Can cows coexist with rare plant communities in a national monument? That is what President Clinton asked the Bureau of Land Management to determine when he created the 52,947-acre Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in 2000. The monument, east of Ashland, Ore., is an ecological crossroads where three distinct bioregions – the Siskiyou Mountains, the Cascade Range […]
On a new national monument, has an agency been cowed?
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
A revival on Hart Mountain
The antelope refuge looks better than it has in decades, but managers seem stuck in the past
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Freaky Fridays with the Bush administration
Officials deliver bad news on the environment when no one is listening
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Dear Friends
Radio Special Radio High Country News will return to the airwaves in mid-November for a special one-hour show called “Atomic Tales: Living in the Nuclear West.” The program will explore our region’s cradle-to-grave relationship with all things nuclear — a relationship that reaches from the dawn of the nuclear age to the burial of radioactive […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Conservation in an imperfect world
In the three decades since it was signed into law, the Endangered Species Act has had some remarkable successes: Wolves have made a comeback in the Northern Rockies; bald eagles have rebounded. But the ESA is an imperfect tool. The endangered species list is often likened to the hospital emergency room, and the comparison is […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
San Diego’s Habitat Triage
To save room for a raft of imperiled species, one city is making sacrifices to the gods of sprawl. Not everyone thinks it’s going to be a happy ending
Posted inWotr
Trying out for the new sport of Extreme Canning
It’s getting harder and harder to be an “extreme” athlete. The ultra-fit among us aren’t just climbing all Western peaks over 14,000 feet; they’re climbing them in less than 10 days and doing it on snowboards, skis, bikes and in-line skates. All this requires thousands of dollars’ worth of gear and years of training. And […]
Posted inWotr
To have and have not in Flagstaff, Arizona
I’m still appalled by the subject line of the e-mail I received a month ago. “Great news: we are homeless!” I didn’t know the address on the e-mail. Based on the subject line, I figured it was probably from a Democratic candidate informing me about a Bushite atrocity. I clicked open the e-mail to find […]
Posted inWotr
California’s growth machine fueled these disastrous wildfires
The wildfires that gnawed their way through drought-crisped Southern California are on a pace to establish a record for acreage charred and for the dollar value of structures and belongings destroyed. Perhaps this is no great feat in a state where homes worth $250,000 five years ago are worth twice that today. The monetary disaster […]
Posted inWotr
Salmon go swoosh in the Northwest
It was Saturday, and we had shopping to do: groceries, eyeglasses, yard tools, and as we crisscrossed Portland to find deals, we were sucked into malls, lured by displays to purchase jeans and sports paraphernalia. Then, in the middle of the overcast Oregon afternoon, in the heart of Northwest cool known as the Pearl District, […]
Posted inWotr
Leaving Las Vegas
I lived in Las Vegas recently for about a year, doing research at a large weapons-testing facility outside of town. Among all the places I’ve lived, from tropical islands to small towns and Western strip-mall communities, Las Vegas seemed uniquely American in its boosterism for get-rich-quick schemes, the sex industry and for the stupendous desert […]
Posted inWotr
Ski resorts go for the green
Because ski resorts are beautiful in winter and green in summer, they have usually been considered good environmental citizens. But in the last few years, that perception has begun to erode. In 1997, there was the Earth Liberation Front’s terrorist attack on Vail’s Two Elks Lodge to protest the resort’s expansion into lynx habitat. Later, […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Gas drilling blamed for smog
Why would Oklahoma City, a town of 500,000 people, have higher levels of some smog-forming hydrocarbons than famously hazy metropolises like Houston, Chicago and New York? A group of atmospheric scientists from the University of California, Irvine collected hundreds of air samples across a 1,000-mile-wide area to find out. Their conclusions, released in the Oct. […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Right and wrong on public lands
With everything from invasive insects to energy developers threatening national forests, wildlife refuges and other public lands, it’s not hard to understand why conservationists are scowling a lot these days. But in From Conquest to Conservation, Michael Dombeck, Christopher Wood and Jack Williams argue that Americans, now more than ever, realize public lands are more […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Calendar
The Water Education Foundation will present a one-day program, Climate Change and California Water Resources, in Sacramento, Calif., on Nov. 6. Scientists and government officials will discuss the regional effects of climate change in California and their implications for the state’s water supply. www.watereducation.org/briefings.asp. 916-444-6240 The organizers of Connecting Mountain Islands and Desert Seas have […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Snowmaking and drought: a bad combination
Researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder say that extended drought, coupled with mining pollution, could make for rocky winters at Colorado ski resorts. A recently released study published in the American Geophysical Union’s EOS Journal examines the Snake River Watershed in Summit County, Colo., where hotter weather threatens snow conditions at popular ski resorts […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Bring on the anti-gravity backpacks
Gail Binkly’s memories of hiking in the “good old days” (for her, the 1980s) ring a lot of bells (HCN, 8/4/03: When did we become such gear-toting wimps?). But does she really prefer those heavy boots made of solid rock and worn jeans that stayed wet for three days after a downpour? How she got […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
A modest proposal for nuclear waste
Being in the county adjacent to Nye County, Nev., where Yucca Mountain may actually store nuclear waste one day, I am not at all comfortable knowing a mere 15 miles separates the counties. Even Carlsbad, N.M., seems too close for producing plutonium triggers for new bombs (HCN, 9/1/03: Courting the bomb). I propose an idea: […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Carlsbad: A nuclear ghost town?
Is Carlsbad to become another Hanford, Wash., nuclear cleanup project (HCN, 9/1/03: Courting the bomb)? Hanford is now the largest U.S. government Superfund toxic site, requiring more engineers and technicians for cleanup than were ever used in its lifetime of producing plutonium. It took a large flow of water from the Columbia River to cool […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
New nukes aren’t necessarily evil
A friend brought us her copy of the Sept. 1, 2003, edition of High Country News, knowing that I would be interested in the article on Carlsbad’s bid for the new pit facility. Never have I seen a clearer illustration of the aphorism that where you stand depends upon where you sit. My viewpoint may be […]