Politics
ArchivePatagonia National Park, under construction. Photo: Eli Steltenpohl “Buying the land was the easy part,” Kristine Tompkins told a packed house during a presentation at the San Francisco Patagonia retail store last week. She was referring to the 2.2 million acres that she and…
Left: BLM land open to solar development before 2011; right: BLM's current 17 solar energy zone. Maps: NRDC Wind, solar, geothermal and other so-called green energy sources might not spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but they're far from benign. Ask any bird conservationist…
Brian Blickenstaff celebrates Germany's "Enjoyment Day" by drinking a lot of wine and then riding his bike home—all within the letter of the law
For the past three years, we’ve been inundated with answers to a simple question via Facebook: “What are you doing outside this weekend?” Behold: your most, er, innovative itineraries.
Closing the book (we hope) on bike racing’s drug-fueled era of excess
Looking for which candidate's economic beliefs are best suited to the present day? Wondering who's better suited to take office should the next president become incapacitated? Well, you've come to the wrong place.
Canus lupus. Photo: S.R. Maglione/Shutterstock In children’s literature, wolves pretty much always get a bad rap. Think Little Red Riding Hood, the three poor pigs, and pretty much every cute, furry, unsuspecting critter in Richard Scarry’s entire opus. In our house, we make a point…
On Tuesday, masked Taliban gunmen boarded a bus filled with schoolchildren in Pakistan and shot a 14-year-old girl in the head. Her name is Malala Yousafzai, and she is now in critical condition in a Peshawar hospital. She openly voiced her belief that…
Jugita Krilaviciute, left, works the soil during the Vail Resorts Hayman Restoration Project in the Trail Creek drainage on Thursday, June 2, 2011. The Vail Resorts Hayman Restoration Project is in the second of a three year, $750,000 partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and The Rocky…
Matt Krause's American friends refused to believe that Turkey was anything like the United States. To prove them wrong, he's walking across the entire country.
Chimney Rock. Photo: USDA.gov/Flickr On Friday, President Barack Obama signed a proclamation designating 4,726 acres of land in southwestern Colorado as Chimney Rock National Monument.
As parents, it’s easy to get caught up in the saga of our own children. Their all-consuming schedules, school, sports, our own fraught expectations. We want them to be smart, kind, and game. We want them to play outside and be healthy. We want them to remember their manners, read…
Activist Tim DeChristopher, currently serving out a sentence for fraud in Littleton, Colorado, reacts to losing his appeal last Friday and responds to criticism generated by a post in which he suggested that environmentalists should not vote for Obama
A pika in its talus home. Photo: Karunakar Rayker By Mary Ellen Hannibal When Chris Ray got started studying pika, she could not have anticipated that these small rabbit relatives would one day become a poster child…
After years of sounding the climate-change alarm, writer Bill McKibben realized that gentle persuasion wasn’t cutting it. So he got mad. Then he got busy: tweeting, organizing, protesting, getting arrested, and becoming Big Oil’s biggest threat.
EPSON DSC picture Larry Gibson, keeper of Kayford Mountain. Photo: Vivian Stockman The Appalachian Mountains lost a hero on Sunday, September 10. Larry Gibson, the face of the fight against mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, died of a heart attack while…
With evidence piling up that Armstrong cheated to win, should he confess and ask his fans, enemies, and cancer-fighting supporters to forgive him? As Brian Alexander explains, that would be the worst move he could make.
In a last-ditch attempt to preserve some of the only green spaces left on the eastern edge of Jerusalem, the city plans to build a series of national parks with an extensive network of trails. Is this an honest effort to encourage tourism, or a political attempt to keep Arab neighborhoods from expanding?
Conundrum Hot Springs party people, mid-August. Photo: Will McGough By Will McGough, Wake and Wander Sitting in the nearly 100-degree water, among several naked bathers in the Conundrum Hot Springs near Aspen, Colorado, I looked around at the pine…
The most ambitious environmental documentary since An Inconvenient Truth tries to make the case that we just might win
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nV4XcnNBPm8 Once again, Russian President Vladimir Putin has thrown himself into an obscure outdoor adventure. This time he donned a white suit and goggles before taking off in an ultralight to guide six endangered Siberian Cranes through the air. Andrew E. Kramer's…
The story behind the otter-exclusion zone, a stretch of water on the California coast from Point Conception to the Mexican border where otters are barred by Congress from swimming
What does the popularity of a zombie-themed obstacle race say about American society?
Image: DDB Group China Car sales in China are a wee bit flat right now, but it’s still one of the world’s largest car markets. Congestion in cities is so bad that local governments have begun restricting how many people can drive each day. Despite that,…
As more blazes rage across the West this summer and government policy shifts toward aggressive wildfire suppression, firefighters’ lives are increasingly placed at risk
Lance Armstrong has always denied Mike Anderson’s claim that he broke his word on a business deal, and that Anderson saw and heard evidence indicating that Armstrong was using performance-enhancing drugs. His lawyer, Mark Fabiani, sent this response to Anderson's allegations.
Our best writing on doping in sports, USADA, and Lance Armstrong's battle against his accusers
Delicate Arch, Arches National Park. Photo: Ryan Dearth Last year, as part of his Call to Action plan to revise and improve the way our national parks are managed, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis asked a committee of…
Chinook salmon. Photo: NWFishers/Flickr The Elwha Dam is gone. The Glines Canyon Dam is nearly gone. With the dams no longer blocking fish from their migratory route up the river, Chinook (king) and other species of salmon and trout are returning. Salmon fry…
Yao Ming in Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve. Photo: Kristian Schmidt/WildAid Yao Ming is a giant man, but he paled in comparison to the corpse of the elephant stripped of ivory that lay at his…
From Ibex wool to Princeton Tec headlamps, outdoor gear is increasingly being manufactured in American factories. Tom Vanderbilt explores the amazing new economics of insourcing.
Allie Bombach on location. Photo: Miguel Tercero What is it about movers and shakers? What makes them tick? Filmmaker Allie Bombach wants to know and is using her MoveShake film series to uncover some answers. The year-long project debuted in early June with the…
There's a reason you haven't heard of Dawn Harper or Kellie Wells, and it has something to do with the color of their skin
The South Fork of the Skykomish, just above Sunset Falls. Photo: Mary Catherine O'Connor When I lived for a short time in Index, Washington, a climbing and boating hotspot on the Skykomish River in the north central Cascades, it felt like equal parts…
The National Resources Defense Council's latest annual “Toxic Power” report contains good news for air quality, namely that toxic air pollution from power plants decreased roughly 19 percent from 2009 to 2010. The improvement came as many plants switched to burning natural gas instead…
In this weekly roundup, we scour the Web for our favorite long-form magazine and newspaper articles, collecting them here and on Longreads.com and Twitter. This installment focuses on the future of fast food, what it means to be an amateur, and all-things Olympic Games.
We all live downstream. Photo: Flickr/Kevin Krejci Next week, tens of thousands of manufacturers, retailers, media and marketers of outdoor gear will convene in Salt Lake City for the Outdoor Retailer (OR) Summer Market. Among them will be many…
Project Angel Thunder is the largest search-and-rescue exercise in the world, involving 1,700 pilots, commandos, and recovery specialists training in the wilds of Arizona and New Mexico to save your ass in some impossibly bad situations. Embed Brian Mockenhaupt discovers that while the scenarios are pure fiction, the game is deadly serious.
This illegal deer stand is bigger than most Manhattan studios. Photo: St. Louis County Land and Minerals Dept. Deer hunters wait. They find a good spot in the forest, and they wait. To get a better vantage, they might climb into a tree or build a…
Photo: Fremlin/CC 2.0/Flickr Going into 2012 Montana's wolf population exceeded 600. Looking for more ways to keep the population in check, the state's Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) Commission passed new rules on Thursday, July 12, that will allow wolves to be trapped.
In this weekly roundup, we scour the Web for our favorite long-form magazine and newspaper articles, collecting them here and on Longreads.com and Twitter. This installment focuses on the animals—and languages—we're eradicating, the dopers we're catching and the fight su
Surveying the beaches in his home state of North Carolina with a world-renowned erosion expert, David Gessner considers the folly of trying to deny what all the sandbags and misguided legislation in the world can never stop: the rising sea
Photo: Shutterstock/Amy Walters Last month, the House of Representatives passed an omnibus bill that would exempt the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from more than 10 important environmental laws, including the Wilderness Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and…
An eyewitness report from the front lines as protests against a massive gold mine provoke violence and retaliation
If you’ve seen Red Gold, about efforts to stop the proposed Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska, you know the documentary-making prowess behind Felt Soul Media. The trailer for the team’s next film, DamNation, has just been released. Conceived by…
Kaieteur Falls, Guyana. Photo: Wilderness Explorers Newsweek said last week that visiting Guyana should be on your Bucket List. Then USA Today said just about the same thing. We first sang Guyana's praises…
Tarahumara Indians, the tribe made famous in Christopher McDougall's book Born to Run, are being used more and more by traffickers to ferry drugs across the U.S. border with Mexico. Aram Roston…
Thirty-five years ago, a national recession and high fuel prices led to the opening of the massive, controversial Trans-Alaska Pipeline System—and a host of problems and pollution that came with it. Sound familiar?
Photo: Mara/Flickr One of our top 10 environmental news stories of 2011 was the troubling violence that environmental activists face in many parts of the world, particularly in Brazil, where three high-profile activists were slain last May. While researching that…
November is fast approaching, but neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama is talking about the E-word. Our eight experts coach them on how to handle one of the year's most sensitive issues.
Robert Young Pelton has traveled to war zones, been kidnapped by rebels, and tracked pirates in Somalia. Why does he keep going back?
Why the crisis in California’s state parks could foretell turmoil for public playgrounds everywhere
Photo: Kesu/Shutterstock I know, it's Friday and in your head you're probably half-way down the nearest trail or river already. But next week, world leaders are meeting in Rio, 20 years after their last meeting there (thus, “Rio+20”) to try to hammer out some…
This past Sunday I forewent a gorgeous afternoon in the sun, opting for the headquarters of frog, a global innovation firm (they design/re-design products and experiences for major companies). Frog and LRN, a consultancy, were hosting a weekend “hackathon.” Unless you're a computer programmer…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Go3vsLnjEDc%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_embedded Sure, summer reading lists are usually filled with the latest mysteries or epic dramas to hit paperback. But for your list, consider adding a series of reports by the Salt Lake Tribune, “Our Dying Forests.” The series recently claimed the The Grantham Prize…
Photo: Kalakutskiy Mikhail/Shutterstock This fall, Hal Herring plans to go backcountry hunting with his son near his Montana home. If they both take an elk, they'll be able to provide the family with enough meat for the following year. But should House…
Chris Sharma. Photo: Mary Catherine O’Connor As we’ve reported before, California’s state parks are in the midst of a crisis that could result in many of them closing on July 1. While the initial list contained 70 parks, many of these have received at…
The Potomac River Photo: MV Jantzen/American Rivers River conservancy American Rivers just released its 27th annual America’s Most Endangered Rivers report, naming the Potomac the most threatened river. This waterway earned the top spot not so much…
Sander Vandenbrouke has managed to make a 19-minute biking documentary that has nothing to do with the issues you might expect in a politically-motivated film about cycling. There are no mentions of climate change, or the cost of petrol, or fitness in The Brussels…
YVON CHOUINARD, owner and founder of Patagonia, one of ϳԹ's 50 best places to work, knows a thing or two about doing good business. Here, he shares some of what he's learned.
We're adding chemicals to our land and water supplies, pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and facing the planet's sixth extinction crisis. YVON CHOUINARD, owner and founder of Patagonia, wonders if we've borrowed more from nature than we can ever give back.
Things have gotten crazy violent in the dark, dense forests of California’s Mendocino County, where pot growers from Mexico run elaborate plantations they’ll defend to the death. Damon Tabor saddles up with Sheriff Tom Allman, head of a helicopter-riding, rifle-toting paramilitary strike force determined to take back the woods.
Critical Mass in Vancouver. Photo: ItzaFineDay Last week I visited a friend in the hospital, where she'd been since an SUV had hit her days before. The driver, who turned left as my friend was biking—quite legally—straight through the intersection, broke her…
Glines dam site, pre-dam; the dam intact; the dam coming down. Photos: Clallam Co. Historical Society; Olympic NP The Olympic Peninsula's Elwha River is running free. Pretty much. The Elwha dam is down and the Glines dam is being chipped away (see the image…
Frank Quan at China Camp Village Photo: Mary Catherine O'Connor I found Frank Quan at a picnic bench, just off the beach, as the waters of San Pablo Bay lapped gently on the shore. It was an unseasonably warm, windless April afternoon and…
Badlands bison Photo: National Park Service photo archive The Oglala Sioux Tribe may be granted management of the South Unit of Badlands National Park, which would create the country's first tribal national park. The…
Wildfire via Shutterstock Photo by Jon Beard This summer's wildfire season is already well underway, with tragic repercussions. The Lower North Fork Fire in Colorado last month claimed three lives and many homes. It prompted Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper to put a moratorium…
Colin Firth has teamed up with Survival International to call for people to take action against the illegal logging and violence wiping out the remaining few hundred Awá of the Brazilian Amazon. Survival International calls the Awá the “Earth's Most Threatened Tribe.” “The Awá's…
Jason Mecier artwork, on auction for Keep America Beautiful. Brought to you by Glad Bags. “If I get one more email on the subject, I'm going to celebrate Earth Day by kicking Gaia in the nuts,” declared journalist…
One year ago today, photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros died after a mortar shell exploded near them on Tripoli Street in the city of Misrata, Libya. They were embedded with rebels fighting the army of Colonel Qaddafi. Hondros died…
Jason Puracal with his sisters More than five years ago, in the small town of San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, a 28-year-old American expat from Tennessee named Eric Volz was charged with the murder of his beautiful ex-girlfriend.
Ikal Angelei on the shores of Lake Turkana. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize Running Ethiopia's Omo River can be a serious adventure, as we described here in 2008, but more importantly, the river is a lifeline for those who rely on the water and…
Photo: Flikr/tkd540 With their commercial use permits on hold, horse pack operators in Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks aren’t taking trip reservations and are nervously awaiting a May 23 hearing at which U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg will outline…
Peter Douglas Photo: Courtesy of California Coastal Commission The next time you find yourself on a stretch of pristine California coastline, you can thank Peter Douglas for what you don't see, such as high-rises or offshore oil-drilling platforms. The 69-year-old, who died April 1, fought hard against…
Veronika Scott's initial coat design, with Tyvec shell. Photo: Brittany Thomasson In 2010, while pursuing her degree in product design at Detroit's College for Creative Studies, a single idea changed the course of Veronika Scott's life. She decided to make a coat. Not just any…
The Office of Consumer Protection Montana Department of Justice released the following report on Greg Mortenson and Central Asia Institute on April 5, 2012
Young lion, via Shutterstock Photographer: Louie Schoeman Last year, the presidents of five African nations made official the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA), the largest conservation area to ever be approved. And last month the park was officially…
Grand Canyon Photo: Grand Canyon NPS The East Rim of the Grand Canyon, where the Little Colorado River meets the Colorado River, is a remote, quiet area, especially compared to the crowded Southern Rim. But it might not remain that way. The 27,000 square-mile Navajo reservation…