I stand by the story I wrote (HCN, 5/11/09). I don’t believe the facts support BPA’s arguments. Take publicly subsided hydropower: My story says that the region enjoys publicly subsidized hydropower at national taxpayer expense and that is accurate. Here’s why: The hydropower dams were built at national taxpayer expense and for about the first […]
Wildlife
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
Salmon simplification
The article, “Salmon Salvation” offers a simple answer to a complex problem (HCN, 5/11/09). “Many scientists,” it says (without naming any), think taking out the four Lower Snake River dams will simply bring back salmon. That’s like saying many people voted for John McCain: perhaps true, but blind to the big picture. Scientists realize 150 years […]
Posted inGoat
In salty, seaside beaver ponds…
Greg Hood is a researcher in western Washington who knows a few things about salmon habitat — a few surprising things. When Hood talks about preserving threatened populations, he doesn’t mention in-stream flows, fish ladders or water temperatures. Instead, he brings up a mostly-vanished ecosystem than once lined significant portions of the Puget Sound. It […]
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
Bring in the cows
Grazing may be the best hope for a threatened butterfly
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
It’s a dam mess
The “Salmon Salvation” article misses the point badly (HCN, 5/11/09). The obsession with the lower four dams on the Snake distracts from a much larger and more tangled problem. Although I, too, would like to see those dams go, the four lower Snake Dams are a relatively minor component of a vast set of problems; […]
Posted inGoat
Jaguars A to Z
For years, HCN contributor Tony Davis has been following — and writing about — the Southwest’s endangered jaguars. The rare cats are in danger of being wiped out in the U.S. by the border fence that isolates them from their Mexican counterparts (see our story Cat Fight on the Border). Recently, a huge male cat, […]
Posted inGoat
Get to know the locals
Encana has a bit of a reputation for looking out for wildlife. Though predictably, it’s an ambiguous one. High Country News has covered the oil and gas company’s efforts to trade habitat restoration dollars for sweetheart lease deals, and its practice of padding drill sites to minimize vegetation impacts. Those moves may not add up […]
Posted inWotr
Semi-wild in the new West
The convoy of five cars heads slowly up the mesa through a patchwork of open fields and cedar woodlands. Binoculars around my neck, I sit in the backseat of a well-used Subaru station wagon amid a scattering of stray goldfish crackers and one, apparently unused, diaper. The driver is Jason Beason, a young father and […]
Posted inGoat
The cost of progress
The Environmental Working Group just released a two-year study focusing on the toxins found in five minority women at the forefront of environmental justice battles. Within each community, these women work tirelessly to protect citizens from various forms of pollution. And within each of these women, scientists found significantly higher amounts of toxins than other […]
Posted inMay 4, 2009: Salmon Salvation
Salmon (apolitical) science
Not only did Steve Hawley’s article “Columbia Basin (Political) Science” include factual errors and omit balancing views, but it also missed dramatic, positive changes surrounding Northwest salmon protection in recent years (HCN, 4/13/09). States, tribes and federal agencies that once stood on different sides now stand together behind the region’s new salmon strategy. Consider the […]
Posted inGoat
Kickstarting salmon salvation?
After years of legal deadlock over the federal government’s inadequate attempts to recover Columbia Basin salmon devastated by dams, the Obama administration appears to be steering a new course. Ken Olsen just wrote High Country News an extensive analysis of how this new political order — combined with the efforts of a diligent federal judge, […]
Posted inGoat
Blocked by concrete or killed by climate?
In the context of climate change, our energy appetite has shoved us into a corner. We’ve gotten used to a diet of cheap, energy-packed fossil fuels, and it will probably be impossible to find an alternative that doesn’t bring along its own set of environmental impacts: Solar arrays will damage deserts, wind farms decimate birds […]
Posted inRay
Watch falcons nesting high in downtown Boise
This is a cool window into the wild — make that, the downtown wild. Two peregrine falcons are trying to hatch four eggs on the 14th story of a bank building in downtown Boise. The Peregrine Fund and Fiberpipe have set up a webcam so we can all watch the falcons. The camera provides a […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
And window seats for all
Thanks to geolocators the size of a dime — small enough for a bird to bear — scientists have documented that songbirds such as thrushes can cover as many as 311 miles in a day. One female martin flew an incredible journey of 4,660 miles in only 13 days, all the way from the Amazon […]
Posted inGoat
Of Gods and Sea Kittens
How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world — the paragon of animals! ~ William Shakespeare In the Sacramento Bee today, Republican Rep. George Radanovich of California’s 19th District accused environmentalists […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
So, this bobcat walks into a bar…
A different breed of cat starred in a barroom saga in Cottonwood, Ariz., that’s “sure to become legend,” reports the Arizona Republic. The tale begins with a woman stopping her car at 10:30 p.m., after thinking she’d hit something. She had — a bobcat — which proceeded to pounce on her and rake her face […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
The cat’s meow
In Spokane, Wash., Vickie Mendenhall thought she’d gotten a great deal by paying only $41 for a used couch. But then she and her boyfriend Chris Lund kept hearing a strange, high-pitched noise when they sat down on it to watch television, reports the Spokesman-Review. After a couple of days, Lund finally lifted up the […]
Posted inApril 13, 2009: The Desert That Breaks Annie Proulx’s Heart
Conservation or cop-out?
Lack of participation could scuttle voluntary efforts to protect species
Posted inApril 13, 2009: The Desert That Breaks Annie Proulx’s Heart
Columbia Basin (Political) Science
An investigation into the Bonneville Power Administration’s influence on salmon research