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2,000 Miles, 650 Trails, No one in Sight: The Solitude of Hiking in a Time of Virus. GORHAM, N.H. — It was well after dark on a recent evening when Philip Carcia, a record-breaking hiker, emerged from another 28-mile day in the woods, his legs streaked with mud and crisscrossed with bloody cuts, into a desolate parking lot near New Hampshire’s border with Maine. New York Times, Sept. 27, 2020. |
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Peabody
Essex Museum Gets Set of Native American Artifacts. |
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Resort's
Snow Won't Be Pure This Year; I'll Be Sewage. FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Klee Benally, a member of the Navajo tribe, has gone to the mountains just north of here to pray, and he has gone to get arrested. He has chained himself to excavators; he has faced down bulldozers. For 10 years, the soft-spoken activist has fought a ski resort’s expansion plans in the San Francisco Peaks that include clear-cutting 74 acres of forest and piping treated sewage effluent onto a mountain to make snow. New York Times, Sept. 26, 2012. |
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Uranium Mines Dot Navajo Land, Neglected and Still Perilous CAMERON, Ariz. — In the summer of 2010, a Navajo cattle rancher named Larry Gordy stumbled upon an abandoned uranium mine in the middle of his grazing land and figured he had better call in the feds. Engineers from the Environmental Protection Agency arrived a few months later, Geiger counters in hand, and found radioactivity levels that buried the needles on their equipment. New York Times, Apr. 1, 2012. [This story prompted a Congressional response.] |
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Ban on uranium mining at Grand Canyon upheld by Arizona court. A coalition of conservation groups are hailing an Arizona judge’s decision this week to uphold the Obama administration’s 20-year ban on new uranium mining claims across 1 million acres of public lands adjacent to the Grand Canyon. The Guardian, Oct. 2, 2014. | ||
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Peabody
Energy and Native Americans in Dispute Over Mining in Arizona.
KAYENTA, Ariz. — The world’s largest coal company, Peabody Energy, is
seeking federal approval to expand its mine on Navajo and Hopi land in
northern Arizona, a move supported by tribal leaders. But many other
tribe members say the expansion would destroy burial grounds and
pre-Columbian ruins and are opposing it in court. New York Times, Dec.
29, 2016. |
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A Shirt, Lakota Family Sees Its History.
Ten years ago, lost to drugs and alcohol, Karen Little Thunder moved
back to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where, she
said, she saved her own life by reconnecting to her Lakota heritage,
particularly the legacy of her great-great grandfather. New York Times,
Dec. 28, 2013. Photo: Sam Minkler. |
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Grand Canyon Uranium Mine Placed on Hold. A uranium-mining company that was due to open its mine on the doorstep of the Grand Canyon is suspending work, citing falling uranium prices and the expense of ongoing litigation. The Guardian, Nov. 7, 2013. | ||
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Why Are Horses Still Being Slaughtered in Droves? An estimated 33,000 horses roam freely on public lands and even more on tribal lands. The Bureau of Land Management is supposed to control their numbers so that they don't ravage grasslands or die of starvation. But critics of horse roundups contend they are a profit-driven enterprise sanctioned by the federal government and driven by business interests like cattle ranching and extractive industries that want to clear land for development. Esquire, Oct. 24, 2013. | ||
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Everyone
Wants A Piece Of The Grand Canyon, But At What Cost? TUSAYAN,
Ariz. — For most of its existence, Tusayan, Arizona (pop. 580)
has been little more than a pokey strip of motels and fast food
restaurants strung along State Highway 64, the last place to gas up
before entering the relative wilderness of the Grand Canyon, two miles
away. |
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We Are Still Here. In 2011, Klee Benally chained himself to a backhoe on the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Ariz. One knee in the dirt, the lanky Diné (Navajo) activist thundered at U.S. Forest Service officials, “Right here we draw the line! Right here we say no more!” He had gone to the mountain to pray, but ended up protesting the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort’s plan to turn wastewater into snow. After two hours, he was arrested and charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. High Country News, Aug. 19, 2013. photo: Sam Minkler. | ||
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A Snapshot of Drilling on a Park's Margins. Two years ago, the photographer Tony Bynum, whose images of Big Sky country have graced the covers of magazines like Field and Stream, embarked on a different type of photodocumentary project. His goal was to create an interactive map to illustrate the oil and gas boom in his own backyard on the eastern edge of Glacier National Park in Montana. New York Times Green Blog, March 1, 2013. | ||
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National Parks on a Precipice. Unless Congress can reach a budget agreement by March 1, the country’s national parks will be hit by a $110 million budget cut, resulting in shuttered campgrounds, shorter seasons, road closings and reduced emergency services, a parks advocacy group reports. New York Times (Blog), Feb. 22, 2013. An Addendum on National Park Cuts. New York Times Green Blog, Feb. 25, 2013. | ||
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A Move to Protect Red-Rock Country in Utah. A proposed resolution would urge the federal government to protect a vast roadless tract in Utah from development. New York Times Green Blog, Feb. 12, 2013. | ||
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Arizona Mining Project Wins Crucial Permit. A Canadian mining company has come one step closer to building a mile-wide, half-mile-deep open-pit copper mine on public land 30 miles south of Tucson. State environmental regulators have decided that emissions from the proposed Rosemont Copper mine would meet federal air standards. New York Times Green Blog, Feb. 4, 2013. | ||
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Hurdles Remain for Jaguar Habitat. Last fall, remote cameras in a rugged expanse of desert grasslands in Southern Arizona captured arresting images of a jaguar slinking through the underbrush, its yellow eyes fixed on some distant sight. The photos add to the dozen or so documented sightings of the endangered cat on American soil in the last century. New York Times Green Blog, Jan. 23, 2013. | ||
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Vast Land Deal Divides Detroit. John Hantz says he has a dream: to purchase 140 acres of derelict land in the heart of Detroit and turn it into the world’s “largest urban farm.” New York Times Green Blog, Dec. 10, 2012. Detroit Narrowly Approves Land Sale. In a 5-4 vote, the Detroit City Council on Tuesday approved a controversial land sale of more than 140 acres of land to an entrepreneur by a 5-4 vote. | ||
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On The Slopes, Sprayed with Wastewater. As I wrote in The Times recently, a ski resort in northern Arizona will become the first in the world to make artificial snow totally out of sewage effluent this winter. Now, apart from longstanding concern about harmful chemicals in the water that will be used to make that snow — piped directly from the sewage treatment system of the nearby town of Flagstaff — new research indicates that the wastewater system is a breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant genes. New York Times Green Blog, Oct. 10, 2012. | ||
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Lose the Crust, Inherit the Wind. As the West struggles with wildfires this summer, hot, dry weather is also contributing to massive dust storms in Arizona. Known as “haboobs,” the storms are characterized by strong winds and a wall of dust that can be thousands of feet high, grounding planes, blowing away barns and knocking out power to major cities like Phoenix. New York Times Green Blog, July 18, 2012. | ||
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The Garden Party Redefined. Forget the elegant hats and croquet; “garden assistance parties” are for ripping out lawns and planting native plants that soak up stormwater and protect oceans. New York Times Green Blog, July 2, 2012. | ||
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A Legal Battle Unfolds Over Newly Returned Bison. The legal battle continues over the fate of a herd of wild bison that are roaming the plains of northern Montana for the first time in more than a century. New York Times Green Blog, May 31, 2012. [This piece was mentioned in the preface to George Catlin's American Buffalo, published by Smithsonian American Art Museum.] | ||
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A Difficult Choice on Water. Proposed legislation offers the Navajo and Hopi the service of having water piped into their homes but comes with the caveat that they hand over their rights to the waters of the Little Colorado River. New York Times Green Blog, Apr. 6, 2012. Photo: Sam Minkler | ||
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Uranium, Grazing Cattle and Risks Unknown. There is no dispute that beef and milk from those cattle make their way into the food chain. What is not precisely known is how much radioactive material plants absorb through the soil, how much the cattle ingest by grazing on the plants and what the effect might be on humans. New York Times Green Blog, Apr. 4, 2012. | ||
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A Tough Pond to Fish. CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti—Driving through Cap-Haitien, Haiti’s largest city in the north, six months after the earthquake, it’s easy to forget for a moment that a city in rubble lies a mere seventy miles away. The World Cup is on. At eight a.m., people dressed in yellow and green Brazil jerseys are lugging huge TV sets onto sidewalks so that entire neighborhoods can watch together. When I ask Edy why those teams are favored, he smiles broadly. “Because they always win,” he says, “and Haiti wants to go with a winner.” Tufts Magazine, winter 2011. | ||
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Season of Hope. MILOT, Haiti—On a hot day in early July, Sally Greenwald walks across a dusty tent clinic set up by the local hospital here to treat earthquake victims flown in from the capital. She points to a young woman in a wheelchair. Six months after the January 12 earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince and killed more than 200,000 people, the woman is still here, and lately she has begun to wonder what life holds for her. She has no home, no family and no legs. Tufts Journal, Sept. 22, 2010. | ||
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