Coyote Crossing

More grist for the desert solar mill

The Western Lands Project, a wonderful and effective small non-profit working to protect public lands in the western United States from encroachment and privatization, has just put out its newsletter. Aside from a nice plug for this here site, the

The Cross thief speaks

Morongo Bill and Scott Fajack have alerted me to a new development. Looks like I may have spoken unfairly as to the character of the person who took the Sunrise Rock cross from its site in the Mojave National Preserve. The Barstow Desert Dispatch

Protect Gold Butte

Most of you have never heard of it, but northeast of Las Vegas, in one of the least-visited parts of the continental United States, a desert treasure in Nevada needs your support.

I visited Gold Butte for the first time in 1997. I was just

1,000-mile OHV atrocity in Nevada: more info

Basin and Range Watch has the authoritative description of just how destructive the so-called “Best in the Desert Vegas to Reno Off-Highway Race.”

Talk about your insult to injury, with that title. These yahoos wouldn’t know the best of the desert

At Grand Canyon, water battle rages anew

Via Lee Allison, a relatively thorough story in the Arizona Republic about the Grand Canyon, Glen Canyon Dam, and science and the environment being disregarded for considerations of political and electrical power.

Nearly a year after the federal

A thousand-mile swath of destruction?

The ORV boosters are pushing an event that could be more destructive than the infamous Barstow to Vegas Race, banned a dozen years ago.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Tonopah Field Office, will conduct an environmental review and hold two

Keep ORVs out of NV wilderness areas

Yes, this is Nevada. Castle Lakes in the Ruby Mountains Wilderness.

From our friends at the Center for Biological Diversity. The link on “please submit your comments” goes to one of those automated letter-sending sites. It’ll take less than two

Desert Pavement

This wind is a tide. Plant your footsoles on the earth: the wind will scour the sand out from underneath, send you toppling backward into the holes it digs beneath your heels. It is relentless. It is patient. Sandgrain after wind-driven sandgrain

Tortoise alert: letters needed

From the Center for Biological Diversity:

Last year, the Army moved more than 750 tortoises off of pristine desert lands in order to expand its Fort Irwin army base in California’s Mojave desert. Not all tortoises were monitored, but of those that

Ferocactus on Lava

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Yucca schidigera

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Ken Salazar gets off to a good start

From the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance:

More than 100,000 acres of Utah wilderness will be protected from oil and gas drilling after the Department of Interior announced today that it will cancel 77 leases issued under the Bush administration.

Eagle over Morning Star Mine Road

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In Hagen Canyon

It makes no sound. If it did the wind would mask it, keening through the sere canyon. Look the wrong way and your mouth fills with dust, with flecks of gravel. It is constant, the wind, and it raises whistles across the crenellated canyon walls.

I wish they’d stop printing books I want to read

...especially given that I have no income.

This one sounds good:

Every scientific study confirms that global warming will cause the amount of water in the Colorado River to decline, yet because we already use every drop, there is none to

US National Park Meme

I call the Mojave National Preserve “The Park” as often as not, but I’m painfully aware that it isn’t one. The difference between “Preserve” and “Park” status? Hunting is allowed in National Preserves. Letting hunters shoot things in the Preserve

Beauty

It is raining, a little. The wind off the little storm front brings the temperature down to a positively comfortable level. It’s almost cool. Not even 80°, and the scent of wet juniper and rock hangs in the air.

How long has it been since I’d