Oil shale has made big news this past year. Congress has ordered the leasing of federal oil shale lands, and would-be developers are reporting advances in both conventional retorting and innovative, in-situ extraction technologies. Yet somehow I don’t get a warm, fuzzy feeling that oil shale is going to help me out at the gas […]
Essays
Posted inWotr
Why one hunter is fed up with the NRA
I am a hunter. I care deeply about our hunting heritage and our ability to pass it on. Like most hunters, I consider organizations that work on behalf of hunting my friends, and those that work against hunting my adversaries. Like most hunters, I am confused when the lines become blurred. And today the lines […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2005: A New Green Revolution
Scandal and war fracture conservative coalition
The wars in Vietnam and Iraq aren’t the same, of course, but there’s an eerie feeling of similarity between what happened in the early 1970s and what is happening now. Only this time, a conservative political coalition is crumbling, instead of a liberal one. In 1971, when I moved to rural Wallowa County in Oregon, […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2005: A New Green Revolution
Backcountry Ranger
Backcountry Ranger A Photo Essay (click through photos on slider above). This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Backcountry Ranger.
Posted inWotr
Oh, Christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree
“I will not kill another living tree for Christmas,” announced a waitress at a restaurant I frequent. It is a common misconception that cutting a fir at Christmas is killing a tree that will otherwise live. “Christmas trees are grown to be cut,” I said sagely. “That is their reason for being.” Then I recounted […]
Posted inWotr
Bet on Las Vegas for Western solutions
Las Vegas is a funny place to find solutions to the woes of Western cities, but in southern Nevada, the phenomenal growth of the last 20 years has spawned innovative ways to solve the problems of Western cities. Las Vegas has all the problems of a healthy economy — growth, sprawl, air pollution, traffic congestion, […]
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The trouble with the Endangered Species Act is us
With House approval of his “Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act” last September, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., got a step closer to his career goal of eradicating the Endangered Species Act. Pombo, a developer posing as a rancher posing as an advocate of the public good, proclaims that the 32-year-old law is “broken” and a […]
Posted inWotr
Camping out at home
The first heating bill I got was for October, and it jumped from summer levels right up to what I was paying mid-winter last year. Mind you, I didn’t even light the furnace pilot light until Oct.10, and because the weather was nice, we only kicked in the thermostat on a handful of days, less […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Wheelchairs and wilderness can coexist
Life can change dramatically, in the blink of an eye. Seven years ago, I went backcountry skiing in the Hoover Wilderness near Yosemite. I missed a turn on a steep icy slope and fell into a rocky gully. In that ugly tumble, I crushed my spinal cord. Suddenly, I was a paraplegic. Every able-bodied person […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Alvin Josephy: A gentle, graceful advocate for sovereignty
In a time of significant change for the Nez Perce people of north-central Idaho, a great friend and advocate has left us. The death of historian Alvin M. Josephy at age 90 on Oct. 16 touches our hearts and calls us to reflect on the importance of his life. I was a child when my […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Vine Deloria Jr.: Writer, scholar and inspired trickster
The modern tribal sovereignty movement has had no single great inspirational leader, no Martin Luther King Jr., no César Chávez. After all, Indian country contains more than 500 separate and independent peoples, each with its own history, traditions, and officials. Yet if one person may be singled out, it is Vine Deloria Jr. A Standing […]
Posted inWotr
Pombo’s plan to privatize the West must be stopped
What is it, exactly, that makes the West special? There are certainly many answers to that question, but perhaps the one that Westerners would give more than any other is our “wide open spaces.” Despite much development, there is still open space in the West: space to hike, to hunt, to breathe free, to escape […]
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We need to store fat from the gas-feeding frenzy
Every fall, black bears enter a ravenous state in which they will do almost anything for food. Biologists call it hyperphagia — the time of super-eating. Bears in hyperphagia can get into trouble if their search for calories leads them to our backyards or to garbage cans behind the local diner. We Westerners have also […]
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When hungry bears drop in for lunch
It was a few falls ago when I came home one late afternoon, only to find the floor covered in broken glass and pieces of pottery. It looked like a serious and not untalented artist had been at work. The pieces lay arranged in grotesque fashion, jutting up like mountaintops above a valley floor of […]
Posted inWotr
Wheelchairs and wilderness can coexist
Sometimes, life can change dramatically in the blink of an eye. The biggest change in my life came seven years ago, when I was backcountry skiing in the Hoover Wilderness near Yosemite. I missed a turn on a steep icy slope and fell into a rocky gully. In that ugly tumble I crushed my spinal […]
Posted inWotr
It’s not whether you win or lose…
The trouble with running for public office is the very real possibility that you will lose the race publicly. I considered this as I declared my candidacy for my small town’s city council. But there were three seats up for grabs, and I figured there would be a good chance I might run unopposed. When […]
Posted inWotr
It’s déjà vu all over again in Iraq
The wars in Vietnam and Iraq aren’t the same, of course, but there’s an eerie feeling of sameness to what’s happening now and what happened in the early 1970s. Only this time, it’s a conservative political coalition that’s crumbling. In 1971, when I moved to rural Wallowa County in Oregon, a national liberal coalition held […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
‘Death is stingless indeed and as beautiful as life’
I was over 80 when I found myself in a college classroom with 20-year-olds, wondering how to bridge the age gap and teach them something useful about the conservation movement in America and my role in it. I began by remarking that it must be hard for them to believe that I was once their […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
In Washington, the most outrageous sins are legal
On the grand stage of political tragicomedy, the spotlight rarely shines on the Council for Republican Environmental Advocacy, prestigious though its origins may be. The nonprofit CREA was founded by Gale Norton, now secretary of the Interior, shortly after she lost the 1996 Republican U.S. Senate primary in Colorado. Helping finance it was Grover Norquist, […]
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Panhandling in our national parks
The Bush administration has spawned more than its fair share of high profile conflicts in our national parks, from opening Yellowstone’s gates to fleets of snowmobiles to its approval of a creationist tract maintaining the Grand Canyon is the product of Noah’s flood. One of the more far-reaching changes in the appearance and operations of […]