My neighbor feeds deer. He says he’s actually feeding birds so that his disabled wife and her pre-teen daughter can enjoy watching them. But when he tosses chunks of stale white bread out in his front yard, it’s not just crows, ravens and starlings that come to call. (And why anyone would think it was […]
Susan Tweit
Posted inOctober 13, 2008: Back to the future
A macabre measure of the human footprint
I’m a student of roadkill. I keep an informal tally of the carcasses I spot on the roadside — what kind, how many and where — and I note the splatters that accumulate on our car wi”ndshield. They’re an indication of the diversity and abundance of animal and insect lives along the unnatural transects we […]
Posted inWotr
The patriotic thing to do
Maybe I’m crazy, but I think that paying taxes is patriotic. And I’m tired of hearing Americans, especially Westerners, whine about their tax burden. I’m no economist. Taxes aren’t a subject I normally pay attention to – except once a year in April – but during the presidential campaign the rhetoric around taxes was impossible […]
Posted inArticles
One species versus 1.8 million others
I’m a student of roadkill. I keep an informal tally of the carcasses I spot on the roadside – what kind, how many and where — and I note the splatters that accumulate on our car windshield. They’re an indication of the diversity and abundance of animal and insect lives along the unnatural transects we […]
Posted inWotr
When the night sky provides free entertainment
One night this August, my husband Richard and I woke at 3:30 am and headed groggily outside to our back deck to watch for meteors. As I stepped out the door, Richard said, “There’s one!” I looked overhead and caught the tail end of a white line fading in the black sky over our small […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Throwing out the dishwater
Once I lived in a one-room log cabin where I pumped my water from a well and heated it on a wood stove. When I was finished washing my dishes, I carried the dishpan outside and tossed the water on the nearby sagebrush. It seemed natural to me to return the water to the same […]
Posted inWotr
Throwing out the dishwater
Once I lived in a one-room log cabin where I pumped my water from a well and heated it on a wood stove. When I was finished washing my dishes, I carried the dishpan outside and tossed the water on the nearby sagebrush. It seemed natural to me to return the water to the same […]
Posted inWotr
Watch out Mars, we don’t treat frontiers with respect
The same day President Bush announced his plan to “continue the journey” into space by colonizing the moon and heading for Mars, I stood in line at the grocery store and thought about space exploration as just another excuse to head ever Westward, another distraction for troubles at home, another frontier to conquer and leave […]
Posted inWotr
Watch out: We’re heating up our world
I’ve tended gardens around the West for much of my adult life, from the tomatoes and basil I nurtured through a Laramie winter in a solar greenhouse to the climbing roses I inherited in our yard in southern New Mexico’s Chihuahua Desert. Now I’m writing a book for Rocky Mountain gardeners, drawing on my education […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
In Iraq, there’s hope of restoring the Garden of Eden
Watching the chaotic aftermath of repression and war in Iraq hurts my heart. As an antidote, I conjure a vision of hope: a shimmering expanse of water and life that may once again grace the Iraqi desert. Until a decade ago, southern Iraq boasted one of the world’s largest wetlands, the Mesopotamia Marshes, almost 7,800 […]
Posted inWotr
In Iraq, there’s hope of restoring the Garden of Eden
Watching the chaotic aftermath of repression andwar in Iraq hurts my heart. As an antidote, I conjure a vision of hope: a shimmering expanse of water and life that may once again grace the Iraqi desert. Until a decade ago, southern Iraq boasted one of the world’s largest wetlands, the Mesopotamia Marshes, almost 7,800 square […]
Posted inWotr
For 60 years, J. David Love explored the West’s geology
When I was a wet-behind-the-ears field ecologist, my then-husband and I were posted to a Forest Service work center 50 miles southwest of Cody, Wyoming, where the road ends in the remote Absaroka Range. Our only human neighbors were the absentee owners of a nearby ranch, and for a few weeks, a raucous bunch of […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
In the West, drought is a native
“You have to get over the color green,” wrote the late historian and novelist Wallace Stegner in Thoughts on a Dry Land, his treatise on living in the West. I’ve remembered Stegner’s words frequently this brown spring, as gusty winds smudge the air over my valley with clouds of dry soil. Green appears only along […]
Posted inMarch 19, 1982: Wilderness on the rocks
Playing the game: public input in NEPA planning
From the outside, the National Environmental Policy Act process might as well be a foreign culture with its own, language and customs. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/14.6/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inMarch 5, 1982: Pine beetles munch on, policies differ
Pine beetles munch on, policies differ
Forest managers are responding to the mountain pine beetle epidemic, which is killing trees across the Rocky Mountain region, with an environmentally-based method called “integrated pest management.” Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/14.5/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E