Your informative article on fire in forests (HCN, 5/26/03: A losing battle) downplayed one perspective that is crucial for future environmental planning. As a result of fire suppression over the past century, standing fuel loads in many Western forests are unprecedented. Preindustrial inhabitants lacked the technology to fight lightning fires successfully, and recent research by […]
William R. Dickinson
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
We need a new vision for the wild
Dear HCN, In his interesting piece on disputes about creating new wilderness areas, Jon Margolis dubs the William Cronon critique of the wilderness ethic post-modernist, meaning that it’s mostly about an impressionistic appraisal of wildlands (HCN, 9/27/99). Margolis misses the point here; Cronon’s analysis is more substantive than that. The modern wilderness movement believes that […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
The San Pedro River: A Long View
Dear HCN, The article on competing water usages for Sierra Vista, Fort Huachuca, and the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area opens the door for more general consideration of the dramatic geologic and ecologic changes that have affected the San Pedro River over the past century (HCN, 6/12/95). The paired “before” and “after” pictures (pages […]