Loggers Going Green – NYTimes.com: This story in yesterday’s NYT imagines the two opposing forces that have shaped our local community — namely loggers and environmentalists — coming together for a cause: their mutual love of Coca-Cola. Wait, make that saving the planet AND jobs at the same time. “Some people who have long fought […]
environment
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State of the Bird
Western Meadowlark. Photo by Donald Metzner, courtesy of Cornell Lab of Ornithology The news is not good for the avian bunch. According to The U.S. State of the Birds , a report released today on bird populations, almost a third of the 800 species of birds in the United States are in deep shit. Said […]
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Cows For Fish
The Nature Conservancy has paid $14.2 million for 4,543 acres of the Shasta Big Springs Creek Ranch in Siskiyou County, Calif., where it plans to restore about 20 miles of stream. It has secured a conservation easement on the ranch’s remaining 407 acres, where the rancher will continue to live and work. The Shasta River […]
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Offshore drilling in Humboldt?
Renewable energy may be the top priority for the Department of the Interior — and so says Department Secretary Ken Salazar — but that doesn’t mean offshore drilling is off the table. The DOI’s Minerals Managment Service will hold a public meeting April 16 at the UC San Francisco Mission Bay campus to talk about […]
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Safe Harbor For Owls and Timber
driving. It’s hooting season on the Van Eck Forest, notes a March 1 post on the Pacific Forest Trust’s blog. But — the gist of the post — if the biologist doing the hooting discovers any new spotted owls, the PFT, which manages the privately owned Van Eck under a working forest conservation easement, won’t […]
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The Water Cure
friends.The Water Cure: We’re well used to miracle liquids of all sorts here in Humboldt County, but the LA TImes today gives us one that actually works for non-hippies, too. Tease: “Electrolyzed water cleans, degreases — and treats athlete’s foot. The solution is replacing toxic chemicals.” This inspiring little story reminds one that there is […]
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Arcata Whoops Feds
Well, all of you sniggerers who like to put down Arcata for meddling in distant world affairs when it ought to be attending to its own potholes, here’s your comeuppance: Our favorite anklebiter city may have just helped shape future world energy development. Two settlement agreements were filed last Friday in the U.S. District Court […]
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Nuke Fears Close Dump
Concerned about the potential of radioactive waste leeching into Humboldt Bay, county government has temporarily shut down the old Table Bluff Landfill outside of Loleta, the Journal has learned. Table Bluff landfill was open to the public between the late 1960s and late 1970s. Since closing, the county has continued to use it as a […]
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Avast, Ye Miners!
Aye, ye gravel grovelers, ye watery wastrels, ye ramblin’ rogues of the deep! I’ll sink yer dredges and steal yer gold, ye dirty river rats! Ye say yer dredges don’t hurt the fishes? Excuse me, but I think yer arguments are bullshit! Aaarghhh! And thus spake Sen. Pat Wiggins, although it’s true that we may […]
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A Post-Dams World
In some people’s nightmare’s, ya take down the Klamath Dams and a world-engulfing blob of hell-deep muck that’s accumulated around that dam for too many years will engulf the downriver world, smothering all salmon, salmon fry, lamprey, lamprey younguns, and everyone else silly enough, in that scenario, to call the Klamath River home. And, oh, […]
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Here Comes the Navy!
The United States Navy is coming to town! The Seattle Post-Intelligencer — a newspaper that’s about to fold , incidentally — reports that the United States Department of the Navy will hold a public hearing in Eureka on Feb. 2 . Concerning what, you ask? Concerning the proposed Northwest Training Range Complex , the department’s […]
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The trees are dying
A Yosemite sugar pine, victim of bark beetles You remember that scene in The Day After Tomorrow — the goofy 2004 global warming thriller — where Jake Gyllenhaal tries to outrun a wave of insta-freeze that’s chasing him down hallways and around corners? (You’re forgiven, or even commended, if the answer is no.) Well, a […]