no sense of space or time here; only pure, absolute quiet. It is one of my favorite images — “Uranium Tailings No. […]
Posted inRange
Two Ronalds: Ron Paul and Ronald McDonald
In 1988, in the waning days of the Reagan Administration, I was a cub reporter in Boise, Idaho. I covered what the photo editor called in jest the “Ronald McDonald beat.” If Ronald McDonald made a public appearance, the editor slapped my skinny shoulders and said, “Go get ‘em, Scoop.” He rattled off the talking […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Hersh Saunders’ transformation from prosthodontist to kosher slaughterer
In a barn on his 400-acre ranch south of Pueblo, Colo., Hersh Saunders sharpens a long blunt-end knife called a halaf. A blue crocheted kippah, a Jewish skullcap, covers the bearded rabbi’s silver hair. Outside the barn, sheep graze and chickens peck near a small synagogue and rows of organic vegetables. Saunders has spent the […]
Posted inGoat
The Estonian connection: Or how I started worrying about oil shale
The last big oil shale* boom in the West busted on “Black Sunday” 1982. I was 11 years old, then, living in Western Colorado, and I can still remember my dad explaining the boom, the bust and the process necessary to get the “oil” out of the shale. Here’s a primer: Underground room and pillar […]
Posted inWotr
Home on the range
This year, I was lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving back home with my parents in central Montana. Holidays at home usually include the traditional trappings of board games, gravy boats and hungry dogs making cute under the table, followed by food-induced snooze fests in the living room. But what I most look forward to when […]
Posted inRange
President Obama says Indian Country is at a turning point
Politicians are required to be optimistic. It’s the first tool in their bag. And a president of the United States is even more optimistic than most politicians. It’s what we expect from our leader. President Barack Obama beamed that message at the White House Tribal Nations conference last week. He told tribal leaders: “We’ve got […]
Posted inGoat
The age of disturbance
When my East Coast-based family rented a condo in Breckenridge, Colo. for our family vacation in June this year, my dad couldn’t stop exclaiming over the dead trees. Scores of lodgepole pines, killed by the bark beetle epidemic, lined pretty much every road we drove down or bike path we pedaled on. A recent report […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
A citizen activist forces New Mexico’s dairies to clean up their act
Jerry Nivens lives in a trailer in Caballo, N.M., 165 miles south of Albuquerque. A bulky Texas transplant who chain-smokes American Spirits, Nivens cares as deeply for his mesquite-speckled patch of ground as any rural New Mexican. He enjoys driving into the mountains, where he used to while away afternoons panning for gold. He goes […]
Posted inRange
Cheers to land trusts
At last it’s December, a month when central and Southern Arizonans can finally turn off the air conditioning for good and revel in the glorious, 70 degree weather. Our beautiful desert beckons, and we respond in droves. Just in time, in keeping with this season of renewal and hope, there is good news to be […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: speeding renewable projects on tribal lands
Recent efforts to speed the process of approving surface leases on tribal lands have moved slower than a Mojave Desert tortoise. But regulations proposed by the Interior Department Monday could help tribes more quickly gain Bureau of Indian Affairs approval for renewable energy, residential, or business leases on some of the 56 million acres of […]
Posted inWotr
The end is near — the end of 2011
To claim that the ancient Mayan culture of Mexico and Central America developed a nuanced conception of time is like saying the modern stock market is a complicated financial instrument. The Mayan calendars cover a multi-faceted collection of linear and cyclical measurements that go back almost 3,000 years as well as forward in time — […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Can an old mine become a work of art?
As I wander past a scrawled “NO TRESSPASSING: SHOTGUN ENFORCED” sign, I can’t help but recoil and glance around. I am, after all, on private property, and instinct is instinct. My safety at this particular mining site, however, is assured: I’m with a bunch of internationally acclaimed artists and a slew of locals. Even the […]
Posted inGoat
Travel planning theatrics
Currently, Koch’s ranch is split by a slim Bureau of Land Management parcel. That parcel contains a public access road into the Gunnison National Forest. In return for eliminating this forest access, and gaining a few other parcels in the same area (totaling about 1800 acres), Koch is offering the federal government a pair of […]