If you dread mowing the lawn, maybe you should just give it up altogether next year. Native pollinator insects — bees, butterflies and others — are declining across the nation because of land-management practices that range from vast single-crop farm fields to manicured urban lawns. This is very bad news, because despite their tiny size, […]
Books
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 inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Snowmaking and drought: a bad combination
Researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder say that extended drought, coupled with mining pollution, could make for rocky winters at Colorado ski resorts. A recently released study published in the American Geophysical Union’s EOS Journal examines the Snake River Watershed in Summit County, Colo., where hotter weather threatens snow conditions at popular ski resorts […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Calendar
The Water Education Foundation will present a one-day program, Climate Change and California Water Resources, in Sacramento, Calif., on Nov. 6. Scientists and government officials will discuss the regional effects of climate change in California and their implications for the state’s water supply. www.watereducation.org/briefings.asp. 916-444-6240 The organizers of Connecting Mountain Islands and Desert Seas have […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Right and wrong on public lands
With everything from invasive insects to energy developers threatening national forests, wildlife refuges and other public lands, it’s not hard to understand why conservationists are scowling a lot these days. But in From Conquest to Conservation, Michael Dombeck, Christopher Wood and Jack Williams argue that Americans, now more than ever, realize public lands are more […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Gas drilling blamed for smog
Why would Oklahoma City, a town of 500,000 people, have higher levels of some smog-forming hydrocarbons than famously hazy metropolises like Houston, Chicago and New York? A group of atmospheric scientists from the University of California, Irvine collected hundreds of air samples across a 1,000-mile-wide area to find out. Their conclusions, released in the Oct. […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Back down the fireline
In a new book, Fire and Ashes, author John N. Maclean leads readers through three sweaty-palmed stories about human encounters with wildfire. Maclean returns to the ground his father, Norman Maclean, covered in the 1992 book, Young Men and Fire. He joins the last living survivor of the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire in Montana to […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
In the field with fire
Federal spending on fire suppression is wildly out of control, forests are increasingly unhealthy — and everyone seems to have an opinion about how to fix the problem. A Season of Fire, by Seattle-based journalist Douglas Gantenbein, is one of the latest titles about fire in the West, and refreshingly, he doesn’t glamorize firefighters or […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Ready, set, vote
George Bush and Howard Dean aren’t the only ones gearing up for the 2004 election — grassroots organizers across the country are getting ready, too. A coalition called America Votes plans to link grassroots groups to pump up election-day turnout. Sixteen organizations, ranging from the AFL-CIO and ACORN to the Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood, […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
City at the end of its rope
Anyone who has lived in Albuquerque, and sworn a curse upon the city and all its planners, visitors and inhabitants while broiling in traffic, and then eaten chile rellenos at sunset while watching the Sandia Mountains turn pink, knows that love and hate, beauty and grit, stand shoulder to shoulder in this desert city. Longtime […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Calendar
The 12th annual Symposium of the California Exotic Pest Plant Council runs Oct. 2-4 in Kings Beach, Calif. Land managers and researchers will speak on “Planning Weed Management for Ecosystem Recovery.” Call 510-525-1502 or visit www.caleppc.org. The University of Montana is sponsoring the 27th Annual Public Land Law Conference and Plum Creek Lecture Series in […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Water law for dummies
There’s nothing worse than being stumped during a dinner conversation while attorneys and professors quarrel over the intricacies of water law. Now, Coloradoans can dive right into those debates, thanks to a new booklet that translates state water law into plain English. The Citizen’s Guide to Colorado Water Law, by the nonprofit Colorado Foundation for […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Living in two worlds
Like many American Indian children, Viola Martinez — a Paiute Indian from California’s Owens Valley — was taken from her family and sent to a government boarding school in the early 20th century. There, she was to be “civilized” and trained as a maid. But instead of giving in to the system, she decided to […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Being rich isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
“It’s not easy being rich” — especially when you’re rich in natural resources. So says a new report from the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado at Boulder, explaining why the West is smack-dab in the middle of the nation’s energy fight. The report, What Every Westerner Should Know About Energy, […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Calendar
The Rocky Mountain Land Institute is holding its 12th Annual Land Use Continuing Education Conference on Oct. 16-17 in Denver. For registration information, call 303-871-6239. Do you enjoy storytelling, sheep and Basque culture? Then get thee to Idaho on Oct. 10-12 for the Trailing of the Sheep Festival. The weekend-long festival ends with a parade […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Yellowstone’s grizzly stalker
Chuck Neal is a retired ecologist whose nickname, “Wild Grizzly Stalker,” says it all: For more than 25 years, Neal has followed grizzlies around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem — 28,000 square miles in and around Yellowstone National Park. Eschewing bear spray, bells and just about everything else, he has seen more than 3,000 grizzlies, and […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Another roadside detraction
Next time you’re cruising the open highway or ambling along a backwoods two-track, be wary of hitchhikers with barbed seedlings and spiky thistles. New studies from the University of California, Davis show that roads significantly promote the spread of invasive weeds. Noxious weeds such as cheatgrass, leafy spurge and knapweed already occupy over 133 million […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 2003: Courting the Bomb
Digging through the dust of Libby
For decades, the best jobs in Libby, Mont., were to be found at the local vermiculite mine. The work was tough and dusty, but it paid better than anything else in northern Montana. In the 1970s, however, mine workers, their families, and their neighbors started dying of respiratory diseases and rare, painful cancers. Libbyites didn’t […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 2003: Courting the Bomb
A peek over the edge
In the endless arguments over public land, it’s healthy to seek the boggy middle ground. But it’s also worthwhile to stroll out to the edge, out where the arguments define right and wrong. For readers ready for such a stroll, Richard W. Behan has written a provocative travel guide, Plundered Promise: Capitalism, Politics, and the […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 2003: Courting the Bomb
NEPA gets short shrift in the courts
For more than a year, environmentalists have been warning that the Bush administration is attempting an unprecedented rollback of the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). A recent study of NEPA court cases by the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife indicates that such warnings have merit. Supporters of NEPA describe it as the Magna Carta […]