One day several years ago, when the youngest was 5 and her sister 8, the youngest brought home from kindergarten a watercolor she had painted of a tree. Painted on 9-by-18-inch paper, the tree’s shallow crown stretched the 18-inch width of the paper and off both edges. My wife and I of course praised the […]
Agriculture
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Finding hope in a new land
Mexican-born author Rose Castillo Guilbault first saw America from the window of a Greyhound bus. The 5-year-old sat next to her divorced mother, Maria Luisa, who had taken a distant cousin’s advice to heart: Head to El Norte. “Get out of this cesspool. It will pull you down and drown you. You’re still young. Start […]
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Hope
After 16 years in the shadows, two sisters win legal residency
Posted inWotr
Corn ethanol isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
This was supposed to be a cakewalk, a no-brainer, a slam-dunk. Ethanol from corn lessened our dependence on foreign oil, they told us. It helped our struggling Midwestern farmers. It was much better for the environment. Who could not support this? As it turns out, quite a few of us. Ethanol plants are sprouting like […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2005: A New Green Revolution
Organics and biofuels bring independence
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “A New Green Revolution.” For years, conventional farmers and other naysayers could dismiss organic farming with a wave of the hand: too many man-hours, too much tilling to control weeds, too few markets. But because organic farming uses no petroleum-based fertilizers or pesticides, it […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2005: Squeezing Water from a Stone
In the orchards, questions about immigration reform
Washington state offers a cautionary tale for would-be reformers in Washington, D.C.
Posted inSeptember 5, 2005: Rangeland Revival
Aliens in the Backyard: Plant and Animal Imports to America
Aliens in the Backyard: Plant and Animal Imports to America John Leland 248 pages, hardcover: $29.95 University of South Carolina Press, 2005. We know by now that exotic species often wreak havoc: Asian tiger mosquitoes spread West Nile virus, Australian eucalyptus trees increase California’s fire risk. But Leland shows us that they can bring benefits, […]
Posted inWotr
Our mini-farm is probably someone else’s real thing
Our neighbor spent the past few years living near Seattle, where sprawl has made it impossible to see where the city stops. He feels lucky to have moved next to us, because in his mind, our little place on an acre and a half is a farm, and that adds to the out-in-the-country atmosphere he […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Idaho gets smart about water
Science helps state juggle water rights during dry times
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
The public pays to keep water in a river
A new wave of ‘takings’ lawsuits could bust the environmental protection budget
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Bees don’t grow on trees
Honeybees are in trouble, and so are the farmers who rely on them to pollinate an estimated one-third of the human diet — everything from almond and fruit trees to cantaloupes and cucumbers. Tom Theobald, who owns Niwot Honey Farm outside Boulder, Colo., says 30 percent of his bees died this year. Other beekeepers say […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
California’s farmers ditch dirty diesel pumps
California’s two biggest utility companies want to help farmers ditch their polluting diesel pumps to comply with air-quality crackdowns. In the process, the companies stand to gain thousands of new customers. In November, Pacific Gas and Electric Company and Southern California Edison submitted a proposal to the California Public Utilities Commission — which authorizes all […]
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
Communities search for a safer way to kill mosquitoes
West Nile virus brings a long-simmering controversy to a boil
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
Failure of leadership, not a lack of water, dooms the Klamath River
Unfortunately, it’s business as usual in the Klamath River watershed, where all the conditions are in place for yet another fish kill similar to the one that claimed at least 34,000 salmon in the fall of 2002 (HCN, 6/23/03: Sound science goes sour). It’s another dry year, with the same low river flows, and water […]
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Who will take over the ranch?
As a real estate frenzy grips the West, conservationists scramble to save a disappearing landscape
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Not just a ranch: Bucks and acres
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Who will take over the ranch?“ If most people looked at the Adobe Ranch, they’d see a meadow with a creek and willows running through it and sagebrush grasslands rising to pine forests. But Carl Palmer sees a distressed asset that he and his […]
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Biology: The missing science
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Who will take over the ranch?“ The Gunnison Ranchland Conservation Legacy and other groups around the West are spending millions of dollars on conservation easements to ensure that ranches are not subdivided. But beyond the ranches themselves, what are the easements protecting? Do ranch […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Ranching’s worst enemy? It’s not greens
Jury finds a meatpacker has taken ranchers to the cleaner
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
Postscript to a water war
Nearly a decade after an attempted water grab in California’s Imperial Valley, the saga takes a strange new twist
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Salmon get a break from pesticides
WEST COAST Protection for the Northwest’s salmon just took a major leap forward. In a landmark ruling, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour banned the use of 38 pesticides near streams that host threatened and endangered runs of salmon and steelhead in Washington, Oregon and California. The ruling follows a July 2002 decision, in which Judge […]