Back in the 1960s, when I was a Los Angeles kid, LAX airport planned a big remodel. Regional bigwigs envisioned a futuristic structure of some kind, so the architects went on a Jetsons jag and suspended a gleaming streamlined pod on two sweeping steel parabolas. It would be the theme building for the whole airport, […]
Empty pods and pleasant graveyards
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Fishing ban will make us forget salmon
When the Bush administration originally announced its intent to ban ocean fishing of chinook salmon along 700 miles of southern Oregon and Northern California coastline, many people in my hometown sneered their approval (HCN, 3/6/06: Fishermen blamed for salmon troubles). With the exception of a brief, limited and most probably token fishing season last summer, […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
‘Miss Fish Hatchery’
Name Jenn Logan Vocation Wildlife conservation biologist Age 33 Home Base Alamosa, Colorado Known for Her efforts to protect and save endangered fish She says “I love the challenge of persuading a person to care about suckers or toads.” The very walls were chirping: There were crickets in every crack and cupboard of Jenn Logan’s […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Tribes look to cash in with ‘tree-market’ environmentalism
Carbon banking could help restore forests and fight global warming
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
On a wing and a prayer
Gunnison grouse must fend for survival without help of Endangered Species Act
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Interior’s new secretary — general or foot soldier?
Will Kempthorne’s deal-making prowess be enough to get something done?
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Dear friends
CHANGES AT HCN High Country News is searching for its next editor in chief, following Editor Greg Hanscom’s announcement that he’ll be leaving us at the end of the year, after 10 years with the organization. HCN’s former associate editor, Matt Jenkins, apparently got lost en route to California, where he was planning to set […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Adapt or collapse
In his most recent book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond examines the rise and fall of civilizations ranging from Easter Island in Polynesia to the pre-Columbian Mayan and Anasazi. All of them faced a similar combination of problems: climate change, rapid population growth and resource depletion among them. And all […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
The Perpetual Growth Machine
Arizona sets out to disprove the notion that someday the West will run out of water
Posted inWotr
Sometimes, it’s possible to be too much in touch
As a general rule, it is not a good idea to smack a fellow river rafter with a paddle or to push him out of the boat in the middle of a rapid. Not only do such actions constitute a breach of wilderness etiquette, they can cause hard feelings that might result in unpleasantness later […]
Posted inWotr
Rhubarb is the season’s gift to us
Are you enjoying rhubarb season? When the robin nests in the cherry tree and thunderclouds tease us by gathering every afternoon, rhubarb is ready. I’m weeding among leaves of rhubarb the size of TV trays when a woman stops jogging by and asks, “What’s that plant?” “Rhubarb,” I tell her; our grandmothers called it “pie […]
Posted inWotr
Fencing off Mexico is an ecological blunder
Medical doctors have their Hippocratic oath in which they pledge to heal the sick to the best of their ability and do no harm. We ecologists have our own guiding principle: Call it the Leopold oath. The late Aldo Leopold, who worked for the U.S. Forest Service and is considered to be one of the […]
Posted inWotr
Killing cougars is the easy choice
The state of Oregon is back in the business of killing cougars. After a long and contentious public comment process, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission recently approved a management plan for the state’s top predator that would allow government-paid hunters to reduce cougar numbers back to 1993 levels. That could ultimately mean the killing […]
Posted inWotr
Shooting at hikers is perfectly legal
My family and I almost became collateral damage at the end of a pleasant hike through Colorado’s Roosevelt National Forest. We were walking on a trail north of the small town of Lyons, when bullets suddenly peppered the trees behind our backs. My 8-year-old son, in tears, flattened himself into the dirt, and though my […]
Posted inWotr
Commemorating the Vietnam War in northern New Mexico
This Memorial Day weekend, the population of northern New Mexico will swell by thousands of people. Many will come for more than the magnificent vistas of the Sangre de Cristo mountains and perfect weather. They visit because the area is home to the first-ever Vietnam Veterans Memorial, built back in 1971, when the war was […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
The life of an enigmatic seabird
One of the great North American ornithological mysteries in recent history was solved not by a scientist or a birder, but by a tree-trimmer. Working in an ancient Douglas fir in California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Hoyt Foster began to lop off a limb 148 feet above ground when suddenly he was confronted by […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Saving water from the sky
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands should come with a warning: Read it only at home, with tools handy, because what’s inside inspires action. Tucson author Brad Lancaster explores strategies to “plant” rainwater where it falls. He should know: Lancaster harvests more than 100,000 gallons of rainwater a year, transforming his one-eighth acre of urban desert into […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Dinosaur bones and dastardly deeds
It’s a sad, sick world, as the daily papers, broadcast news and even High Country News report, what with droughts, drying aquifers and global warming. Sometimes one yearns for a bit of escapist fun. Douglas Preston offers up a delicious dose in his latest novel, Tyrannosaur Canyon. A page-turner set in the desert Southwest, it’s […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
It’s the population, stupid
“California, here we come,” is replete with contradictions (HCN, 5/1/06: California, here we come). It praises California for “showing the rest of the West how to use water more efficiently through conservation” by “pioneering the transfer of water rights from rural areas to rapidly growing urban centers.” But rural areas, with their ability to grow […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
California’s not that different
California is no better off environmentally than the Rocky Mountain West (HCN, 5/1/06: California, here we come). (Of course, there are several Californias, and the environment is valued in different ways in, say, the central coastal region than in most of the Central Valley. Remember, please, that Richard Pombo hails from California, and he’s not […]