Articles

The U.S. Senate is set to take up a deeply flawed Nevada wilderness bill in the November lame-duck session. If passed, it would set terrible precedents for all future wilderness bills. The bill, HR 5205, introduced by Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., bundles together seven separate Nevada lands bills, and after being amended by the House […]

I’ve usually admired David Brooks, New York Times columnist, and Mark Shields, campaign strategist and analyst, for their smart political opinions on public television. So it was sad recently to see their heads stuck in Alberta’s tar sands over the highly controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which will surely be reintroduced in Congress next year. Pipeline […]

Remember that fourth-grade Thanksgiving pageant, the big feast with Indians providing most of the food? Squanto was there, kindly teaching the Pilgrims how to put a fish in a hole to grow corn and beans and squash. Somehow I don’t remember learning that Squanto — more properly “Tisquantum”— was taken to England and then abducted […]

With Thanksgiving near, it’s the season to be grateful and take stock of our situation. In that spirit, here’s some of what I’ve been thinking about. First, as we conclude our celebration of the golden anniversary of the Wilderness Act, let’s give a cheer to the 88th U.S. Congress, which, in 1964, passed the law […]

The following is just a sample of what public-land managers have encountered while on the job in the last few years: On a dirt road in Arizona, a man who was paranoid about the federal government aimed a rifle at federal rangers and opened fire. In California, a shooter targeted a firefighter in a national […]