Chip Ward’s first book, Canaries on
the Rim: Living Downwind in the West, was decidedly grim,
detailing his fight to keep the deserts of Utah from becoming a
dump for toxins ranging from radioactive waste to defunct
biochemical weapons. His new book, Hope’s
Horizon, gives us a brighter view of recent environmental
battles, taking an optimistic yet clear-eyed look at efforts to
heal tattered ecosystems and abandon dangerous technologies.
Organizing his stories around the key themes of
reconnection, restoration and abolition, Ward describes dozens of
environmental activists working to realize visions both large and
small. Central characters include conservation biologist Michael
Soulé and his Wildlands Project, which seeks to stitch
together chunks of wildlife habitat from Greenland to Mexico and
“rewild” the land (HCN, 4/26/99: Visionaries or Dreamers?), and
Corbin Harney of the Western Shoshone Indian tribe, who is fighting
nuclear waste storage at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain (HCN,
7/2/01: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?).
Ward manages to
convey hope while remaining realistic. He portrays anti-dam
activities across the West, focusing on physics professor Rich
Ingebretsen’s crusade to drain Lake Powell and restore the
Colorado River (HCN, 12/22/03: Being Green in the Land of the
Saints). Although the flooding of Glen Canyon was a huge loss, it
may yet be undone: Even the Bureau of Reclamation admits that Lake
Powell loses more water to evaporation and its porous sandstone
walls than it saves, and Bureau scientists have thought seriously
about decommissioning the dam. Meanwhile, activists have notched up
victories over dams on Utah’s Bear and Diamond Fork rivers,
and dam-busting proposals abound in Washington and Oregon.
In the end, Ward reminds us that all is not yet lost in
the natural world. He sees the stubborn spread of coyotes, despite
our best efforts at eradication, as emblematic of nature’s
resilience and our often-futile efforts at control: “As Coyote is
here to say, sometimes Nature is our dog, and sometimes she is
God’s dog.”
Hope’s Horizon:
Three Visions for Healing the American
Land
by Chip Ward
350
pages, hardcover $27.
Island Press, Washington, D.C.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline An antidote to despair.
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