Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Harvesting Poison.” The Bailey family grows more than cherries on their 1,500-acre orchard in The Dalles, Ore. The fourth-generation farmers are also trying to nurture worker-friendly conditions. They offer employees decent housing, such as modular trailers and small brick houses, equipped with showers, toilets […]
Rebecca Clarren
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Trees help clean the West’s dumps
Phytoremediation tackles everything from dry-cleaning solvents to formaldehyde
Posted inWotr
Cheap salmon, hidden costs
Salmon, once a delicacy, is now cheap and fresh and available year-round, appearing the embodiment of all that is good about progress. But behind that cheap price tag are costs — to our oceans, wild salmon and native cultures and economies. Off the coast of British Columbia, Atlantic salmon are raised in net pens dropped […]
Posted inJune 23, 2003: 'Sound science' goes sour
Genetic engineering turns salmon into fast food
Transgenic superfish may be the next thing to hit supermarket shelves
Posted inWotr
It’s buyer beware when it comes to Atlantic salmon
When Dan Wasil plucks a white package of “Fresh Atlantic Salmon” from the grocery store cooler, he hardly glances at its label. “I assume that it comes from the Atlantic,” says Wasil, a fundraiser who has lived in Portland for over 30 years. While he says he’s careful to check labels to see if chicken […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
How safe is that fillet?
Most Americans — even those fanatical about eating only organic foods — assume that eating fish raised in the ocean is a healthy act that does no harm to the environment. Not necessarily. Some seafood varieties are overfished, and some are caught and farmed in ways that damage ocean ecosystems (HCN, 3/17/03: Bracing against the […]
Posted inWotr
Mention planning in Oregon and get ready for a yawn
Advice for party-goers: If you’re hoping to enthrall acquaintances and potential dates, avoid the terms “urban-growth boundary or “transit-oriented development.” While working recently on a story about Oregon’s land-use system, I was eager to share my findings at social occasions. Bad idea. Few Oregonians understand how it works, and my attempts at conversation yielded polite […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2003: Bracing against the tide
Bracing against the tide
On the rugged coastline of British Columbia, tribes, fishermen and environmentalists fight a ‘salmon apocalypse’
Posted inMarch 17, 2003: Bracing against the tide
Are you gonna eat that?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Bracing against the tide.” PORTLAND, Ore. — When Dan Wasil plucks a white Styrofoam package of “Fresh Atlantic Salmon” from the grocery store cooler, he gives the label no more than a second thought. “I assume that it comes from the Atlantic,” says Wasil, […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
Eco-groovy food for skinny wallets
While your favorite organic food brand guarantees a pesticide-free, responsibly grown product, it’s usually fortified with a hefty price tag. There’s relief: The Portland, Ore.-based Food Alliance offers consumers and farmers a label — guaranteeing products grown and harvested in equitable and safe conditions, using sustainable farming practices, and with little or no pesticides — […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Planning’s poster child grows up
Oregon’s 30-year-old land-use rules may need a face-lift
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
New Urbanism creates living communities
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Urban planner Jacob Brostoff lounges in a grassy common area and beams with admiration as he looks out over Orenco Station, a new development in a suburb of Portland. “This place is nothing like traditional suburbia,” he says. “I hated growing up in the […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Across the Columbia, a game of catch-up
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Pam Vanderheiden listens to a lot of radio – she certainly has the time. Every day, she joins the throngs of people who commute from Vancouver, Wash., across the Columbia River into Portland, Ore. Every day, the traffic is bad. “Getting home is a […]
Posted inJuly 8, 2002: The anatomy of fire
White River Forest plan friend to all – and to none
COLORADO When a draft plan for how to manage Colorado’s White River National Forest was released in 1999, it was hailed as a precedent that would steer the agency toward emphasizing endangered species habitat and conservation over resource extraction and recreation (HCN, 1/17/00: STOP – A national forest tries to rein in recreation). Now, five […]
Posted inJune 10, 2002: Hatching reform
Hatching reform
SEATTLE, Wash. – From 80 feet above downtown, the throngs of people wrapped in raincoats on the sidewalk below look like a spilled package of multicolored candies. The view is less colorful looking outward from the eighth floor window of the historic Cobb building, but no less busy; glass and steel high-rises thrust upward in […]
Posted inJune 10, 2002: Hatching reform
The wild (and not-so-wild) sex life of salmon
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. A quick trip through the life cycle of a salmon, be it hatchery or wild, makes human development appear quite simple. In late summer or early fall, the female salmon deposits several thousand eggs in a shallow river bottom nest called a redd. In […]
Posted inJune 10, 2002: Hatching reform
Tribes blur the line between wild and hatchery fish
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. For a glimpse of how far hatchery reform can go, state and federal agencies need only look at what tribes like the Nez Perce, Umatilla and Yakama are doing with their hatcheries. With money from the Northwest Power Planning Council, a congressionally appointed committee […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
The Latest Bounce
Off-roaders in the Mojave Desert must yield to the desert tortoise, says the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. In early April, the agency, acting under a court agreement with the Center for Biological Diversity, closed 18,000 acres in the western Rand Mountains to dirt bikers, in an effort to help the desert tortoise, which continues […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Evicted terns get new habitat
OREGON Caspian terns, much maligned for feasting on declining salmon runs on the Columbia River, just got a wing up. Displaced by development along the Pacific Coast, the world’s largest tern colony settled several years ago on an island composed of dredging material disposed of by the Army Corps of Engineers. There, near the mouth […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Elk and deer disease could waste Western Slope
COLORADO Chronic wasting disease, the fatal brain malady found in elk and deer, has jumped west across the Continental Divide despite efforts by Colorado wildlife and agriculture agencies to contain it (HCN, 11/5/01: Wasting disease spreads in Colorado). In late March, wildlife officials determined that two wild deer illegally penned on the Motherwell elk ranch […]