As budgets shrink, national parks increasingly rely on volunteers instead of paid staff
Voluntary excess
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
The deer departed
And the ones that will remain while the National Park Service conducts a controversial mammal birth-control experiment at Point Reyes National Seashore
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Two weeks in the West
Just about every dinky diner in the Northwest’s logging country used to have a supplemental menu. Beside the grease-spattered board offering up fried eggs and bacon was another touting items such as spotted owl stew. It was a joke, of course, a jab at the endangered bird that many loggers blamed for the demise of […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Dear friends
WELCOME, HCN SUMMER INTERNS After a degree in zoology from the University of Washington and three years at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Morgan Heim wanted a change. It’s not that Morgan, who grew up catching snakes and crabs in Virginia Beach, didn’t love following salmon or studying orcas. But ultimately the relentless single-mindedness […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Of feral dogs, and feral Westerners
Feral dogs are more common in the rural West than bathtub methamphetamine labs or chainsaw carvers. They roam dumps, harass and attack wildlife and livestock, and, I know from painful experience, they lie in wait on two-lane roads to discipline bicyclists. “Rez” dogs may be famous for scavenging in roadside ditches outside Tuba City, Ariz., […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Weathering the academic storm
Dan Donato’s controversial study on salvage logging turned his life upside-down
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
A common problem
It may sound odd to some ears, but it’s accurate to say American Indians are diverse. One small example: Although high-desert reservations are an enduring image in the popular mind, only about one-eighth of Native Americans live on reservations, with roughly two-thirds inhabiting urban areas. Still, some social trends spread widely enough across Native American […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Problems in Paradise
A murder near the famed waterfalls of Havasu Canyon reveals the social ills of a tribe that needs help
Posted inArticles
The magnificent obsession of sheep herding
(Click on any photo below to see a larger version.) Border collies by nature are intelligent and moody -– one woman fondly describes hers as a habitual sulker — and as many an owner will attest, they’re notoriously high-maintenance. A collie’s obsessive-compulsive herding instinct means that it will round up not just sheep or cattle, […]
Posted inWotr
Ducks on the walls
“My baby’s got the most deplorable taste/but her biggest mistake is hanging over the fireplace/She’s got ducks, ducks on the wall!” That song by the Kinks rankles: What’s the matter with ducks on the wall? During my 15 years as a Wyomingite, I’ve learned that ducks make especially nice ornaments, winging toward windows or flapping […]
Posted inWotr
Knee-jerking in western Colorado
In 1917, during the height of anti-German propaganda in this country, the essayist H.L. Mencken wrote a history of the bathtub. He said President Millard Fillmore had installed the first bathtub in the White House — a brave act given that medical professionals believed bathtubs to be “certain inviters of phthisic, rheumatic fevers, inflammation of […]
Posted inWotr
Fees have become a public-lands shakedown
Scarcely anyone objected in 1996, when Congress authorized the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to charge the public new or increased fees for accessing its own land to fish, hunt, boat, drive, park, camp or walk. After all, it was going to be an experiment […]
Posted inArticles
Can Congress drag the 1872 Mining Law into the 21st century?
Today’s hardrock mines are nothing like the pick-and-shovel operations of the mid-19th century, but they are still governed by 19th century laws. Under the General Mining Act of 1872, anyone who stakes a claim on public land for metals such as gold, silver and uranium can extract the ore royalty-free and, until a moratorium 13 […]
Posted inWotr
I’ll take a double dare any time
I was that moronic kid who would do anything my brother dared me to, even if that involved, say, taking an ice ball to the face (“You flinched! You lose!”). I’m over the need for my big brother’s approval, but I still love a challenge. I took up one recently, after reading an interview in […]
Posted inWotr
So what if park fees go up?
A day at Disneyland costs a family of four at least $232, not counting Mickey Mouse ears. At Six Flags Magic Mountain, the admission price would be at least $180. A seven-day pass to enter Yellowstone National Park costs $25 per car, which means that the same family spending a week among bison, elk, geysers […]
Posted inWotr
Asarco would take us back to a polluted past
I remember the first time I tasted the air near the Asarco copper smelter in El Paso, Texas. It was 1990, and my wife and I had just moved there from Tucson, Ariz., to start teaching jobs in the English Department at the campus of the University of Texas-El Paso. I soon met two professors […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
Heard Around the West
OREGON Eugene’s annual used-book sale, organized by Friends of the Library, turned vicious last year, reports the Register-Guard. “Aggressive and boorish” Internet booksellers hired local people to wait in line, and when the doors opened, they swarmed in and threw sheets over tables, claiming every book. “It was over the top — it was savage,” […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
Wilderness Lost
My husband, Jay, and I planned our child’s outdoor life before he was conceived. We knew any child of ours would love to hike. How could he not? Spending time in the wilderness was fundamental to who we were. Jay and I have always connected with one another on the trail. Whenever we had troubles, […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
British writer tackles border politics
Make room on your bookshelf: Midnight Cactus will fit nicely between T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain and Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway. While Boyle provides a satiric fictional account of Southern California haves versus immigrant have-nots, and Urrea documents a deadly real-life journey across the border, British author Bella Pollen offers a lighter, though […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
Tipping the scales towards native species
When biologist Phil Pister used buckets to rescue the last Owens pupfish from an evaporating pool, he knew that if he “tripped over a piece of barbed wire,” the species was history. Thirty-eight years later, the pupfish survives only because scientists move the fish pool-to-pool and constantly trap predators. In Unnatural Landscapes, Ceiridwen Terrill, a […]