As an unofficial birdwatcher – the kind who doesn’t carry a little notebook and camera while tramping through woods – I sometimes get a geeky thrill out of the visitors to my backyard bird feeders.
Last week a neon-yellow and red Western Tanager stopped by for thistle seed. Out on a dogwalk, more of them sang in the trees along the Boise river. Zing! went the strings of my bird-lovers heart.
This morning, the Idaho Statesman’s outdoor writer Pete Zimowsky informs us that the tanagers are migrating, and other Rocky Mountain western states are enjoying the migration, too.
I thought it was just my optimist's mind imagining a dramatic increase in bird life along the streams and in the trees of my riverfront neighborhood, but Zimo says it's everywhere. We are awakened every morning now by birdsong, and instead of the usual two or three chirpers, there are dozens, singing and trilling and calling and scolding.
Keep your eyes open for the Tanagers, not to mention the state bird of Montana and Oregon, the yellow Western Meadowlark, Idaho’s Mountain Bluebird, and Colorado’s Lark Bunting.
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Idaho Republican Senators Larry Craig and Mike Crapo both had something to say today about the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, on which the Senate voted to continue debate.
Who Cares About Global Warming Anyway?
by: Senator Larry Craig
If you remember Al Gore’s Oscar-winning movie and his visit to Boise, you might be shocked to learn how the Democrat-led Congress actually handled an issue some say is the most important crisis of our time. You may not even have known this debate was going on, considering how disorganized, brief and superficial the debate was.
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Colorado House Majority Leader Alice Madden put up a slide of Lake Mead with the rhetorical question: Half empty or half full?
Madden’s immediate subject at the University of Colorado’s Natural Resource Law Center’s Annual Summer Conference was water, but the question echoed around a wide variety of subjects: energy, climate, renewable resources.
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With the Saturday Market and the First Annual Green Expo all being held on Saturday May 17, it was hard to find a parking spot downtown, let alone maneuver through the crowds. The warm and sunny weather beckoned Boiseans to come out and play, and they did – by the thousands.
Boise is beginning to look like a real Metropolis, with people from all over the world at the Expo and many languages being spoken.
Despite the heat, the crowds and the general commotion, people were happy. The atmosphere was festive and chatty, all with one shared interest to learn more about choosing a more environmentally responsible way to live.
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"Where Green is Another Shade of Red, White and Blue"
Organizers of the first annual Idaho Green Expo are putting on quite a show this weekend, with a downtown Boise festival promoting green thinking, living, technology and materials.
But it’s no stodgy enviro-lecture. The Boise Center on the Grove is the setting for this weekend’s event, with over 150 exhibitors showcasing their green products and services. There will be seminars, demonstrations, speakers, art displays, things for kids to do, live music, and sales of local and organic food.
And with the nice weather predicted, it’s a great place to take the family on the first warm outing of spring.
Saturday, May 17th : 9:00 AM - 8:00 PM
Sunday, May 18th : 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Boise Centre on the Grove –
FREE admission
Valet bicycle parking
Laura Zuckerman has a pretty comprehensive story today for Reuters that looks at the overall outlook of this summer's Western fire season, with a primer on how more homes in the Wildland Urban Interface (know as the WUI) and the effects of global warming are changing the regional and national, approach to firefighting.
That's not really news to most of us in the West who have watched tactics evolve first from the warfare-like 10 a.m. rule to a realization in the 60s and 70s that fires are natural and in some cases, should be managed, not suppressed. Now though, fire managers stuck trying to balance managing fires for natural benefit and protecting property (and in some cases lives) as more and more homes creep closer to the wildland interface. Throw global warming into the mix and you're also weighing which fires are natural and beneficial to the ecosystem, and which can turn into catastrophic ones that can actually do more harm than good -- in the remote wildlands or in the interface.
Oh, and then there's the question of how to fund all of this.
Zuckerman's story doesn't fully address all the issues hanging out there, but it does raise some of the more important ones and gives some good fodder to think about and discuss as we head into another fire season.
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In the Intermountain West climate varies – by elevation, aspect, within valleys and even within backyards.
In natural landscapes, the varieties of plants (and where they grow) offer clues to microclimates. But man-made landscapes (like wheat fields and blue grass lawns) “mask” the diversity of climate within. The mask leads landowners to assume that the climate on their property is all the same. They discover their mistake when their plantings fail.
Natural features like elevation, aspect, and wind affect local climate, and therefore your backyard is a microclimate.
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About a year ago, a client of mine came to me and asked me to design a house that would have no energy bill -- a "Net Zero House," producing as much energy as it used. During the same year, I found that my energy bill for my own house was beginning to become much more of a burden on our family budget. These two events led me to research energy costs and how those costs are impacting the average American household. It was immediately clear from the research that energy prices are outpacing income and our current way of building houses will create energy bills that will not be sustainable for the average household.
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Wednesday the Missoula County Commissioners sent a letter to Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey asking him to drop consideration of the forest road easement amendment until the documents proposed for amendment have been identified and made available to the public.
The commissioners wrote: "...the failure to identify, review, and properly reference the easements to be amended will make the proposed Easement Amendment legally void, and the process leading up to your expected approval fatally flawed."
Rey, overseer of the Forest Service, said during a meeting last week with officials from western Montana that he would not make the paperwork available and invited a lawsuit, which appears imminent.
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On May 12-13, an immense conversation between the agriculture and energy sectors, environmental, educational and state agencies, legislators, officials and climate scientists will focus on Montana’s energy and agriculture sectors’ innovations and opportunities, climate challenges and its impacts, and future prices and outlook.
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