A massive compromise to save Columbia Basin salmon, Gunnison sage grouse gets protection, pet tortoises still threaten wild ones, and a fresh look at wolves’ impacts on Yellowstone.
Finding an inner compass
Review of “Steal the North” by Brittain Bergstrom.
Have returning wolves really saved Yellowstone?
Researchers fear that some damage can’t be undone.
Hurray for the level-headed
Regarding “Defuse the West” (HCN, 10/27/14), these conflicts are not restricted to the West. Most of these confrontations are initiated by redneck motorheads who apparently think they are living in 1880 and can do anything they please. These fools don’t seem to grasp the fact that ever-increasing use of our public lands demands that there…
Industrial poisoning
Rebecca Clarren’s excellent report on the exposure of Oregonians to herbicides sprayed by timber companies brings to mind a similar struggle by the state’s citizens in the late 1970s (“Fallout,” HCN, 11/10/14). Back then, a small group of women from Alsea, Oregon, who had suffered miscarriages after exposure to herbicides sprayed by the U.S. Forest…
Los Angelenos earn money off lawns, an ‘extreme walker’ and more
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
New Mexico interregnum
Review of “Backlands: A Novel of the American West” by Michael McGarrity.
Range report
What the BLM can (and can’t) tell us about the state of rangeland health.
Contemporary photographs of 19th century art
Review of “Karl Bodmer’s America Revisited” by Robert Lindholm.
The great salmon compromise
The Columbia Basin Fish Accords have funded $1 billion worth of habitat restoration projects, but can they replace free-flowing rivers?
A fix for the desert tortoise
Prolific pets continue to threaten their wild cousins.
The Latest: A new tactic to quell Owen’s Valley dust
Los Angeles tries to save water and mitigate effects of sucking the valley dry.
A grouse divided
Will new federal protections rescue the Gunnison sage grouse?
The Latest: Illegal marijuana grows busted in Colorado
The Forest Service seized more than 100,000 plants on public lands.
A job well done
I met Barrett Funka many years ago on the trails in the Bob Marshall Wilderness (“Pack-Man,” HCN, 11/10/14). Nice to see he has “made it.” I say that tongue-in-cheek, because I know what he gets paid, and that the real reward is not in a bank account, but rather in the pride in a job…
Tribal revival
As a kid, I relished stories of America’s pre-settlement wildlife abundance: Vast clouds of passenger pigeons darkening the skies for days at a time, buffalo storming across the Great Plains like massive living tornadoes, and, of course, mighty runs of salmon, so densely packed that you could walk across the writhing, red creeks without soaking…
Alaska’s energy labs
Hybrid technologies help distribute power in isolated communities.
When neighbors spray herbicides next to your organic crop
Living together with local resentments in Northern California.
Bad forest policy
In a paranoid response to publicity over the recent dramatic increase in severity of wildland and interface fires, there’s a lot of forest thinning going on in a misguided attempt to reduce fire danger (“Lost in the Woods,” HCN, 9/1/14). In the 1970s, when we were thinning the Southwestern forests, I’d probably killed about a…
Come to the HCN holiday open house!
Our annual open house is December 11th; cavers and consultants visit the office.
DDT still lives
“Fallout” was an extraordinary report on the perils of modern-day pesticide spraying in Gold Beach, Oregon. Apparently, the consequences of DDT spraying epitomized in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 have sunk deep into our memories and are now almost forgotten, once again allowing history to repeat itself. Unfortunately, most people, including senior editor Jonathan…