Barred owls are driving threatened spotted owls out of their Northwest forest territory. Is it time to shoot them?
Is anybody listening?
If there is a link between the fires of Northern California and the war in Iraq, it is the thread of human ignorance and our remarkable ability to keep our heads in the sand (HCN, 7/21/08). The fiasco that is Iraq was completely preventable and the result of intentional deceit, stunning hubris and callous disregard…
It’s a wilderness, not a mall
Regarding wilderness designations, there is no guarantee that just because a place exists all humans have to be allowed in, nor given special access to all parts of all places (HCN, 6/23/08). I speak as a physically challenged person who cannot go down the Grand Canyon or hike the Appalachian Trail, and I do not…
Know your owl
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Hostile takeover.” There are minor differences, but the two species are similar. Both are large owls with dark eyes and round heads lacking ear tufts. The easiest way to tell them apart: The barred owl is larger and paler in color. This article appeared…
Making a hand
What’s rarely noted and is missing in this discussion about the cowboy myth is that taking care of animals requires commitment to their welfare and a lot of knowledge (HCN, 6/09/08). Without this, you’re unemployable as a cowpoke and an outfit can’t survive economically. If you can’t handle feed and supplement needs with changing seasons,…
Riders and writers, hobos and fauxbeaux
Riding Toward EverywhereWilliam T. Vollmann188 pages, hardcover: $26.95 Ecco, 2008. Embittered by the policies of the Bush administration, disillusioned by the general fear growing within our society and slowed by age and poor health, National Book Award Winner William T. Vollmann sets out on a series of freight trains through the Western United States. He…
Stewards of the world?
In response to Jeffrey A. Lockwood’s article “Why the West Needs Mythic Cowboys” (HCN, 6/09/08), I disagree that “stewardship, in the deepest Biblical sense” should be an ideal. Stewardship is a perverted notion borne out of a fundamental misconception of humanity’s place in the world. It is we who belong to the world, not the…
The company we keep
When you hear the words “invasive species,” what comes to mind? Perhaps it’s the amber waves of cheatgrass and buffelgrass that have turned vast stretches of sagebrush and desert into a prickly, flammable hell. Or the hordes of minute quagga and zebra mussels now clogging water intakes and starving fish in Southwestern reservoirs. Or nutria,…
Advice from a rancher: The risks make it fun
The other day I heard a newsman refer to “these perilous times” for businesspeople. No kidding, I thought. The gloomy picture featured rising costs, increased property taxes, deepening recession, employee demands for more insurance and benefits, market risk — the list went on. I thought of the risks we’ve faced in ranching, with more to…
Catastrophe or nature’s process
In The Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens Edited by Charles Goodrich, Kathleen Dean Moore, and Frederick Swanson124 pages, softcover: $15.95. Oregon State University Press, 2008. Twenty-five years after Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, Oregon State University sponsored a four-day trip into the blast zone. Scientists, writers, artists and academics came…
Wake up and smell the cowboy coffee
I love the myth of the cowboy. It gives me respite from the realities of life. Still, it is a myth. The marvelous article by Jeffrey Lockwood also is a myth (HCN, 6/09/08). It reads well and makes excellent points but is based principally on fictitious characters. Conagher was born in the mind of Louis…
When endangered foxes are on the menu
Editor’s note: This is a sidebar to “Hostile Takeover.” The Channel Islands, a chain off the coast of Santa Barbara, illustrate just how much a non-native species can roil the ecology of a place, changing predators into prey and throwing unfamiliar species into competition. During the 19th century, settlers brought pigs to the islands. Some…
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Drilling with Charlie
Drilling holes into the earth is an audacious act with an ancient history. Many centuries ago, the Chinese were drilling wells 1,000 feet deep. In the 1860s, as the giant marine mammals grew scarce, American whalers came ashore and began harpooning the planet, hoping to strike “rock oil.” Earth may resemble a big rock, but…
Going to the gasroots
Oil and gas companies mobilize from the ground up in a changing West
Got a license for those antlers?
As with all issues related to the marketing of wild animal products, horn hunting needs regulation as strict and enforceable as anything on the books for any hunting (HCN, 6/23/08). Whenever the convergence of wildlife and man create a market for wildlife products, greed inevitably takes hold, and what was a pastime turns into a…
The wandering lepidopterist
It’s a sadly typical spring day in Seattle, all scudding clouds and spitting rain even though the forecast promised sun. On top of that, Dr. Robert Michael Pyle has some bad news. “Marsha won’t be joining us,” he says. I’m sorry to hear it. Marsha has been at Pyle’s side for more than 30 years,…
Drilling, wolves, guns and plutonium
“Drill here, drill now,” has become something of a political mantra in this election-year summer of high gasoline prices and frustrated consumers. Tack on “pay less,” and it’s the bumper-sticker slogan for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s national campaign to expand domestic energy production. Many Republicans now running for Congress hope their enthusiasm for drilling…
Hostile takeover and a conservation quandary
Barred owls are driving threatened spotted owls out of their territory. Is it time to shoot them?
Measuring Tahoe’s blues
Sediment and pollution obscure lake and light