My Page: Nathan Rice

High Country News Feature

Last January, three endangered California condors were found dead in Arizona. The cause of death: lead poisoning. After eating carrion riddled with spent lead ammunition, the birds’ digestive systems likely shut down, starving them to death. Since condor reintroduction began in Arizona in 1996, 15 have died of lead poisoning; in California, 18 condors have bit the bullet. After 25 years spent trying to recover the condor from near-extinction, the birds remain imperiled by lead in their scavenged prey. Despite growing concerns about health effects on both humans and wildlife, however, lead ammunition still flies widely unregulated across the West.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-MT, wants to keep it that way. With a bill introduced last month, Tester hopes to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act to permanently exempt lead bullets, shot and fishing tackle from regulation. 

High Country News Feature

On public lands, mining claims are staked for more than just the riches hidden underground. Some are made simply to snatch cash from competing users—possibly renewable energy developers, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Speculators could grab mining claims in areas considered for wind and solar energy development—land which may or may not actually hold mineral wealth—and then force developers to pay for them before windmills or solar panels can be built. (Update: BLM is concerned that existing mining claims could be speculative in areas now being considered for renewables. This has not yet been documented in these areas, but mining claims staked in two solar project application areas are being reviewed.)

With a new rule made effective on Monday, BLM seeks to end such land disputes and clear the path for renewable energy development. The rule will exempt land considered for renewable development from competing mining claims, many of which cannot be inspected to ensure that an actual “discovery” has been made. The move will simplify an already complex application process and aid the ongoing federal effort to generate 10,000 megawatts of non-hydropower renewable energy on public land by 2015.

High Country News Feature

Now that the mountain pine beetle has chewed through some 70,000 square miles of forest in the western states and Canada, it seems the voracious pest is expanding its palate. Beetles in Canada were recently discovered attacking jack pines (Pinus banksiana) for the first time, a break from their usual diet of lodgepole (Pinus contorta), according to a study published this month in the journal Molecular Ecology. With this switch in taste, the beetle could be setting up to cross the continent via the vast Canadian boreal forest, putting trees on the East Coast at risk.

Up to this point, the mountain pine beetle has munched mainly on lodgepole-dominated forests in the western U.S. and Canada. But at the eastern edge of Canada’s lodgepole range, hybrid lodgepole-jack pines may have helped the critters switch to the eastern species. Scientists from the University of Alberta who authored the new study were able to verify that purebred jack pines as far east as Alberta’s Slave Lake had fallen to beetle attack.

NEW WEST FEATURE

Looking down on Cliff Palace, pink sunset painting rounded tower walls, we are transported 800 years into the past. Smoke rises from square holes atop roofed kivas. Women labor over stone metates, grinding corn into meal. Laughter and strange, foreign syllables echo from the sandstone alcove that houses the largest ruin in Mesa Verde National Park. Snow covers the ground.

We stand in silence as evening falls into night, imagining the lives of the Ancestral Puebloan people who once thrived here. As I pull up the hood of my jacket in the cool wind, I suddenly realize that something is wrong with the picture in my head: Everyone is wearing loincloths ... and it’s 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Every museum diorama I can remember depicts these desert people as mostly naked, toiling under the blazing sun. I’m instantly grateful for the synthetic insulation keeping me warm in the winter chill, from ski boots to polypropylene underwear – stuff I’d usually take for granted. But for all of my imagining into the past, somehow it never occurred to me: How did these people stay warm in the frigid depths of winter?

New West Feature

With two inches of snow on the desert at the end of a long growing season, Randy Ramsley is ready for a break.

“Harvest is over,” Ramsley said with a sense of relief. “Mostly I’m just resting from a brutal season.”

After losing his help on Mesa Farm in Caineville, Utah, this summer, the organic small farmer had to do it alone: wrangling 50 goats, milking 15 of them, baking every day, making cheese every other day, running the road-side store, delivering produce to buyers and growing the garden.

“Working 14, 16 hours a day seven days a week taught me a lot about myself, so I have to bless the experience,” Ramsley said. “I wouldn’t want to do it again.”

Here on Mesa Farm, surrounded by desolation, Randy Ramsley makes the desert bloom. Under the shadow of Luna Mesa, he produces everything from lettuce to peaches to goat cheese - all organically and without chemicals. A growing family of 50-some goats grazes the weeds in his fields and makes fertilizer for the one-acre vegetable garden, milk for cheese, and meat for the table.