The dedicated volunteers of the Hummingbird Monitoring Network serve as citizen scientists, gathering field data on the birds they love.
Farmland conservation program may be plowed under
Third-generation rancher Tony Malmberg remembers driving down a road in western Nebraska with his grandfather 38 years ago and watching clouds of blowing dirt darken the sky above their heads. “A bunch of Kansas farmers had come in and bought a bunch of this sandhill country and were plowing it up,” says Malmberg. His grandfather…
How I survive scorching Phoenix summers
Every summer in Phoenix, I picture people in the rest of the country riding bikes through fields of purple flowers, picnicking in parks and strolling down leafy streets. I picture them summering, while I am simmering, trying not to melt. When I step out of my house, I’m hit with a wall of scorching gas,…
Junk rule pits rural ideals against suburban standards
Last spring, San Juan County in northern New Mexico hired a plane to survey its interior. An aerial tour of the scrubby hills and swales revealed quite a bit about the county: Pump jacks, two generating stations and a refinery are evidence that it runs primarily on coal and oil. And though it has experienced…
Helping Hummingbirds with Citizen Science
At 6:30 on a Wednesday morning, the early August sun creeps over a rocky ridge at Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. Dense stands of Gambel oak, Utah serviceberry and rabbitbrush spring up from the grassy meadows around Morefield Campground. Birdsong and the whir of hummingbird wings mingle with human whispers in the chilly…
Tribes use land conservancies to reclaim ancestral grounds
Two Border Patrol agents race up on ATVs, rifles across their backs, and demand to know what Louie Guassac is doing, walking near the California-Mexico border. “We own this land,” replies Guassac, a sturdy Kumeyaay Indian with a long black braid. It’s something his tribe hasn’t been able to say about this patch of desert…
California tribe competes with the state to restore its homeland
Updated 9/22/11 Everywhere she looks in Humbug Valley, Beverly Benner Ogle sees the past: On the banks of Yellow Creek, her Maidu Indian ancestors still dance in spring celebration. In the tall timothy grass, her grandmother, a girl again, plays with the children of white settlers. On a grassy knoll near towering pines, her mother…
We’re listening
Thank you for digging a little deeper than breaking environmental news, and adding some social aspect that ties it all together. HCN has gotten better with age. Please do not be so negative. I would appreciate balanced articles with happy endings. If all news is sad, I’ll stop reading it. Keep up the bad news!…
PG&E conservation lands
PG&E made 140,000 acres of watershed lands available for conservation as part of a bankruptcy settlement with the state of California, which bailed the utility company out. The nonprofit Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council is disposing of the parcels, shown here in grey.
Calling all science nerds
One August many years ago, I joined a weeklong expedition to Michigan’s thickly forested Isle Royale to help gather information about the local moose and wolves. Six of us volunteers, led by a biologist, bushwhacked all day through dense underbrush searching for moose antlers and bones. Whenever we found them, we took measurements, recorded more…
EPA aims to clean up polluted air in Western gas fields
In gas patches East to West, tales of tainted water wells have garnered widespread media attention, putting hydraulic fracturing — broadly credited for the natural gas industry’s meteoric expansion of late — at the center of one of the country’s hottest environmental fights. But despite reams of circumstantial evidence, incontrovertible proof that fracking itself –…
Flight risks: Cities reduce hazards for migrating birds
What do you picture when you think about migratory birds? Chattering snow geese dropping in a feathery cloud to the surface of a reservoir? Or a sunlit marsh filled with amorous sandhill cranes, twirling and prancing for prospective mates? What you probably don’t envision is a metal-and-glass metropolis teeming with cars, people and pets. But…
HCN stories win awards
Our May 17, 2010, feature “Accidental Wilderness” by David Wolman just received recognition in the Society of Environmental Journalists 2010-2011 Awards for Reporting on the Environment. The story took third place in the category “Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding In-depth Reporting, Small Market.” And in the 2011 Excellence in Journalism Awards from the Native American…
Citizen scientists gather data on wildlife
The wildlife species about which we have little or no information far outnumber those that are thoroughly studied and documented. Basic population trends are missing for even some of the best-known species, such as the Mexican spotted owl and the northern leopard frog. Better coordination between state and federal agencies could ensure that researchers collect…
Incredible hummingbird facts
Hummingbirds are the smallest birds in the world and the size of raisins when they hatch. The tiniest species is Cuba’s two-inch-long bee hummingbird. They often double their body weight before migrating. They can fly backwards and forwards, straight up and down, side-to-side, and are the only birds that truly hover. They convert nearly 100…
A day among junk connoisseurs
San Juan County, N.M., is dry and scrubby, dotted with pump jacks, two coal-fired power plants and an oil refinery. Energy may be the area’s mainstay, but underlying this economy, is another informal one based on the selling and trading of old car parts. The county is a haven for junk cars – and for…
Reality fiction: a review of What You See in the Dark
What You See in the Dark: A NovelManuel Muñoz272 pages, hardcover: $23.95.Algonquin Books, 2011. It’s 1959, and the shiny façade of America’s white culture is beginning to tarnish. Schools are being desegregated and black people are starting to march in the streets of the South. There’s an “unsavory mixing of whites and Mexicans” in California…
The aftermath of violence: A review of The Color of Night
The Color of Night Madison Smartt Bell 208 pages, softcover: $15.Vintage Contemporaries, 2011. Dangerous, charismatic leaders with zealous followers haunt Western history, with Jim Jones, the California cult leader responsible for the 1978 Guyana suicides, at the top of the list. In The Color of Night, Madison Smartt Bell’s 13th novel, the leader is clearly…