Why good policy and good intentions won’t stop big, destructive fires.
Cruising the ocean, counting seabirds
The lone-flier screams, resistlessly urges the heart to the whale-way over the stretch of the seas.–“The Seafarer,” an Old English poem, author unknown At 120 feet wide and 951 feet long, the MS Golden Princess is nearly as big as an aircraft carrier. At 109,000 gross tons, she weighs more than one. She has 15…
Washington’s Hanford Reservation and nuclear plant may lie on faults
Updated 11/7/11 “You’re going to see some really cool geology,” Brian Sherrod says, running his finger across the screen of his laptop in the cab of his pickup. Sherrod, a U.S. Geological Survey paleoseismologist with a salt-and-pepper mustache, tents his hands and interlocks his fingers, illustrating how seismic forces created the craggy hillsides and deep…
Obama message control blocks journalists covering the environment
The conversation should have been easy: An interview about renewable energy on public lands with a federal official I know and trust, the rare bureaucrat who can spin administrative drudgery into a good yarn. But I soon sensed I was wasting my time. For there was another person on the line, too, one whose job…
Life as a fire lookout
Once upon a time, I had a pretty sweet gig at the Wall Street Journal, editing stories about sports, wine, theater, pop music, photography, painting and opera. Every month or so, I reviewed a novel or profiled a jazz musician. The daily “Leisure & Arts” page was a quiet, civilized little backwater, largely untouched by…
Lack of medical care on the firelines endangers firefighters
When the three young firefighters first appeared at the Dutch Creek trailhead in California’s Shasta-Trinity National Forest, veteran crew boss Tim Bailey felt uneasy. Their green protective chaps were a little too clean, and their chainsaws looked practically unused. But despite their apparent inexperience, the tree-felling crew from Washington’s Olympic National Park was gung-ho, recalls…
Management by mega-fire
A few years ago on a bright spring day, I decided to burn our small hayfield. With perhaps a little too much glee, I dropped a few matches on the edge of the field. For an hour, nothing happened; I could hardly get the grass to light despite going through an entire box of matches.…
A lovely and restless autumn
Art Director Cindy Wehling is taking a much-deserved sabbatical through the end of the year, after more than 20 years of HCN deadlines. (That’s more than 500 issues!) While Cindy’s traveling the West and working on an addition to the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired house she and husband Don Olsen built, Denver freelance designer and editor…
Chronicles of the ‘Cowboy Candidate,’ a review of Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands
Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands: A Young Politician’s Quest for Recovery in the American WestRoger L. Di Silvestro320 pages, hardcover: $27.Walker Books, 2011. With its obsessive inclusion of seemingly every grouse the future president shot, every letter he wrote, and every meeting he chaired during his stay in the West, Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands…
Good policy and good intentions won’t stop big wildfires
Southwestern wildfires are known to be fast-moving and destructive, but this summer’s conflagrations astonished even veteran observers. On May 29, two cousins abandoned a campfire in a ponderosa pine forest in eastern Arizona. The resulting Wallow Fire, encouraged by dry, windy weather, burned for the next five weeks. It became the largest wildfire in the…
California dings homeowners for wildfire protection
As taxpayers across the country cover the multimillion-dollar costs of protecting private residences from wildfires, subsidizing people who choose to live near combustible wildlands, California has begun to try to shift more of those costs to the homeowners. In 2003, the California Legislature passed — but then quickly repealed — a bill that would have…
In national parks, where are all the fossils?
When it was established in 1922, South Dakota’s Fossil Cycad National Monument possessed the world’s most significant beds of fossilized, Cretaceous Age cycads, large, fern-like plants. But management was left to local ranchers, and paleontologists working the site received limited federal support. By the time the state historical society offered to take over in 1955,…
Killing for conservation in national parks
To work for the National Park Service is to undergo a kind of transformation. I wake up in boxers and an oversized T-shirt, and, 20 minutes later, I’m standing outside my cabin in pressed green jeans, a buttoned and tucked-in gray shirt, bulky brown belt and hiking boots. At 5 feet tall, 100 pounds, I’m…
Missing in action: top dogs
This article, coupled with an article I read not long ago about the inherent danger in eliminating large predators in a region — the lion in Africa — and the economic hardship it creates, fit so well together (HCN, 8/22/11). The implications are fascinating and ominous. We eliminate the large predators, such as wolves, and…
Phoenix remembered
Great essay by Aaron Gilbreath (HCN, 9/5/11)! I got to Phoenix in July of 1965, when there was still a real monsoon season that brought rain with the dust, and cooler evenings. The city didn’t have the wildlife that keep you company, but you knew you were in the desert during the dry times, too,…
Praise for Brad Tyer’s “Lost Opportunity”
Gorgeous article (HCN, 9/19/11). Insightful and sophisticated; layered in scope; ethical and pragmatic; beautifully written. Emily DePrangTucson, Arizona Top-shelf journalism. It’s almost cruel to have to wait a year for the book after reading such astute reporting and beautiful prose. Keila SzpallerMissoula, Montana Phenomenal story. Deeply reported, deeply personal, too. I’d like to see more…
The Hatfield legacy: “deep and wide and wonderful”
Nice job praising Sen. Mark Hatfield (HCN, 9/5/2011). In 1974, we started the Environmental Center at Oregon State and one of our first recruits was Andy Kerr, who quickly quit school to dedicate his life to saving Oregon wildlands. Andy did a hell of a job, and still does. But I will never forget the…
The violence of the open road
If you stand near the highway and listen to the trucks rip past at 85 to 90 miles per hour, you should be disturbed (HCN, 8/22/11). These speeds and the vehicle weights are lethal. The violence here is profound, and yet it has become normalized. It is absurd what we sacrifice for mobility: air, water,…
Where have all the Hatfields gone?
Politics aside, we need more senators and representatives like Mark Hatfield (HCN, 9/5/11). We used to have a couple of politicians here in Arizona who were political opposites — I mean really opposite. But they both got things done for the state: the straight-talkin’ Barry Goldwater and the great (for the landscape) Udalls. Can we…
It’s a feral, feral world
Why don’t you do an article comparable to that about feral hogs on the Western Canada goose, a species that some people regard as cuddly (“To catch a swine,” HCN, 8/22/11)? Others, like me, regard the goose situation in this country as a prime example of everything that could possibly go wrong in species intervention…