Cecil Garland is not well known beyond the Big Blackfoot River of western Montana. But in this scenic valley, he is remembered as the hardware store owner and WWII veteran who led a 10-year fight to designate the 240,000-acre Scapegoat Wilderness. He is a legend among conservationists, largely because the Scapegoat was the first wilderness […]
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A once-proud conservation group has lost its way
Recently, the family of Olaus J. Murie demanded that the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation cancel the organization’s Olaus J. Murie Award. The surprising reason? The foundation’s “all-out war against wolves is anathema to the entire Murie family.” I sympathize with the family’s position for several reasons. In 1999, while working for the Elk Foundation, I […]
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Start a wildfire, go to jail – or worse
For many decades, the practice of lighting fires in wildlands to clear brush, improve browse, or to create jobs for fire crews was virtually a prerogative of rural living. For the most part, nobody got hurt and nobody went to jail. In the past decade, however, as a more urban-oriented population has spread into previously […]
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Even pests have a purpose
It’s a remarkable achievement: According to a census in April, the number of California condors, one of the largest and most endangered birds in the world, has reached 405, including both wild and captive birds. That’s the most condors to exist on the planet since recovery of the species began in the 1980s, when only […]
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Hawk watching on the Mokelumne River
On a Friday evening in the middle of August there isn’t much traffic along Franklin Boulevard, an old agricultural road that now cuts through 20 miles of Sacramento, Calif., suburbs. We’re looking for birders along its half-mile length but don’t see anybody or even a parked car. When a farmer drives his pickup out of […]
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Just don’t call the condors wild
The success of the California condor captive breeding program is easily exaggerated. From the standpoint of the number of young birds that have been hatched — over 400 of them — there’s no question that it’s a stunning achievement. But beyond that, some observations are in order. In particular, it seems reasonable to question the […]
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“Friending” nature
As someone who writes about nature and the West, I’ve been urged to get more involved with social media. “Search out your readers” I am told; don’t just sit back like a wallflower too shy or too proud to dance. But as a writer in rural Silver City, N.M., I have to wonder: Who wants […]
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Mourning the world we’ve lost
“How do we grieve? How do we grieve for all that disappears into the maw of human appetite? How do we grieve for something as beautiful and terrifying as the polar bear?” The white-haired woman’s voice broke as she stood to ask her difficult question, the other audience members turning somber faces toward her — […]
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A subdivision on the edge of the wild
The subdivision in Utah where I live is bang up against the mountains, with open land between us and the Snowbasin ski resort, and more national forest beyond. Our house lies at the end of a cul-de-sac on a tributary of the Weber River. A steep hill flanks us to the south, thick with Gambel […]
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Public lands agencies are charging for nothing
If a fee falls in the forest, yet rangers refuse to listen, can the government still keep charging you that fee? Well, yes, if you’re in Sedona, Ariz., within the Coconino National Forest’s Red Rock Ranger District, and in other forests as well. Apparently, even federal judges can’t stop the agency from taking your money. […]
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No longer the safest place
My little corner of the West — southern Oregon, between the Pacific Ocean and the high Cascades — achieved a brief notoriety during the height of the world’s Cold War anxieties: It was listed as one of the safest places in the United States in the event of nuclear attack. Distant from population centers and […]
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On the front line of mental illness and violence
Moments after I entered the room where the patients locked in the secure area tend to hang out, a young man asked me for enough meds to “put him to sleep” until the day of his commitment hearing. “If I’m asleep, I won’t say anything that they can use against me,” he said calmly, indicating […]
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It’s all about the aircraft, not the Grand Canyon
Thanks to successful lobbying by Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, with some help from Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, aircraft will continue to swarm over the Grand Canyon and are even likely to increase in number in the future. Tour operators are being offered more flights as incentive for adopting “quiet technology” […]
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Megadrought, the new normal
In a dirt parking lot near Many Farms, Ariz., a Navajo farmer sold me a mutton burrito. He hasn’t used his tractor in two years, he told me; he has to cook instead of farm because “there isn’t any water.” He pointed east at the Chuska Mountains, which straddle the New Mexico border. In a […]
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Global climate change: We need to talk about it
“Knee-high by the Fourth of July” is the old saw about the height of corn in the rural irrigated parts of Colorado where it’s grown. But this year, hurried on by the hot weather, the stalks stood waist-high to my 6-foot-2 frame by the summer solstice –– nearly two weeks before the Fourth arrived. We […]
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Is the outdoor industry really a green giant?
Last February, the CEO of Patagonia, perhaps the world’s most conservation-minded outdoor gear and clothing company, spoke to eager business students and outdoor-industry professionals at the University of Colorado at Boulder. CEO Casey Sheahan’s message was simple: Companies can do right by the environment and society and still turn a profit. Sheahan’s talk was peppered […]
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Floods, fire … are locusts next?
There must be a fellow named Job living in Roundup, Mont. That would explain the latest punch to the belly of this small rural community. The first punch occurred a year ago this May, when deputies drove through neighborhoods along the Musselshell River, rousting people out of their beds for immediate evacuation. Rain had fallen […]
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Black Sunday, 30 years later
I’m a fairly outspoken environmentalist, so what was I doing having dinner recently in Grand Junction, Colo., with retired executives from ExxonMobil, the largest oil company in the world? Well, it was kind of a reunion, since Exxon and I go back to the early 1980s, a time when I was teaching fourth grade in […]
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The Forest Service faces a test in Arizona
Arizona’s flammable ponderosa pine forests stretch from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon above the Mogollon Rim to the White Mountains in the east. Most of that land — glory country for recreationists, as well as the watershed for the Grand Canyon, the Phoenix area and many nearby towns — lies within four national […]
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Watch out for those fake Canadians
I’ve spent much of my life roaming the wild backcountry of northern Montana on hunting, fishing and backpacking trips. Although I’ve had a few humbling encounters with grizzlies, lightning and avalanches, for the most part I’ve always felt reasonably safe and secure. I never ran into any suicide bombers or terrorists and never dreamed I […]