Coyote Crossing

Is a fish more important than a tortoise?

In Adam Hochschild’s book The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin, Hochschild describes a conversation with Alexander Vologodsky, a Russian physicist. Vologodsky had noticed an abandoned settlement as a youth in the extreme north of Siberia,

Ken Salazar: bad for endangered species?

More distressing information on Ken Salazar, Obama’s pick for Interior Secretary, from the Western Watersheds Project:

While Colorado’s Attorney General, in 1999, Salazar threatened a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior if the Service

Yes We Can drill off the California coast?

Connect the dots.

From a San Francisco Chronicle article published yesterday, written by the estimable Jane Kay.

The context:

The federal government is taking steps that may open California’s fabled coast to oil drilling in as few as three

Find that receipt

Eric has an gift or two he’s planning to return this week, including:

... Ken Salazar. But then, we actually pay attention to Interior. Its one of those “Indian Things”, like siting in circles talking to rocks, or watching the revolving doors at

Technically, the Arctic is a desert

This is very, very hard to watch.

Do it anyway.

Go to http://www.SaveThePolarBear.org. Sign the petition. Spread the … (continues)

Genetically Modified Organisms: A Non-Knee-Jerk Primer

[This post was at first a comment on the Vilsack thread, and after a couple requests to promote it to post status I am doing just that, after correcting a couple of typos. Hope someone finds it useful.]

Unlike a lot of environmentalists I don’t

Vilsack: Another Bad Cabinet Pick for USDA

Via Anuradha Mittal at the Oakland Institute, more change that looks remarkably like what we wanted to change from. Executive summary: http://www.stopvilsack.org.

An Action Alert from the Organic Consumers Association

Organic Consumers

Why The Blog World Frustrates Me, cont.

As of 7:57 PM Pacific Time, according to Technorati. Totals will change.

Ken Salazar, Obama’s pick for Interior Secretary,  will oversee resource extraction from and/or protection of one fifth of the US’s land area. Salazar has deep ties to the

Yosemite

Roger Minick’s “Woman with a Scarf at Inspiration Point, Yosemite Valley, 1980,” reproduced here under Fair Use guidelines for purposes of criticism, is hanging these days at the Getty Museum right now as part of the exhibit In Focus, The

Endangered Species Emergency

Bush has made his slimy little lame-duck attack on the Endangered Species Act, and it’s really, really bad. Please repost, re-tweet, email and spread this around.

From The Center for Biological Diversity:

Center Races to File Suit Challenging

The Loss Of Solitude

Via the comment thread on this post over at Michael’s place, I found myself clicking over to a thought-provoking essay in The American Scholar on the disadvantages of an elite education. Written by literary critic and former Yale prof. William

Obama and Extinction

There is more to protecting the environment than mitigating climate change.

You wouldn’t know that just from listening to the campaign speeches we’ve all heard over the last few months. The one environmental topic that ever got brought up was

Jerky Treats

Readers who have been around here for a while will recall that I used to have a dog, a fine and patient and only a little bit neurotic dog, whose name was Zeke. I loved Zeke. Zeke loved me in return, and others who have loved me will attest to the

Last gasp Bush plan to kill Yellowstone wolves

What is it with these psychotic Republicans and their wolf-killing fetish?

Via Tmorph:

The Bush Administration is determined to ram through a new wolf-killing plan before leaving office. This dangerous scheme could allow the Northern Rockies

Relevant words from Martin Litton

“If you start off with a willingness to compromise, you’ve given up, you’ve lost. Even though the final result, in most cases, is a compromise, it’s a compromise that was reached between two sides, each of which was adamant, and was not going to

On centrism

Last night, as some in the blog wannabe-pundit world blamed African-American voters for the passage of California’s Proposition 8, a couple of African-American guys struck up a conversation with me in front of CNN’s Los Angeles headquarters on

Saul Alinsky wins election

Regardless of how one feels about the candidate - I myself am shelving my cynicism about centrism, for a couple of days, out of respect for the historical milestone we witness this week - the election was a stunning affirmation of the power of a

Letters from the desert: A quick note or two

I’ll be doing a bit of writing here over the next days, but it’s not ready yet, and I want to push that layout-breaking photo off the front page. (The monitor-breaking photo at top left of the front page stays. Sorry.)

Item: I’m sitting in the

Vox Clamantis in Deserto

If the next President makes good on his promise to expand the use of nuclear power plants, the desert will pay.

The desert always pays.

Even if it’s the “safe nuclear power” that those of us in the extreme environmentalist community care about.

Stop the Sunrise Powerlink: Call Now

I want you to pick up your phone today and call California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at (916) 445-2841. You may be on hold for a few minutes after you choose the voice mail option for “express your opinion on a hot issue.” You’ll talk to a