Perhaps you’ve seen the American Express TV ad where the famously contentious outdoorsman and clothesmaker Yvon Chouinard looks into the camera and declares, “I’m a dam buster.” He’s not alone in sharing that sentiment, as a sediment-choked dam in Southern California has become the bête noir of conservationists living there. A menacing wedge of concrete jammed between the steep walls of a canyon in the Los Padres National Forest, the Matilija Dam looms over the Ventura River. Built in 1947 both to store precious rainwater and preventing flooding when it did, the dam no longer ... Read More
The Tastiest Enemy: Eating Invasive Species
May 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Bristling with venomous spines and possessed of a voracious appetite, lionfish have joined a growing list of invasive species infiltrating U.S. land and water. But an unusual partnership of conservationists and cooks argue that some of the best weapons to attack these invaders are the knife and fork. For species that have proven almost impossible to contain, whether feral boar or creeping kudzu, advocates embrace an “if you can’t beat them, eat them” ethos. Dubbed invasivores, a portmanteau of ‘locavore’ and ‘invasive,’ the catchphrase proudly puts invasive species on the ... Read More
The Human Causes of Unnatural Disaster
February 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Blowout in the Gulf, a new book on Deepwater Horizon, opens with the observation that the ruined oil platform was dubbed Macondo, after the setting for the novel One Hundred Years Of Solitude. Written by the Nobel Prize-winning Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, the novel is an apocryphal tale of a prosperous town cut off from civilization, too self-involved to notice the signs of its own corruption. Ultimately, it is wiped off the face of the Earth in a deluge. The parallels were too thematically powerful for the authors of Blowout to ignore in their account of the BP Gulf oil ... Read More
Program Opens Farmers Markets to Food Stamps
November 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
On the health and nutrition front, there's good news and bad news. In August, the USDA reported the number of farmers markets had grown 16 percent in the past year. The bad news is they are unevenly distributed, separating the nutritional haves from the have-nots. To see this in action, visit Southern California. Walking out the door in affluent beach communities is to encounter a cornucopia of food options. Lemons drip from trees, avocados roll down steep alleyways and Whole Foods markets proliferate at busy intersections. But drive any distance down the freeway to low-income or ... Read More
Invasive Weeds? There’s An App for That
May 13, 2010 • By • 2 Comments
Cell phone users not content to text and chat can put their minutes to good use for the National Park Service. Resource managers working in national parks have a new tool in their arsenal to monitor and control invasive weeds. The Center for Embedded Networked Sensing lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, have joined forces to create a mobile application to help locate and eradicate harmful non-native plants found in environmentally sensitive public areas. Commonly referred to as apps, mobile applications have turned ... Read More