Piecing together a 50-year restoration in San Francisco’s South Bay, one species at a time. Also, why defensible space around homes still burns, finding and growing edible camas, a Native American staple, the Bakken water boom, and more.
In search of camas, a Native American food staple
Skull Island sits in Massacre Bay, in Washington’s San Juan archipelago. Here, in 1858, Haida raiders killed a band of Coast Salish and left the bones behind. I can think of other, perhaps more cheery spots to look for flowers, but Madrona Murphy’s enthusiasm is unstanched. “Look!” she calls as our boat nudges against shore.…
The Salt Pond Puzzle: Restoring South San Francisco Bay
FREMONT, CALIFORNIA We were on patrol. Caitlin Robinson-Nilsen, a young biologist in shades and a ponytail, steered the 4WD Explorer along a muddy levee in Fremont, Calif., and I rode shotgun, staying vigilant. She surveys snowy plovers –– adorable, six-inch, two-ounce, skittering shorebirds, with black collars and eye-patches –– as the waterbird program director for…
What the High Park wildfire can teach us about protecting homes
RIST CANYON, Colorado Dave Cantor’s house in the hills outside Fort Collins usually draws friends for barbecue, horseshoes and recreational shooting on July 4. This July 3, though, Cantor sifts through its ashy remains, tripping over a downed power line and catching rotten whiffs from a freezer pried open by black bears. Cantor, who co-owns…
Arapaho Journeys: Photographs and Stories from the Wind River Reservation
Arapaho Journeys: Photographs and Stories from the Wind River ReservationSara Wiles262 pages, hardcover: $35.University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. For more than 30 years, Sara Wiles has photographed life on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation, a community she first encountered as a social worker in 1973. Wiles, who was adopted by Arapaho elder Frances C’Hair, is clearly…
We cannot drill our way out of this mess: A review of Arctic Voices
Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point Subhankar Banerjee, editor. 560 pages, hardcover: $35.95. Seven Stories Press, 2012. In 2001, on the U.S. Senate floor, one of Alaska’s pro-development politicians held up a blank white piece of posterboard. “This is a picture of ANWR (the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) as it exists for about nine…
Farewell, Ed Quillen
I’m not much on being anyone’s fan, but I will have to live with my failure to ever write in to thank Ed Quillen for repeatedly sharing his knowledge and sharp, long-view perceptions that felt as right and big as the West (HCN, 6/25/12, “Dear Friends”). I never met Ed. I didn’t always agree with…
Gutted protections, gutless politicians
I am weary of politicians who “gut” the rules and regulations intended to protect human health and the environment (HCN, 7/23/12, “(Not so) quiet canyon”). They all seem to play the jobs/economy card, when in fact the deterioration of the environment leads to situations that cost the taxpayers money and citizens their health (and therefore…
Where there’s a will, there’s a way
Paul Larmer’s editor’s note and the feature article by Greg Hanscom each present a valid point: The multibillion-dollar outdoor industry makes a minuscule contribution to conservation (HCN, 7/23/12, “The Hardest Climb”). But take a look on the other side of the fence: The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, passed in 1938 in the middle…
Hail the ab
Thank you for the superb article on the plight of red abalone along the Northern California Coast. (HCN, 6/11/12, “Gastropodan Crimes”). Growing up in Crockett, in the San Francisco Bay Area’s East Bay, my brother and I spent more than a few days of our youth out in that frigid, four-foot-visibility water, being knocked around by…
High Country News gets new interns
It’s that time of year again — when two fresh-faced interns join us in our Paonia, Colo., offices for six months of “journalism boot camp.” We’re also delighted to announce that the talented and diligent Neil LaRubbio, intern from the last session, will remain with us for another six months as our editorial fellow. It’s…
Historic plant cultivation in Northwest native tribes
The idea that the Coast Salish and other Northwest Native Americans cultivated plants was disputed until relatively recently. Famed anthropologist Franz Boas and his disciples argued that Native Americans didn’t need to cultivate plants thanks to abundant salmon runs; they could subsist on wild forage instead. According to Doug Deur, an anthropologist at Portland State…
Not “pristine”, but still wild and unpredictable
“Nature is almost everywhere,” wrote environmental journalist Emma Marris in her buzz-generating 2011 book Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. ” But wherever it is, there is one thing that nature is not: pristine.” Humanity’s imprint is unavoidable, even deep in the backcountry. Smog frequently blankets Sequoia National Park, yellowing the needles of…
Of balloons, littering and birthday parties
Here in the western Great Basin, the high desert is rough and remote. This topography tends to keep out the common detritus of the dominant endemic species, Hillbillicus Nevadensis (var. Redneckii). So while the dusty BLM roads in the sage-filled valley bottoms are beribboned with spent shell casings, Coors Light bottles and empty cans of…
Political pawns
Posted in response to Emily Guerin’s blog “Grand Cacophony National Park?“, at hcn.org, an expanded version of the snapshot “(Not so) quiet canyon,” which ran in our 7/23/12 issue. I was backcountry packing in the Grand Canyon in 2010 and subjected to relentless fixed-wing overflights echoing off the canyon walls (HCN, 7/23/12, “(Not so) quiet…
‘Postmortemism’
Your issue covering off-the-beaten-track Western places of interest is very appealing to those of us who prefer reality travel over canned tourism (HCN, 6/25/12, “Touring the Postmodern West”). It seems more honest than the usual “family vacation” photo ops. I also found the descriptions of land art and industrial landscape art interesting. While some of us would…
Practical pyromania: A review of The Flamer
The FlamerBen Rogers257 pages, softcover: $14.Aqueous Books, 2012. Ben Rogers’ engaging first novel, The Flamer, is the coming-of-age story of a young Nevada pyromaniac named Oby Brooks. Oby discovers his love for conflagrations when his father donates the family’s dilapidated house to the Reno Fire Department to burn “for training purposes.” The boy watches the…
The Bakken oil play spurs a booming business — in water
The first thing you notice in North Dakota’s oil patch are trucks. They dominate a landscape defined not long ago by cattle and wheat, and not long before that by bison and grass. Trucks groan through Watford City all night. They pile up traffic on highways designed for the occasional car or combine and whip…
A ride with a Bakken water trucker
Reporter Nicholas Kusnetz spent a day riding with Mike Reynolds, who left his logging business in eastern Washington state in order to earn money as a water trucker in the Bakken. Reynolds is pleased with the job, but eager to return to the work — and the home — he loves.
The Continental Divide Trail gains new protectors
At 3,100 miles, the Continental Divide Trail is the most rugged and least used of the country’s three major long-distance hiking trails. In January, when financial troubles forced the Continental Divide Trail Alliance to close its doors, it also became the only long-distance trail without a formal advocacy group. Since then, nonprofits throughout the Rockies…