The next time you reach for these three popular foods, consider this sampler of the chemicals commonly applied to them in the fields, and the potential impacts to farmworkers’ health if the pesticides are used improperly. Apples Azinphosmethyl (AZM), a pesticide, can cause nausea, convulsions, weakness, respiratory distress, headaches, eye injuries and neurological damage that […]
Connections to your kitchen
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Healthy workers, healthy label
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Harvesting Poison.” The Bailey family grows more than cherries on their 1,500-acre orchard in The Dalles, Ore. The fourth-generation farmers are also trying to nurture worker-friendly conditions. They offer employees decent housing, such as modular trailers and small brick houses, equipped with showers, toilets […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Reweaving the river
Farmers and ranchers — not ‘yuppie environmentalists’ — work on a Colorado restoration
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Reckless rancher cuts sweet deal in D.C.
Bush administration orders local BLM office to back off
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Timber companies borrow a tool from environmentalists
Conservation easements help protect private forests — and keep logging jobs alive, too.
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Who’s at the helm?
The EPA hasn’t had anyone at the wheel for three months — but it’s been charging full steam ahead
Posted inWotr
Run before dawn and other advice from a Native American elder
Born in 1896, Margaret King sits on her cot like a stained glass sculpture. If you parted the Bluebird Flour sack curtains from the window of her HUD house and held all 60 pounds of her up to the sun, purples, reds, blues, yellows and browns would stream through her parchment skin. Her ferocious eyes […]
Posted inWotr
A rational response to wildfires
As summer weather breaks in the West and ushers in a cool and moist fall, all of us are breathing a sigh of relief. At the same time we cannot avoid being haunted by the question of whether there is something we ought to be doing to reduce the wildfire threat. Any rational response to […]
Posted inWotr
Free Hetch Hetchy!
To the members of a nonprofit group called Restore Hetch Hetchy, one solution to overcrowding in Yosemite Valley in California seems obvious: Create a duplicate of that enormously popular attraction, complete with its own spectacular waterfalls and soaring granite cliffs. The proposal would not require a team of theme-park engineers to execute since a natural […]
Posted inWotr
Hell’s mountains are in the Northern Rockies
If Hell has mountains, they must look like the Northern Rockies. As my fire spotter and I fly an insignificantly small airplane over our territory in western Montana, we weave through brown tendrils of wind-shredded smoke that curl around granite peaks. Sudden explosions of dark ash rise into the air above stands of trees as […]
Posted inWotr
Some trees inspire true love
This is a love story about a small number of scientists and some pine trees in North America. I do not know if any hugging has taken place between the trees and the scientists, but tears of loss have been shed. Biologist Diana Tomback got to know the trees as a young graduate student, and […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Another roadside detraction
Next time you’re cruising the open highway or ambling along a backwoods two-track, be wary of hitchhikers with barbed seedlings and spiky thistles. New studies from the University of California, Davis show that roads significantly promote the spread of invasive weeds. Noxious weeds such as cheatgrass, leafy spurge and knapweed already occupy over 133 million […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Yellowstone’s grizzly stalker
Chuck Neal is a retired ecologist whose nickname, “Wild Grizzly Stalker,” says it all: For more than 25 years, Neal has followed grizzlies around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem — 28,000 square miles in and around Yellowstone National Park. Eschewing bear spray, bells and just about everything else, he has seen more than 3,000 grizzlies, and […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Calendar
The Rocky Mountain Land Institute is holding its 12th Annual Land Use Continuing Education Conference on Oct. 16-17 in Denver. For registration information, call 303-871-6239. Do you enjoy storytelling, sheep and Basque culture? Then get thee to Idaho on Oct. 10-12 for the Trailing of the Sheep Festival. The weekend-long festival ends with a parade […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Being rich isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
“It’s not easy being rich” — especially when you’re rich in natural resources. So says a new report from the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado at Boulder, explaining why the West is smack-dab in the middle of the nation’s energy fight. The report, What Every Westerner Should Know About Energy, […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Dave Brower’s spirit lives!
The article “Invasion of the Rock Jocks” presented a stilted picture of the climbing community’s commitment to environmental protection (HCN, 7/7/03: Invasion of the Rock Jocks). While pointing out the importance of educating young climbers and meeting the challenges of new trends in the sport, the article fails miserably to answer its own questions. Are […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Waiving goodbye to wildlife protection
In your recent issue on oil and gas development in the Rockies (HCN, 8/18/03: Gas crisis puts Rockies in hot seat), you printed an industry group chart which purports to display the onerous “seasonal stipulations” attached to many BLM oil and gas leases, an example (in the industry’s view) of the “restrictions and impediments” hindering […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
A little democracy in our water?
Your cover story, “Pipe Dreams,” says water always moves to the big money in the cities (HCN, 8/4/03: Pipe Dreams). So does everything else. It’s the way the system works, but it’s not just. Why is it so difficult for the West to install a democratic water distribution system? Because the country doesn’t have a […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Fish vs. kids? or kids vs. golf carts?
As an Albuquerque resident of 13 years, I read with interest your story “Truce remains elusive in Rio Grande water fight,” (HCN, 8/4/03: Truce remains elusive in Rio Grande water fight). The story was very good, but one bit of relevant information was not in the story. ALL of Albuquerque’s drinking water comes from wells. […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Hatchery runaways add to concerns about fish farms
Farm-raised Atlantic salmon — already discovered in 12 Puget Sound river systems — have infiltrated another Northwestern stream. In July, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife employees spotted 250 juveniles in Scatter Creek, near Olympia. John Kerwin, a state hatchery official, says the fish came from a Cypress Island Inc. hatchery that produces salmon smolts […]