Honeybees are in trouble, and so are the farmers who rely on them to pollinate an estimated one-third of the human diet — everything from almond and fruit trees to cantaloupes and cucumbers. Tom Theobald, who owns Niwot Honey Farm outside Boulder, Colo., says 30 percent of his bees died this year. Other beekeepers say […]
Agriculture
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
California’s farmers ditch dirty diesel pumps
California’s two biggest utility companies want to help farmers ditch their polluting diesel pumps to comply with air-quality crackdowns. In the process, the companies stand to gain thousands of new customers. In November, Pacific Gas and Electric Company and Southern California Edison submitted a proposal to the California Public Utilities Commission — which authorizes all […]
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
Communities search for a safer way to kill mosquitoes
West Nile virus brings a long-simmering controversy to a boil
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
Failure of leadership, not a lack of water, dooms the Klamath River
Unfortunately, it’s business as usual in the Klamath River watershed, where all the conditions are in place for yet another fish kill similar to the one that claimed at least 34,000 salmon in the fall of 2002 (HCN, 6/23/03: Sound science goes sour). It’s another dry year, with the same low river flows, and water […]
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Who will take over the ranch?
As a real estate frenzy grips the West, conservationists scramble to save a disappearing landscape
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Not just a ranch: Bucks and acres
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Who will take over the ranch?“ If most people looked at the Adobe Ranch, they’d see a meadow with a creek and willows running through it and sagebrush grasslands rising to pine forests. But Carl Palmer sees a distressed asset that he and his […]
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Biology: The missing science
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Who will take over the ranch?“ The Gunnison Ranchland Conservation Legacy and other groups around the West are spending millions of dollars on conservation easements to ensure that ranches are not subdivided. But beyond the ranches themselves, what are the easements protecting? Do ranch […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Ranching’s worst enemy? It’s not greens
Jury finds a meatpacker has taken ranchers to the cleaner
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
Postscript to a water war
Nearly a decade after an attempted water grab in California’s Imperial Valley, the saga takes a strange new twist
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Salmon get a break from pesticides
WEST COAST Protection for the Northwest’s salmon just took a major leap forward. In a landmark ruling, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour banned the use of 38 pesticides near streams that host threatened and endangered runs of salmon and steelhead in Washington, Oregon and California. The ruling follows a July 2002 decision, in which Judge […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Agriculture’s wild side
It’s no coincidence that farming and ranching are at least partly responsible for a huge number of federal endangered species listings. When the goal of agriculture is to create monocultures of corn, soy, wheat, hogs or cattle, biodiversity loses. But that doesn’t mean modern agriculture has to be incompatible with healthy ecosystems. In his new […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Grazing foes float a buyout
But will ranchers and Congress buy in?
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Go west, fruit picker
WASHINGTON For years, migrant workers have flocked to eastern Washington to pick apples in the fall (HCN, 12/18/00: Troubled harvest). But with a jump in global competition, apple orchards have streamlined their operations to save costs, eliminating jobs in the process. This season, a late hailstorm wiped out nearly 30 percent of the apple crop […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Showdown on the Nevada range
Ranchers trespass on public lands, says the BLM