It’s a sad thing to see the fundamentalist wing of the Republican Party skew its values to line up with those of the money-driven Wall Street wing when global warming is at issue. But it is even sadder to see even the non-religious side of the GOP adopting true-believer doublethink to sustain these monetized values. […]
Wotr
Posted inWotr
Stealth campaigns threaten our democracy
This election season in the West already looks as hot as a wildfire running on a dry wind. High-profile campaigns target congressional seats and governorships. But beware: The most important campaign runs in stealth mode. It’s the campaign by libertarians who want to cripple your state and local governments. They’re doing it with ballot initiatives, […]
Posted inWotr
A resident responds to a plaintive question from Wolf Creek developer Red McCombs
“All my life, I have always wondered why there is antagonism toward developers,” said billionaire developer B.J. “Red” McCombs recently during a forum on his proposed resort atop remote Wolf Creek Pass, in southwestern Colorado. I can answer Mr. McCombs, but first, some history: At issue is a massive project on an inholding (private land […]
Posted inWotr
Debunking the myth of the sand-burrowing minnow
It’s a popular refrain here in central New Mexico come summer: The silvery minnow can hunker down, bury itself in a dry streambed and outlast drought. Whenever the river slows and its bed begins to dry, I’m inevitably informed that the Rio Grande has always dried, and the four-inch long minnow has always survived. This […]
Posted inWotr
If only binoculars were cool
I’ve been a bird-watcher since I was a kid. Or to put it another way: Since I was a kid, I have not been cool. For the most part, that stopped bothering me a long time ago. Still, every now and then, I feel it. This happened recently when I got a close-up look at […]
Posted inWotr
Our coyote war in the West reminds me of the war in Iraq
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail,” said psychologist Abraham Maslow. As a wildlife ecologist here in the American West, I can’t help but draw analogies between the Bush administration’s foreign policy in Iraq and one of its proposed wildlife policies in the American […]
Posted inWotr
A lesson in survival
I thought about the woman’s bones for a long time — what position they might have been in when they were abandoned and covered up, what had happened to her heart and her lungs as they slowly deteriorated. The cavity of her ribs and her chest, the now-hollow cavity of her thigh bones, that narrow […]
Posted inWotr
Rainbow Gathering lacks one color — green
When we tell folks that we have become the unwitting hosts for the Rainbow Family’s annual gathering, the first response is “the who?” As it turns out, some 20,000 Rainbows have gathered in Big Red Park, north of Steamboat Springs, Colo., in the Routt National Forest. Their Web site, welcomehome.org, styles them “the largest non-organization […]
Posted inWotr
An Idaho forest burns almost naturally
Early in May, I watched one of my most cherished forests burn. The flames and smoke were great to see. Fire is often seen as death and destruction for a forest, but here was a forest living with fire as an ecological process. Exactly 10 years ago, this old-growth ponderosa pine forest of the Deadwood […]
Posted inWotr
The good news about garbage
One summer day, in my favorite wild place, I found enlightenment through garbage. Other people’s garbage, I realized, is my destiny — and maybe my redemption. Spiritual enlightenment found in a wilderness is a cliche; few special moments occur anywhere else these days, and just once, can’t someone admit to finding rapture in a mall? […]
Posted inWotr
Waypoints of the heart
As a kid I used to play treasure hunt, all by myself. I’d take a piece of notebook paper and draw an X for my starting point — the front stoop of my house — on a dead-end street. Then I’d make a series of marks, each one representing a step, guided more by a […]
Posted inWotr
Cooking up a whopper on federal land in Oregon
Here in Oregon, the dinosaurs are stirring. The brontosaurs of big timber, almost at their last gasp, are making one last power play, and it’s a WOPR, pronounced — how else? — “whopper,” which stands for Western Oregon Plan Revisions. What’s being revised are management plans for six Bureau of Land Management districts in western […]
Posted inWotr
The Supreme Court takes pot shots at each other over wetlands
In one of the most anxiously awaited decisions this session, the Supreme Court recently struck a blow against environmental protection by ruling for a couple of commercial developers. The issue in play in Rapanos v. United States: Can federal protection be extended to small tributaries and wetlands near, but not directly abutting, navigable waters? A […]
Posted inWotr
Don’t top that tree!
One day several years ago, when the youngest was 5 and her sister 8, the youngest brought home from kindergarten a watercolor she had painted of a tree. Painted on 9-by-18-inch paper, the tree’s shallow crown stretched the 18-inch width of the paper and off both edges. My wife and I of course praised the […]
Posted inWotr
Slow down, you go too fast
These are difficult times for people like me. I love to drive. Nothing soothes me more than a long, empty stretch of road and a full tank of gas and no known destination. I love the rumble of the road, spotting a café in a town, stopping for pie and coffee and listening to locals […]
Posted inWotr
A mining town gets a second chance
Historically, the mining industry has not given its towns a second chance. When ore runs out or metal prices head south, as both always do, the industry waves good-bye and leaves mining towns to confront their fates alone. They can either join the West’s long list of ghost towns, or figure out some way to […]
Posted inWotr
Down on the ground looking for culture
The topic for the Gunnison, Colo., master-plan meeting not long ago was “community culture,” and the rambles of that discussion have been lurking in my mind ever since. The talk went fast to complaints about a really junky property on the west approach to town, a collection of shacks and sheds with stuff lying around. […]
Posted inWotr
Health is a casualty on the fast track to gas drilling
The 20 miles of interstate highway between the small towns of Silt and Parachute in western Colorado slice through a landscape of sagebrush and mesas. There are few exits through this section of Garfield County, where the local population of deer and elk rivals the number of ranchers, retirees and others who live here. Susan […]
Posted inWotr
Truth really is no defense
On, May 30, Justice Samuel Alito cast his first deciding vote, and in doing so struck a blow for muzzling public servants at all levels of government. The 5-4 majority in Garcetti v. Ceballos held that public servants have no First Amendment rights in their role as government employees. This decision makes it easier to […]
Posted inWotr
Fencing off Mexico is an ecological blunder
Medical doctors have their Hippocratic oath in which they pledge to heal the sick to the best of their ability and do no harm. We ecologists have our own guiding principle: Call it the Leopold oath. The late Aldo Leopold, who worked for the U.S. Forest Service and is considered to be one of the […]