National parks across the country, including California’s desert national parks like the Mojave National Preserve, Joshua Tree National Park, and Death Valley National Park have begun developing action plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as part of the National Park Service Climate Friendly Parks Program. The Climate Friendly Parks Program helps individual parks reduce […]
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HCN Reader Photo: Hopeful
When I first saw this image thumbnail in our Flickr pool, I couldn’t really tell what it was. I enlarged it for further examination, and found a beautifully-composed image with a strong message and a lovely title: “Hopeful.” Add your photos to our Flickr group and be sure to check out our upcoming photo contests.
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Privatizing conservation
The State of California is in the middle of a process that will result in the state’s Fish and Game Commission designating an array of near shore marine reserves along the length of California’s coast. The reserves are intended to preserve and restore marine resources including commercially valuable fisheries. The California Department of Fish and […]
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Hunting season may be over but wolves are hardly in the clear
Yesterday marked the close of the first official hunting season for wolves ever to take place in America’s lower 48 states. More than 250 wolves were killed as a result of Montana and Idaho’s hunting seasons and more than twice that number have been killed overall since wolves lost federal protections in May of 2009. […]
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HCN Reader Photo: Spring blooms
We asked readers to add images of spring to our Flickr pool, and you graciously obliged. This picture, from user lenfwilcox, is of an aprium blossom in Fresno, California. Aprium, we understand, is a cross between an apricot and a plum. It sounds delicious and looks delightful! Continue sharing your images with us on Flickr; […]
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Community Forestry, or Not?
A new buzzword phrase appears to making the rounds in the natural resource policy world. The phrase is “social license”. I wasn’t sure what the phrase meant, so I looked it up on where else…Google. Here is what I found. Apparently it originally came to mean the unwritten approval that a corporation needed to gain […]
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Wolf conflict, take 452
Outfitters and ranchers often complain that environmental advocacy groups harness money from urban coastal dwellers to interfere in the lives of hard-working westerners. What if this money was harnessed instead through a program similar to the duck stamp initiative, in which those concerned about protecting carnivores pay into a fund that would directly assist communities […]
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A promise kept
The three most important things to know about what health care reform means to Indian Country are simple ideas. First, the United States, officially and permanently, recognizes its trust and treaty obligation for health care delivery to American Indians and Alaska Natives. Second, there will be more money (not enough, but more) pumped into the […]
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HCN Reader Photo: Eagle in Winter
After a bit of a hiatus, we’ve reinstated our weekly reader photo with this inspiring image from Paul Larmer. Add your photos to our HCN reader pool on Flickr.
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Sage Grouse Must Wait
Ever spent hours waiting for assistance in a doctor’s office while other, more urgent patients were seen first? Then you can imagine how some of us feel about Friday’s decision to leave the sage grouse hanging about in the waiting room. On March 5, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) concluded that the sage grouse, […]
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Feinstein and Westlands – who’s running whom?
There has been an interesting development in the ongoing story of Big Ag v fish in the Great Central Valley of California. Back in January HCN featured an article by Matt Jenkins on that conflict and in particular on the part played by the powerful corporate farmers of the Westlands Water District on the West […]
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Rolling Boulder up the mountain
“It is now abundantly clear that we have at our fingertips all of the tools we need to solve the climate crisis. The only missing ingredient is collective will.” If any place on the planet has the collective will to put those tools to use, it’s Boulder, Colorado — a city that is probably home […]
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Tribes and Enviros mixed on Klamath Agreement
In a refreshingly cordial ceremony on February 18, three Native American tribes, the federal government, the states of Oregon and California, and an electric utility signed two agreements that promise to restore the Klamath Basin to health and end decades of rancor among the region’s stakeholders. The documents were signed in the echoing rotunda of […]
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In Alaska, a health care model for the nation
It takes about 30 seconds of walking around the campus of the Alaska Native Medical Center to see that this is what the Indian Health system should look like across the country. “No,” a friend corrected me, “this is what the U.S. health care system should look like.” The Alaska Native Medical Center is two […]
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Booms, Busts, and B.S.
I’d have to look at 60+ years of calendars, but suffice it to say this Grand Junction native has lived through his share of hometown booms and busts. Off the top of my head, there’ve been a couple of uranium booms and the oil shale boom that infamously ended with a Black Sunday in May […]
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Native Farmers and Ranchers
In my last post, I reported some of the results of the USDA’s 2008 Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey which is part of the 2007 Census of Agriculture. The 2007 Census has given us the first good data on Native American farmers. That’s because in prior surveys the USDA treated reservations as if they were […]
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It’s time to put aside the fairytales
It’s tough being a wolf these days. Despite barely having recovered from being indiscriminately hunted to near extinction during the last century, wolves continue to face the rampant persecution and vitriol of yesteryear from legislators, corporations, citizens and even state and federal governments. Most recently, Utah’s Senate has passed a bill that (if enacted) would make […]
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The 2008 Farm and Ranch Survey is out!
The USDA has released the results of the 2008 Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey. The survey is taken every five years nationwide. Much of the regional information below is based on comparison of the 2003 and 2008 surveys. Nationwide the number of irrigated acres increased over the five year period from 52.5 million acres in […]
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Wolverines, snowmobilers, and the ESA
Last week, the Idaho Statesman newspaper published an article about recreational vehicle impacts on wolverines in the Payette, Boise, and Sawtooth National Forests. The piece focused on a study investigating questions about the extent to which snowmobilers and Snowmobilers, backcountry skiers, and advocacy groups all have a stake in the outcome of this study. The […]
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Western resource extraction, now and then
For four years Boston-based photographer Eirik Johnson, a Seattle native, travelled around Washington, Oregon, and northern California taking pictures of loggers and fishermen. His photographs, collected into the series “Sawdust Mountain,” are on display at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington until this Sunday. The series depicts the visual impact of natural […]