It was in 2011, on a research-trip for a documentary, that my husband and I saw Death Valley for the first time. It was love at first glance: the overwhelming space, melting into a bluish infinity, surrounded by far away mountain ranges, vaulted by an enormous unlimited sky. We never had seen any place like […]
We’ve all thought it while stuck in our contracted pandemic worlds of home, zoom meetings, grocery runs, and local exercise circuits. We can’t help but think, “I can’t wait to travel again.” Like starving castaways, we fantasize over the places we will go, things we will see, people we will meet. The travel bug is so deeply […]
He is gone. Yet his legacy, in all too many regrettable ways, persists. Donald Trump is now a private citizen, but the consequences of his four year assault on America’s environment live on to haunt us. The destruction has occurred at so many levels and can be illustrated by a single overarching issue: the border […]
From: Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, March 9, 2021 Subject: Update on Imperial USA Corporation/Kore mining exploration project at Indian Pass. In 1994, Glamis Gold, a Canadian gold producer, attempted to obtain permits to operate a mine on the sacred and culturally significant land at Indian Pass in Imperial County, CA. At the time, […]
Can conventional planning work? by Stephen McCool IT WASN’T TOO LONG ago that I was sitting on the banks of the Rio Negro − a major tributary of the Amazon River in Brazil − reflecting on changes that are coming to that region. And like the Amazon Basin, change is coming to the California desert. […]
Teaching field geology on public lands by Marli Miller SIX PAIRS OF EYES stared blankly at me. Cows. Amazing how big those creatures are, especially when you’re sitting on the ground ‒ so I was grateful they hadn’t already tried to share my tiny bit of shade. I stood up, shouldered my pack, and walked […]
Thacker Pass, Nevada THE RECENTLY APPROVED (2/20/2020) Sierra Club policy “Mining and Mining Law Reform Policy (including minerals for Clean Energy)” states in its opening sentences: Mining by its very nature is a dirty business and highly disruptive of the natural and human environment. It involves disturbing the terrestrial and/or marine environment with short term […]
Living and dying in the desert BY ROBIN FLINCHUM : THE LAST TIME WE SAW our friend Jim he was riding off into the horizon, that delicate line where the never-ending blue sky meets the muted colors of the panoptic desert. In my memory now, he simply fades into a poof of bone colored dust […]
An environmentalist who writes from the heart :TERRY WAS BORN in 1955 in California into a family of Mormon faith. When she was two years of age, the family moved to Salt Lake City area where she spent most of her growing-up years. It was there that she experienced first-hand the unforeseen impact when the […]
The Significance of Administrative Rulemaking by David Rutherford, Associate Professor, University of Mississippi The plan is to get rid of public lands altogether, turning them over to the states, which can be coerced as the federal government cannot be, and eventually to private ownership. . . Nothing in history suggests that the states are […]
