Articles
Will Navajos Approve a Grand Canyon Megadevelopment?
GAP, Arizona — For over 50 years, residents of this western sliver of the Navajo Nation have watched tourist traffic zoom by on Highway 89, headed for the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell and southern Utah’s national parks. Except for a single gas station and a few ramshackle jewelry stands, there’s little here to attract vacationers’ [...]
Cutting a Lifeline
Arizona’s San Pedro River is a green corridor in the desert, and an important pathway for migratory birds. But a huge proposed development nearby threatens the river’s flow. Audubon Arizona is one of the groups pointing out that there’s a connection between groundwater pumping in the San Pedro Valley and the river itself. Read the [...]
Pick Your Poison
Thanks to Rachel Carson’s crusade, DDT was banned and birds are rebounding. If only it were that simple. A retrospective look on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring.
Long Returns
A short essay on a long topic, from the January 2012 Orion: ”Take it as a deposit in the bank of long returns, or as an exchange in a drawn-out conversation we hold with the children of people who have not yet been born: my five-year-old son, sedulously plunging his hands into a big bowlful of [...]
The Science of Feathers
They are what most makes a bird a bird. New research is showing how they formed and how they help birds survive. An overview for Audubon.
Pecking Order
Birds’ beaks look hard and unvarying. But they’re not. An essay on the wondrous malleability of birds’ business end, from Audubon.
The World’s Best Bad Idea
Almost everybody agrees that pumping vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the oceans is a terrible way to deal with climate change. But our current inaction on climate change means that future generations may well have to make some terrible choices. A cover story from Miller-McCune (now Pacific Standard) that was underwritten by a 2010 Abe Journalism [...]
The Dirt on Climate Change
Could soil engineered specifically to maximize carbon storage dampen some effects of climate change? Very possibly. A detailed report for Miller-McCune (now known as Pacific Standard).
California prepares for the next burn
It’s on its way again . . . always. In a fire-prone region, can better mapping tools help municipal officials and firefighters better plan how to avoid or fight wildfires? Probably—but some homeowners aren’t happy to be told they live in harm’s way. My research for this High Country News story was supported by a [...]
Listen to “Transmutations,” an essay from Orion
It begins with a plaintive, minor-key whistle in the distance as a freight works its way up the side of the mesa toward our house.
Flight Plan
A report for Audubon shows how scientists are trying to understand one of nature’s most amazing spectacles: how birds flock. Don’t miss the linked slide show with spectacular photos by Richard Barnes.
“Facing the Yuck Factor” wins reporting award from the Society of Environmental Journalists
How has the West embraced water recycling? Very (gulp) cautiously.
Blowing in the Wind
Worlds of their own, full of import, seeds are, in these astonishing images by Rob Kesseler, not unlike some new planet glimpsed through the bridge windows in a sci-fi flick. The story, with a beautiful slide show, appeared in Audubon.
Art Under Fire: Tourist attraction closed due to flying bullets
An oldie but goodie: an investigation into how a shooting range disrupted one of Illinois’ most innovative art installations, from the Chicago Reader.
