The Alaska predator control issue was an excellent one (HCN, 2/21/11). It offered information that I likely wouldn’t come across in the newspapers or journals I read — about the possible relationship between increasing salmon runs and declining ungulate populations, for example. It tackled complex matters in a way this non-wildlife biologist could grasp. And […]
Complexities tackled
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Hook-and-bullet journalism
The scientific bankruptcy of hook-and-bullet journalism by “outdoor” writers was on display in Craig Medred’s essay, “How my thoughts on wolves have changed” (HCN, 2/21/11). In his defense of the lethal manipulation of wolf populations, Medred uses the word “artificial” only once: to describe an “artificially high” wolf population resulting from “recent high salmon runs.” […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Who’s squeezing whom?
Craig Medred’s recent article on Alaska’s wolf dilemma raises some valid points (HCN, 2/21/11). Yes, wolves are carnivorous predators that can present a danger to humans. But it is worthwhile to consider why wolf attacks are becoming more common. One must ask whose territory is being invaded and squeezed into ever decreasing parameters. As biologist […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
The rules of intrusion
I have enjoyed reading HCN and Craig Childs’ writing over the years — until now (HCN, 2/21/11). As a high school librarian in Kayenta, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation, I often reach for an issue of HCN when a student isn’t reading. Students are proud to see tribal topics being covered and discussed in such […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Kudos, times two
Thanks for two superb articles: Craig Childs’ essay, “Ghosts, walking,” and Jim Stiles’ opinion piece, “Words that reverberate, words of hate” (HCN, 2/21/11). The former elegantly evokes the emotions canyon country kindles, while Stiles reminds us that it takes two poles to create polarization. We all need to be able to sit in between and […]
Posted inWotr
It’s March and all is well, right?
As I write this in March, it’s raining. A moist flow has set in, and we’re looking forward to a spring full of wildflowers: Indian paint brush, sego lilies, penstemon. It’s a wet cycle in the high desert of southern Utah. Not only is it raining, we’ve had more snow this winter than we’ve seen […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Running into winter
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. When my father-in-law’s sixtieth rolled around we got together as a family and asked him what he wanted for his birthday. Without hesitating he replied, “I want you all to run a half marathon […]
Posted inGoat
Rare earth, indeed
In 2009, Backpacker magazine’s risk meter — rating the status of threatened wild places along a spectrum of “saved” to “doomed” — placed Otero Mesa in southern New Mexico about three-quarters of the way to “doomed.” Nudging it to the edge of the proverbial cliff, according to Backpacker, was a singular threat: oil and gas […]
Posted inRange
The myth of rural subsidies
By Brian Depew Living in cities makes us smarter, more efficient and more innovative and rural life would not be possible without a “raft of subsidies devoted to sustaining it.” That is the claim made by Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein in a series of posts last week (one, two, three and four). Klein was […]
Posted inGoat
Utah lawmakers cut off public access to information
Okay, I admit it. At times, I’m a Tea-Party sympathizer. I’ve been glad to hear voices like Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s calling to eliminate wasteful price-gouging military contracts. And having spent too much of my lifetime struggling to extract information from recalcitrant government officials, I can see where people get the idea that inside federal […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Mount St. Helens: A world apart?
The hummocks of Mount St. Helens’ northern slope look decidedly haphazard. Barren, knuckle-shaped hills alternate with groves of red alder. A straggly willow grows from a mound of rocky soil. Patches of yellow moss are broken by wild strawberry blossoms and the occasional flare of red paintbrush. The effect is unsettling, as if the landscape […]
Posted inRange
The McClintock Factor
When Republican Congressman John Doolittle was implicated in the Abramowitz Scandals and forced to retire from Congress, California Democrats figured they had a good chance to win the 4th US Congressional District for the first time in modern history. The sprawling 4th district extends along the eastern side of northern California. Lead by growth in […]
Posted inGoat
‘Managed retreat’
Sea level rise is real, and it’s coming to a coastal city near you. Research published last month from the University of Arizona finds that hundreds of coastal cities in the lower 48 will lose an average of 9 percent of their land area as climate change causes seas to rise about one meter by […]
Posted inWotr
A prodigal son is honored by his hometown
It’s not only war heroes who get honored in the West with lasting memorials. When prodigal son Dalton Trumbo finally returned to his hometown of Grand Junction, Colo., he arrived on Main Street in a bronze bathtub. After four years, despite rain and snow, he’s still there, and some residents still can’t figure out if […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
New national forest rule lacks rigor
If you had come upon the U.S. Forest Service’s new draft planning rule in the second week of February and, unable to contain your curiosity, given it a hasty read, you might have come away impressed. Since 1982, the forest planning rule has provided the blueprint for managing 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands; […]
Posted inBlog
America’s Great Outdoors Diversity Initiative
Protecting the environment for future generations is great idea. In fact it’s a notion so simple that you might wonder why it took a White House committee ten months, 52 public listening sessions and a 116-page document to express what any lover of nature knows by heart. Unveiled in February by President Obama, America’s Great […]
Posted inBlog
How better science could help solve environmental justice problems
In the world of public health research and environmental monitoring, “cumulative impacts” are edging toward conventional wisdom–but at EPA headquarters, the phrase is just becoming hip. This week, the agency doled out $32 million dollars to study the health impacts of exposure to multiple pollutants at once. That’s on top of the $7 million granted […]
Posted inRange
It’s not climate change, it’s ocean change
We tend to think of nature as a bulwark against change. We spell it with a capital “N” and imagine it to be a timeless rock of stability against a sea of discontinuity. It should not surprise us that Europeans and North Americans turned nature into refuge from modernity a full century before John Muir […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A hearty feast
WYOMING After Wyoming Wildlife published a big story called “Golden” about the hunting prowess of golden eagles, reader Jim Frailey, of Harrisburg, Ill., told the magazine about a stunning eagle attack he’d witnessed purely by chance back in the early 1980s. He was taking a break from driving a delivery route when he noticed a […]
Posted inWotr
Finding place
For 14 years, I’ve been a wilderness ranger in a remote corner of southeast Alaska. What started as a summer job, something to fund my Western travel adventures, somehow turned into a career. Just as unexpectedly, I’ve learned about the powerful bond that can form between people and a place. This wilderness I’ve come to […]