Once again, in Zootopia, Disney’s view of nature is sanitized and out of touch.
Kim Todd
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Oval Intention: an essay
In the buttery early morning light at Tuolumne Meadows, my 8-year-old son and I contemplate a heap of fabric and jumbled poles. We’d woken early to claim a good campsite, but only now do I recall the difficulty of assembling my father’s ancient tent. He and my daughter are still sleeping, miles away. The instructions […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Rebuilding a river as Washington’s Elwha dams come down
In his autobiography, Conquering the Last Frontier, Olympic Peninsula pioneer Thomas Aldwell described his first encounter with the land that would be his legacy: “Below the cabin was a canyon through which the Elwha River thundered, and 75 feet or so in front of it was a spring of crystal clear water, overhung by vine […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
Canary in the old growth
The search for an ecosystem’s vital signs
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
When endangered foxes are on the menu
Editor’s note: This is a sidebar to “Hostile Takeover.” The Channel Islands, a chain off the coast of Santa Barbara, illustrate just how much a non-native species can roil the ecology of a place, changing predators into prey and throwing unfamiliar species into competition. During the 19th century, settlers brought pigs to the islands. Some […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Hostile takeover and a conservation quandary
Barred owls are driving threatened spotted owls out of their territory. Is it time to shoot them?
Posted inNovember 26, 2007: Beetle Warfare
Field notes from the front steps
Back in early spring, when just a few buds had cracked open, the world was constrained by a strip of pavement, a lawn, the driveway with the basketball hoop at the end, the dusty colors of sidewalk chalk. The Mission Mountains, Sapphires, Bitterroots – sheltering bears, mountain lions, and elk – were visible from various […]