Here’s some good news: In Yellowstone National Park, the cottonwood groves are thriving. Cottonwoods are a key element in the Yellowstone ecosystem, but not so long ago it seemed that they were doomed by dense herds of elk that clustered along the park’s rivers and browsed the trees so heavily that no young saplings survived. […]
Essays
Posted inWotr
Now that we’ve clear-cut the Forest Service…
I first met the U.S. Forest Service in 1967, when I helped build a log cabin at 9,600 feet on the Gunnison National Forest in western Colorado. The idea that I was part owner of 300,000 square miles of beautiful land intoxicated me. We became so drunk on the land that in 1974, we moved […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
In Oregon, a lesson learned the hard way
Washington has apples. Colorado has football and hockey. Oregon? We have land-use laws. It’s what built our state’s reputation. Planning textbooks often feature a chapter on Oregon, and environmentalists and land-use planners throughout the West look longingly toward our state Legislature in Salem; it’s the place where smart people put a cap on sprawl. That […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
Colorado voters snub coal for all things renewable
Not long after Enron, one of our larger humpty-dumpties, had its great fall, I heard a supporter say he missed its CEO, because “Ken Lay was a visionary. He wanted to cover parts of Texas with wind turbines and export that clean energy to the rest of the country.” Yeah, a visionary. Wind or natural […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
A mountain lifts a heavy heart
On a recent Saturday, with a heart heavy as concrete, I headed north, leaving my house in Portland, Ore., as rain pounded the windshield. The remnants of a recent breakup cast the world in dull hues. Mount St. Helens was busy spitting ash into the sky, and I figured, what else cheers the soul like […]
Posted inWotr
A lesson in consensus from contentious Idaho
I can’t get too worked up about the national election’s impact on Western land issues. I don’t live in a state where oil and gas development is roaring through publicly owned lands the way it’s doing in Wyoming and Colorado. Democrats still have enough votes in Idaho’s Senate to stop legislation that fundamentally changes the […]
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See a river through a child’s eyes
I live in Colorado near a river called the Cache La Poudre, French for powder cache. During the last school year, I was thrilled to take part in several field trips with my daughter’s fourth-grade class. Each time the children learned more and more about this local river. Twelve times during the school year we […]
Posted inWotr
Terrible choices now confront the people of Oregon
On Nov. 2, when Oregonians closed the book on the most forward-looking planning law in the nation, they did not just amend a statute, they changed the ethos of a state that had for 30 years celebrated open spaces, greenways and livable communities over development. And they likely started a copycat war throughout the West […]
Posted inWotr
Colorado snubs coal for all things renewable
Not long after Enron, one of our larger humpty-dumpties, had its great fall, I heard a supporter say he missed its CEO, because “Ken Lay was a visionary. He wanted to cover parts of Texas with wind turbines and export that clean energy to the rest of the country.” Yeah, a visionary. Wind or natural […]
Posted inWotr
Surprise! Conservation united Montana voters
Montana voters smashed the trash-can lid on the “blame the environmentalists” rhetoric so in vogue with right-wing Republicans earlier this year. To no one’s surprise, Montana voters went solidly for President George Bush and overwhelmingly reelected their sole Republican congressman, Dennis Rehberg. But in that light, consider this: Brian Schweitzer will become Montana’s first Democratic […]
Posted inWotr
Revolt rattles Oregon’s famed planning regulations
Washington has apples. Colorado has football and hockey. Oregon? We have land-use laws. It’s what built our state’s reputation. Planning textbooks often feature a chapter on Oregon, and environmentalists and land-use planners throughout the West look longingly towards our state Legislature in Salem; it’s the place where smart people put a cap on sprawl. That […]
Posted inWotr
Surprise! Colorado’s senate race focused on the issues
In Colorado, we just endured the most expensive U.S. Senate campaign in our state’s history, with about $15 million spent to determine who would replace retiring Republican Ben Campbell, who was first elected as a Democrat in 1992. He changed parties in 1995, and easily won re-election as a Republican in 1998. There was more […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
Who took the ‘farm’ out of the Farm Bureau?
It’s an organization “preying upon the very people it claimed to help,” said Frances Ohmstede, 40 years ago, about the American Farm Bureau Federation. “Its policies lead rural America further and further into debt and poverty,” said her husband, Bryce. “It’s a financial empire built for their own benefit,” added Alfred Schutte, the Ohmstedes’ friend […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
American — and proud of it
Until I traveled to Holland recently, I didn’t know how irreversibly American I am. Perhaps I’m not precisely a patriot — the word comes from the Latin for father — but I’m certainly one deeply identified with my native land. In Amsterdam, people eyed me with pity, suspicion or loathing as soon as I opened […]
Posted inWotr
Cheering on Mount St. Helens is a spectator sport
On a recent Saturday, with a heart heavy as concrete, I headed north, leaving my house in Portland as rain pounded the windshield. The remnants of a recent breakup cast the world in dull hues. Mount St. Helens was busy spitting ash into the sky, and what else cheers the soul like a good case […]
Posted inWotr
If dogs could talk, what would we learn?
It was all over the papers recently that a border collie named Rico recognized 200 human words. That prompted owners of other breeds to write letters to the editor in defense of their breeds. One trainer said motivation is critical. Another observed that border collies are “acutely sensitive to motion.” I think they all got […]
Posted inWotr
The political science of salmon non-recovery, 101
If the 13 endangered salmon runs on the Columbia and Snake rivers go the way of the dodo on our watch, the responsibility for this denouement cannot be laid at the feet of the five Columbia River Indian tribes or their allies in the biological and aquatic sciences. For two decades, in courtrooms and at […]
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We’ve seen enough destruction from mining
On Nov.2, Montanans will vote on Initiative 147, which would repeal the state’s ban on cyanide heap-leach gold and silver mining. The ban was passed by voters for a good reason: Montana, and Indian Country in particular, will suffer for many decades from the pollution caused by mining operations. Zortman-Landusky Gold Mines, for instance, has […]
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Why the West gets mostly ignored in an election year
The other night we were channel-surfing and hit upon the Miss America pageant. “What year did women get the vote in the United States?” a contestant was asked. The answer, according to the pageant judges, was 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The correct answer is a little more complicated. […]
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Spaceboys: The manly myth strikes again
On Oct. 4, SpaceShipOne blasted to the edge of space from a Mojave Desert Airport for the second time in five days, winning its design team a $10 million prize. The ship is the only privately funded manned vehicle ever to leave the atmosphere, and has already inspired the owner of Virgin Atlantic Airways to […]