“Land-Grab Universities” (April 2020) rubbed me the wrong way. Not that the reporting was inaccurate, but that it left out mountains of context. For starters, how is it more sinful for a land-grant university to make money selling land than for a railroad to do the same? Or a farmer or rancher making money off […]
Craig Jones
Posted inApril 1, 2020: Land-Grab Universities
Backcountry snobbery
For years, I have gotten grief for hiking and backpacking in jeans and T-shirts instead of lightweight zippered shorts/pants and sweat-wicking shirts; eating M&Ms and PB&J sandwiches, rather than custom gorp or Clif Bars; and for cross-country skiing in the same jeans and T-shirt with old 75-mm three-pin bindings. As a white guy, I let […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2019: "We can either wait on Mother Nature – or we can give it a shot ourselves."
A buried history of conflict
Anna Smith’s article on the challenges the Cow Creek Band has faced in regaining and now managing forest lands in Oregon is the kind of piece that both informs and challenges readers. The challenge thrown down by some tribal members is quite provocative: Shawn Fleek’s quote — “The conservation movement began as a way for […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2017: Los Promotores
Distributing trail use
The trail numbers seem off in your story “Trail Blazing” (HCN, 6/26/17). The American Hiking Society’s 2015 report listed 103,000 miles of trails in 1965 on federal and state land, and 236,000 miles in 2015, not 326,000. (Editor’s note: Craig is correct; we’ve updated our story.) The lack of numbers in between those two years […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Fantasy politics
“Over the last 30 years,” says (Arizona state Sen. Al) Melvin, “mining, lumbering and grazing have come to a screeching halt, snuffed out by the so-called environmental practices of the Forest Service and BLM” (HCN, 5/14/12, “Sagebrush skirmish”). Is there any chance that reality could enter into this debate? The first 10 of those 30 […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
A new land ethic
While it is gratifying to see some coverage of the potential problems our current wildlife preservation systems face in the presence of climate change, there are some continuing blind spots that should be pointed out (HCN, 2/04/08). First, as was noted in a 2002 HCN interview with conservation biologist Michael Soule, the “pristine ecosystem” that […]