Were concessions to protect undeveloped land in California worth it?
Jane Braxton Little
Posted inMay 28, 2018: The River of Lost Souls
Below Mount Shasta, a fight burbles over bottled water
Selling water to Nestlé, Crystal Geyser and others could strain aquifers.
Posted inAugust 8, 2016: Line of Descent
California plans to log its drought-killed trees
Cutting down dead trees may not reduce wildfire risk.
Posted inMarch 2, 2015: Unite and Conquer
Keeping the dust down in California’s Owens Valley
A civil engineer battles Los Angeles over its air pollution legacy.
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
Environmental warrior Martin Litton is still fighting at 95
Martin Litton, 95, wastes no time on proprieties. “I’m supposed to be dead, you know,” he growls on a January morning, leading me through a thicket of potted plants into his home in the hills near Palo Alto, Calif. A towering presence with a booming voice, Litton has spent his life battling developers, extractive industries […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2011: For the love of hummers
California tribe competes with the state to restore its homeland
Updated 9/22/11 Everywhere she looks in Humbug Valley, Beverly Benner Ogle sees the past: On the banks of Yellow Creek, her Maidu Indian ancestors still dance in spring celebration. In the tall timothy grass, her grandmother, a girl again, plays with the children of white settlers. On a grassy knoll near towering pines, her mother […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Rural California schoolkids learn from fire-damaged forest
Sidney Deschenes is still haunted by the Moonlight Fire of 2007: The clouds of choking smoke that blew down from flaming mountains onto the valley that’s been her home since kindergarten. The rain of embers that ignited spot fires near homes at the edge of the forest and forced her family to evacuate three times. […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
New world, new canvas
Ex-priest reconstructs a working-class history from Basque arborglyphs
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
Notes from the (water) underground
Gordon Grant’s pioneering work on the northwest’s hydrologic sponge
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
Burning issues
Name Tom BonnicksenAge 67Occupation Retired forestry scientistSpent childhood Outdoors sliding down the Indiana Dunes, canoeing the upper Wisconsin River, living at 8,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains.On how he gathers data “I walk through the woods. I know every inch of these places I study. I’m on the ground all the time. And if I’m […]
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
Saving the Sierra, tale by tale
NAMES: jesikah maria ross, Catherine Stifter PROJECT: Saving the Sierra: Voices of Conservation in Action RÉSUMÉ EXCERPTS: Stifter: Two Peabody awards for independent radio productions; firefighter, EMT, and water truck driver for North San Juan volunteer fire department; lives off the grid in solar-powered cabin. ross: UNICEF youth radio project in Ethiopia; community media projects […]
Posted inWotr
This land is my land — really
President Bush wants to sell my land to fund rural schools. I mean my land — not the vast tracts of federal forests and grasslands I co-own with the proverbial New York cabbie, the Seattle widow and all other American citizens. My private land — the 12 acres I own with my husband. We bought […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
Timberlands up for grabs
The West’s private forests are on the auction block, pitting forest communities against developers in a red-hot real estate market
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
‘Sticking around’ for an alpine valley
From his kitchen window, Attilio Genasci can see past barns and alfalfa fields to a small knoll jutting up from the flat expanse of Sierra Valley. Angie, his wife of 50 years, is buried there. For Genasci, 96, the vista is a daily reminder of his promise to Angie to protect this spacious valley, 45 […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Saving Maidu culture, one seedling at a time
It was just a family jaunt, Lorena Gorbet says — a day trip to Soda Rock, where mineral water fizzes out of limestone clefts into a tributary of northeastern California’s Feather River. Gorbet, a Mountain Maidu Indian, gathered her children at the base of the rock, a Maidu cultural landmark. She told them about the […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
Resort homes threaten scenic Mono Lake
Developers around California watch to see if a county can trump federal preservation rules
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
New forest plan leaves owls in a lurch
Sierra Nevada plan gets logger-friendly
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
Timber proposal undercuts Quincy Library plan
A plan the Forest Service is touting as “a measurable, science-based assessment” of logging’s impact on California spotted owls and other forest species is raising hackles in California. The proposal, released in December, calls for cutting up to 600 million board-feet of timber — enough to build 60,000 houses — and bulldozing 160 miles of […]
Posted inWotr
What we don’t know about wildfire can hurt us
Fires still rage across the West. Grim-faced federal officials report over 6 million acres burned, twice the 10-year average. President Bush declared most of Colorado a disaster after Gov. Bill Owens pronounced the burned area in his state a “nuclear winter.” This news hits outdoor-loving Americans in the gut as we assume all natural resources […]
Posted inJune 24, 2002: The buzz business
Can green-certified lumber make it?
Some foresters say environmental management doesn’t reap extra profit