OREGON Rick Kirschner, a naturopath who works with corporations to resolve staff conflicts, has been hired to train the trash-talking city council of Ashland, a city better known for hosting the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The therapist will have his work cut out for him. At the last meeting of the seven-member group, Councilman David Chapman […]
Heard Around the West
Posted inOctober 29, 2007: Which Way West
In Large and Sunlit Land
Here, in large and sunlit land … I will lay my hand in my neighbor’s hand And together we will atone For the set folly and the red breach And the black waste of it all. -Rudyard Kipling On New Year’s Eve 1987, in Niger, West Africa, I camped with friends at the foot […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2007: Which Way West
Six Good Places
There’s a workaday village – or its ruins, anyway – hidden in the wilderness of the Sierra Nevada. I found it by following a feeling, one mapped onto my brain by ancient forces. Lately this map has begun guiding me in other places: Venice. Vancouver. Aix-en-Provence. Seattle. Even Portland, where I live. And it has […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2007: Which Way West
Another near-death experience for environmentalism
Where were you the day environmentalism died? It was Oct. 6, 2004, when social researchers and environmental policy strategists Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger instigated the world’s greenest catfight by distributing their essay The Death of Environmentalism at a meeting of the Environmental Grantmakers Association. The pamphlet charged that the environmental movement had become just […]
Posted inWotr
Truckers or skiers, take your pick
Any conversation about the West’s dangerous interstate highways might explore why more truckers don’t use I-90 or I-70, instead of Wyoming’s infamous I-80, which stretches across the southern part of the state. Given Interstate 80’s high altitude and snow-prone disposition, plus forecasts that traffic will increase to over 14,000 vehicles a day, everyone should be […]
Posted inWotr
How many nuclear bombs do we need?
“When I became conscious, it was a dead city.” The college students in the room are silent as Shigeko Sasamori stands in front of them. It looks as though she wears light pink lipstick. Up close, the scars around her mouth, neck and hands are clearly visible. The morning American pilots dropped an atomic bomb […]
Posted inWotr
Exploring the shrinking marvel of Lake Powell
I grew up thinking of Lake Powell as sacred in the way that a mass grave is sacred. But I’m also a practical person, and I see the lake as a giant highway offering access to some of the most spectacular country in the West. It was the practical side that agreed when my wife […]
Posted inArticles
A watershed proposal
Colorado’s Cache la Poudre River tumbles 80 miles from its high-alpine headwaters in Rocky Mountain National Park down to the South Platte River on the plains below. The upper Poudre is the only designated wild and scenic river in the state – but after it exits Poudre Canyon, 90 percent of its flow is siphoned […]
Posted inArticles
Apache trout swim ‘full stream’ ahead
It is a pre-meditated killing, cold-blooded in every sense. Before night descends, the conspirators make final calculations. The next morning, they return with the lethal poison. Hundreds die, but to one federal agency their deaths are not in vain – the victims are non-native fish, taken out by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Cat Fight on the Border
Will homeland security concerns keep jaguars from returning to their native U.S. range? Maybe.
Posted inWotr
Sometimes the priceless really is priceless
Most of us have seen those credit-card ads that go something like “Fishing license, $40. Fly casting gear, $480. Reeling in a rainbow trout in the wilderness under a 14,000-foot peak: Priceless.” But dollar signs can be associated with these “priceless” activities. Let’s start with the rainbow trout. Rainbows are native to the West Coast, […]
Posted inWotr
The West is always wild to the young
The thing I remember most about winter in the mountains above a town in New Mexico called Las Vegas was the silence. At times, it was so quiet that, as a sheepherder from Montana pointed out, you could hear snowflakes slap against the pines. The sheepherder and I were fellow pilgrims whose lives intersected along […]
Posted inWotr
What’s worse than an unethical hunter?
All-terrain vehicles aren’t good or bad in themselves; it’s all about context. When my son was lost for an entire night in the mountains of northeast Oregon, search and rescue volunteers from Union County showed up on their ATVs and set out to bring him home. I was never so glad to see machinery in […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Bargains with wolves
A common logical error is the “either-or” fallacy. We must either kill wolves or put up with dead and horribly maimed cows. And men so quickly turn to guns. I’m sure there are many solutions in between, one of which is “negotiating” with the wolves. Ann Daum writes about a rancher successfully negotiating with coyotes […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Rhetoric vs. reasonableness
The exchange inspired by Bryce Andrews’ “Living Precariously With Wolves and Cattle,” has revealed a striking contrast in soul and substance on opposite sides of the divide over management of public rangelands in the American West (HCN, 8/20/07). Andrews’ description of killing one wolf and participating, at least indirectly, in the killing of three others […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Medium-rare, with a side of dead trees
Chalk another one up for the cattle industry and beef consumerism (HCN, 8/20/07). Clear mesquite trees to plant buffelgrass for cattle grazing, and clear more trees for mesquite charcoal to cook the cattle. The inverted cycle of life. I seem to have missed where the “good intentions” apply in this story. Was it good intentions […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
The power of pond scum
The article describing the potential use of pumping CO2 underground prompts me to provide an alternative, and perhaps less costly, way of sequestering carbon exhausted from industrial sources (HCN, 9/3/07). I would suggest that the energy producers pump gaseous CO2 through vast transparent vats filled with blue-green algae and nutrients. If the vats were placed […]