As whitebark pines in the Northern Rockies succumb to pine beetles and blister rust, hardworking climbers defy gravity to collect pine cones from canopies to supply efforts to breed more resilient and resistant trees.
The environmentalists’ whitebark pine air force
In the summer of 2009, the Natural Resources Defense Council and EcoFlight conducted a comprehensive aerial survey to assess the damage mountain pine beetles were causing in whitebark pine forests in the Yellowstone National Park region. They devised a Landscape Assessment System — a low-flying airplane using “geo-tagged oblique aerial photography to assess the cumulative…
What is that dead deer thinking about, and why is he hanging there?
Ten points. That’s what my hunter friends would have noticed. They would have coveted the owner of those 10 points, would have risen early in the autumn morning chill, crept toward him silently as the sun warmed their backs, until they heard the echo of his hooves in the distance, caught a flash of brown,…
Water-quality standards unfairly burden rural communities
Updated 12/14/11 When Clarence Aragon began managing the half-century-old Mora Mutual Water and Sewer Association 12 years ago, he thought he was helping the environment. Hundreds of households around Mora, N.M. — a small river-valley community on the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains — flush wastewater through subpar septic systems, sending trickles…
A tree-climber’s tale of harvesting cones to save whitebark pines
You wipe the sweat out of your eyes with a sap-stiffened glove, clinging tightly with your other hand to the one live branch, thick as a hammer handle, that is keeping you up here and alive, 30 feet or so above the rocky earth, while your boots struggle to balance on twigs and your knees…
Tribes try selective fishing to boost catch without harming wild salmon
“Power up!” yells Capt. James Ives as a pulley motor begins hauling a heavy fishing net onto the Dream Catcher’s deck, here on the Columbia River in northeastern Washington. Three crewmembers from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation fold the net, piling its floats on one side of the boat and pleating its lead-weighted…
Land trusts thrive despite, and because of, the Great Recession
The Great Recession, it turns out, may have been good for one thing in the West: private land conservation. From the tiny Orient Land Trust in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, which has nearly doubled its holdings to 2,260 acres, to the 138,041 acres of ranchland protected by the California Rangeland Trust over the last five…
Inside the world of whitebarks
The climbers Whitebark pinecone-pickers are working in at least 19 national forests, three national parks and some wildlife refuges, as well as some Canadian forests, in the hope that the seeds they obtain can be used to grow whitebark pines that are resistant to white pine blister rust — and perhaps, if the research progresses…
Bearly hanging on in the North Cascades
The following two comments were posted at hcn.org in response to Nathan Rice’s feature story, “The Forgotten Grizzlies” (HCN, 11/14/11). “The forgotten grizzlies” seems to suggest two things: (1) More research would somehow improve the chance for the grizzly bear to come in to the North Cascades. (2) More money would somehow allow the introduction…
California chronicles: A review of New California Writing: 2011
New California Writing: 2011Gayle Wattawa, ed. 320 pages, softcover: $20.Heyday, 2011. Most anthologies possess a ready-made but sometimes narrow audience. Readers come to these single-subject, multi-authored books with an already established connection and desire to know more. What, then, does a book focused on California offer to those who live outside the Golden State? Plenty,…
Did the Park Service bow to pressure from Coca Cola on its bottle ban?
It was an ambitious plan: Ban the sale of individual plastic water bottles in the Grand Canyon to cut waste in the nation’s second-most visited national park. But in December 2010, just two weeks before the prohibition was to take effect, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis postponed it indefinitely, citing impacts to concessionaires and…
Environmentalists may have to take what they can get
For those of you who had hoped that the Obama administration would oversee the boldest conservation initiatives this country has seen since the days of Richard Milhous Nixon (who signed many of our country’s most important environmental laws), you can now cease hoping. The Great Recession, combined with a resurgent right wing that has exploited…
In appreciation of simplicity
What could be better than harvesting your own wild game without consuming gas by the minute and purchasing hundreds of dollars worth of gadgets to augment the “hunting experience” (HCN, 11/14/11, “Food and friendship, fossil-fuel free”)? Keep it simple. It helps that Nadia and Andrew live practically in the lap of a game reserve. But…
How private efforts and economic troubles have combined to support conservation
Produced in collaboration with the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University
Mountain bikes are vehicles, too
Mountain bikes are vehicles, and like all vehicle access, Nadia White and her partner got into a landscape they probably wouldn’t have if they had to walk (HCN, 11/14/11, “Food and friendship, fossil-fuel free”). That’s what happens when someone uses mechanical advantage to further access, and like all motorized and mechanical access, it degrades the…
Polluted air, coming soon to Glacier National Park
Glacier National Park is next in line for hazy, polluted air (HCN, 11/14/11, “Out of the haze”). Oil and gas development along Glacier’s eastern border with the Blackfeet Reservation is increasing drastically. Nearly all of the Blackfeet land is leased to oil and gas companies. Park officials and Superintendent Chas Cartwright are concerned with potential…
The man beneath the hat: Ken Salazar’s search for middle ground
Nearly every story about Ken Salazar mentions his cowboy hat. It’s hard not to; there aren’t a lot of politicians or bureaucrats — particularly Democrats — in D.C. who can get away with wearing one and not come off as a wannabe. Today, though, Salazar’s white hat and blue, pearl-buttoned ranch shirt fit right in.…
The trouble with transmission
New transmission lines are just another way to steal natural resources from low-population states (HCN, 11/14/11, “A transmission transformation”). The residents of these states have to live with the infrastructure required to create and transmit energy — whether it’s generated by coal, solar or wind – but we only see the returns during the initial…
A celebration of Cascadia: A review of Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest
Open Spaces: Voices from the NorthwestPenny Harrison, ed. 252 pages, softcover: $22.50.University of Washington Press, 2011. I read Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest over two weeks, setting it down still open so that its pages made a neat tent on my coffee table, returning to it over morning coffee, between garden chores, after dinner…
Vagabond visitors
Mark Winkler stopped by our western Colorado office while visiting his mother in nearby Montrose and touring the North Fork Valley. He’s a homemaker and freelance writer in Redwood Valley, Calif. When he got to Paonia, he first dropped by KVNF, our local community radio station, which sent him to tour our local movie theater,…
A ‘ragtag team’ of scientists, rangers and citizens works to save whitebarks
Our management of whitebark pine has a melancholy history, shaped by ignorance and mistakes as well as by the determination to rescue a species we have sent into a downward spiral. Foresters accidentally introduced white pine blister rust, an Asian fungous disease, to North America around 1900, by importing infected pine seedlings for tree plantations.…