The summer before last, I took a four-day hike through the backcountry of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in the Washington Cascades. I’m accustomed to rugged terrain and steep slopes, so I was impressed when, after miles of travel off the trail, I heard the voices of teenagers wafting toward me. I met the intrepid boys […]
National Park Service
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Western game wardens go after poachers
A thick autumn snowfall still carpeted the ground when Colorado district wildlife manager Tom Knowles got the tip that put him on the trail of the “Missouri boys.” The informant, a hunter named Michael Xavier, said that three men who had licenses only for cow elk had killed at least one bull elk in Rio […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2011: A Burning Problem
In national parks, where are all the fossils?
When it was established in 1922, South Dakota’s Fossil Cycad National Monument possessed the world’s most significant beds of fossilized, Cretaceous Age cycads, large, fern-like plants. But management was left to local ranchers, and paleontologists working the site received limited federal support. By the time the state historical society offered to take over in 1955, […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2011: A Burning Problem
Killing for conservation in national parks
To work for the National Park Service is to undergo a kind of transformation. I wake up in boxers and an oversized T-shirt, and, 20 minutes later, I’m standing outside my cabin in pressed green jeans, a buttoned and tucked-in gray shirt, bulky brown belt and hiking boots. At 5 feet tall, 100 pounds, I’m […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Park Service finally drafts a solution to conflicts over canyon flights
Hermits Rest, Grand Canyon National Park At the end of the road along the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, past Hermits Rest, a famous rock cabin built in 1914 that’s now a rustic souvenir and snack shop, there’s an inviting rock outcropping where you can stretch out in solitude and gaze across the canyon. On a […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
State trust lands at a glance
Among publicly owned lands, state trust lands are an anomaly. Granted at statehood by the federal government, they run in patchwork patterns across the West, from the red Utah desert to the dense forests of Oregon. Their arrangement on the landscape is utterly arbitrary — generally, two square-mile sections, numbered 16 and 36 in every […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
A misguided investigation ends an era in Arizona
Calling the National Park Service case against Billy Malone “misguided” is a kindness. Others use words like “corrupt” or “fiasco” when speaking of the bungled federal investigation that cost taxpayers nearly a million dollars, ruined the reputation of one of the last old-time Indian traders and may have transformed an authentic Indian trading post into […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2011: Serendipity in the Desert
Rethinking national parks and wilderness
Review of Uncertain Path: A Search for the Future of National Parks
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
Debating Preservation in the Southwest’s Spanish Missions
TUCSON, ARIZONA The temperature drops dramatically as you step through tall church doors into the cavernous interior. The ancient five-foot-thick walls have the dignity of living ruins. Where plaster is missing, you can see graying adobe bricks, and the painted decorations on the whitewashed walls have faded. Yet the Tumacácori mission still seems to breathe, […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Ranger danger?
National parks seem like places of refuge, far removed from urban crime and violence. But for at least the last decade, law enforcement rangers in the National Park Service have been among the federal law enforcement officers most likely to be injured or killed by assault. In 2009, descriptions of violent incidents in national parks […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Eggstraction
Meet 317 and 318, a young couple in California’s Pinnacles National Monument. They are two of only 91 California condors flying free in the state – and only 349 left on Earth. This spring, the birds had no sooner laid an egg in their nest than National Park Service biologist Gavin Emmons rappelled down and […]
Posted inOctober 26, 2009: The newest Westerners
Our national parks: Another idea
In 1912, James Bryce, the British ambassador to the United States, proclaimed that the national parks are “America’s best idea.” Others have called the parks “America’s best places.” But if the parks are our “best” places, what about all those other places where we live and work and go about our daily rounds? Don’t they […]
Posted inWotr
Whose Valles Caldera is it?
When people try to describe the Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico, they sometimes compare it to Yellowstone National Park. Both offer stunning landscapes born of volcanic activity, and both are filled with wildlife. Though only 89,000 acres, Valles Caldera contains thousands of elk, vast grasslands, streams and mountains, all within the sunken remnant […]
Posted inWotr
Parks for the people — not profit
The fog that often hangs over Drakes Estero, an estuary in California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, tends to obscure the natural features that make this small body of water one of the treasures of our national park system. This estuary, which has been designated a wetland of international importance, hosts one of the largest breeding […]
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
What we got here is a failure to collaborate
Updated Aug. 24, 2009 On July 10, President Obama announced his nomination of Jonathan Jarvis as the next director of the National Park Service. Jarvis has worked for the agency for 30 years and directed its Pacific West region since 2002. Many of his colleagues contend that he not only has scientific training, but is […]
Posted inGoat
No entrance fees
OK, so the Park Service didn’t put out a press release about how they’ll start allowing certain firearms in parks. But thankfully, they put one out about a few fee-free weekends this summer. That’s right, you won’t pay to enter “America’s Best Idea” on these weekends: June 20-21, July 18-19 and August 15-16. U.S. Interior […]
Posted inMay 4, 2009: Salmon Salvation
The West dissected
Oil and gas companies — despite the efforts of “obstructionist” environmentalists — managed to drill at least 117,339 new wells in 12 Western states (including South Dakota) in the last eight years alone. That drilling rush often skirted regulations and caused significant air and water pollution. That’s according to the Environmental Working Group, which recently […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
A conflict of values
Yellowstone and the Snowmobile: Locking Horns over National Park UseMichael J. Yochim328 pages, hardcover: $34.95.University Press of Kansas, 2009. Even as another winter recedes, Mike Yochim’s new book on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park will remain in season. It’s an instant classic — the first comprehensive examination of a notorious nationwide controversy, packed with facts […]
Posted inWotr
Let them eat copper
I am sitting on the sun-blasted South Rim of the Grand Canyon, tracking condors through binoculars and trying to read the numbers on their wing tags as they dip and wobble above and below me. Next to me is Elaine Leslie, the heroic National Park Service biologist who never gave up on condors, even when […]