tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12707522522780562432024-03-04T20:57:01.388-08:00where everything is music.krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.comBlogger201125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-47781528140821174452016-03-15T07:38:00.001-07:002016-03-15T07:38:40.865-07:00Hello again Hi! It's been a year, huh? Big year! I was published in Outside, Smithsonian, Slate and some other cool places. Google also locked me out of this blog, and I just figured out how to get back in. I'm undecided whether I'll keep posting here... I have my hands full as it is. In the meantime, visit my real website at <a href="http://www.kristaleelanglois.com/">www.kristaleelanglois.com</a>. Thanks!<br />
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Here's an adorable picture of my dog, just to cap things off.<br />
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<br />krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-6895787851210718512015-02-25T20:50:00.001-08:002015-02-25T20:50:48.708-08:00Canada's mining boom spills into Alaskan waters.<br />
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Carrie James’</span><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">story ought to sound familiar: She grew up in a small town on the Alaskan coast, fishing for salmon the way her Haida and Tlingit ancestors had for generations. She taught her children, two boys and a girl, how to catch, smoke and put up the fish. And then, as with so many other salmon-based tribes, plans for upstream development began to threaten her way of life.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">But unlike some Pacific Northwest tribes, which have <a class="internal-link" href="http://www.hcn.org/issues/46.21/the-great-salmon-compromise" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box;">lately negotiated</span></a> with hydroelectric companies to repair some of the damage caused by dams —</span><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">or tribes in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, which at least have the Environmental Protection Agency on their side in the fight over <a class="internal-link" href="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/the-fight-for-bristol-bay-alaska-sides-with-mining-corporation-tribes-back-epa" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Pebble Mine</span></a></span><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">—</span><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">James has felt powerless in her effort to stop a handful of mines from being dug in the headwaters of rivers that feed her tribe and economy. That’s because the headwaters aren’t in Alaska. They’re in Canada.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Over the last decade, the Canadian government has expedited a <a class="internal-link" href="http://www.hcn.org/issues/44.22/a-mining-rush-in-canadas-backcountry-threatens-alaska-salmon" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box;">mining boom</span></a> in western British Columbia by rolling back one environmental regulation after another. The Navigable Waters Protection Act, for example, once protected more than a million Canadian rivers and 32,000 lakes. As of 2012, that number was down to just 66, leaving some of British Columbia’s wildest, richest and largest rivers exempt from environmental safeguards.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">...Keep reading <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/canadas-mining-boom-spills-into-to-u-s-waters" target="_blank">here. </a></span></div>
krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-50559103510199263962015-02-25T20:47:00.001-08:002015-02-25T20:51:23.006-08:00Cheap oil is saving Alaskan ecosystems -- for now. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-zErRFWkHAGbEzgvIiHTSD2ICmJmp2ZbpQ_KCsojTF67QyDHkfEphcivaZAY5xwxKYKFi3YwPiC7B2cfy_fCvNHwLVLa76jlV7r7NHG1LirG_90ktveF2EBTvcuMay2HMJ4tZwu-1pfs/s1600/9024877289_e335ae8431_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-zErRFWkHAGbEzgvIiHTSD2ICmJmp2ZbpQ_KCsojTF67QyDHkfEphcivaZAY5xwxKYKFi3YwPiC7B2cfy_fCvNHwLVLa76jlV7r7NHG1LirG_90ktveF2EBTvcuMay2HMJ4tZwu-1pfs/s1600/9024877289_e335ae8431_z.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Courtesy National Park Service</td></tr>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">It’s hard to find a place more remote than Bettles, Alaska. The village of 15 people lies 35 miles north of the Arctic Circle on the Koyukuk River, accessible to the outside world only by an ice road, boat or plane. And 69-year-old mayor Gary Hanchett likes it that way. “I love the country,”</span><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">he says in a slow, gravelly voice. “To this day I don’t see myself ever living south of the (Yukon).”</span><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">But former Governor Sean Parnell targeted the region around Bettles for one of a handful of “mega-projects,”</span><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">huge developments meant to create jobs and tap into Alaska’s untouched resources. In this case, the resource was copper, and the project a 220-mile long <a class="external-link" href="http://www.npca.org/about-us/regional-offices/alaska/ambler.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box;">mining road </span></a>that would cross more than 100 streams and rivers, countless acres of tundra and wetlands, and Gates of the Arctic National Park. It would also trundle right past Hanchett’s house, bringing exhaust fumes and possibly asbestos dust to a place where he usually smokes fish.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Hanchett has been doggedly fighting the proposed Ambler Road for more than two years. But the best news he’s gotten came on Jan. 22, when newly-elected Independent Governor Bill Walker unveiled his <a class="external-link" href="http://gov.alaska.gov/Walker/press-room/full-press-release.html?pr=7061" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box;">2016 budget</span> </a>plan: All funding for the road had been cut. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Similar controversial developments, including the plan to build a 735-foot-tall hydropower dam across the salmon-rich <a class="external-link" href="http://www.conservationgateway.org/ConservationByGeography/NorthAmerica/UnitedStates/alaska/scak/science/hydro/Pages/default.aspx" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Susitna River</span></a>, were also axed...</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">...Keep reading <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/plunging-oil-prices-are-saving-alaskan-ecosystems-for-now" target="_blank">here. </a></span></div>
krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-49122325610811223362015-02-25T20:36:00.003-08:002015-02-25T20:36:44.666-08:00Unwelcome ungulates: Do mountain goats belong in Utah? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-qAQhtz3RdxzaxqPqeiz2fVdz_gX7-6uvsTXvfbm8KRDjtwsO-b783PS1brZF_igs5Zh3I8simWn3HxAl77FOjRVqYymwyNMAvENxNWoK0-d_-yJGeN7auObQlMb7BeXlxRtSUl2KjgE/s1600/IMG_5982.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-qAQhtz3RdxzaxqPqeiz2fVdz_gX7-6uvsTXvfbm8KRDjtwsO-b783PS1brZF_igs5Zh3I8simWn3HxAl77FOjRVqYymwyNMAvENxNWoK0-d_-yJGeN7auObQlMb7BeXlxRtSUl2KjgE/s1600/IMG_5982.JPG" height="426" width="640" /></a></div>
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The La Sal Mountains rise from the slickrock canyons and dry mesas of the Colorado Plateau like a mirage, an island of alpine peaks in a sea of desert. Just 15 miles from the adventure tourism hub of Moab, the mountains are blissfully cool, even in summer, and nearly empty of people.</div>
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To Barb Smith, a 52-year-old Forest Service wildlife biologist with striking green eyes and a silvery braid, the upper La Sals are an ecological paradise, one of the few chunks of land in Utah that isn’t grazed, logged or scarred by off-road vehicles. Smith is also a botanist, and as she and a dozen or so volunteers climb above 11,000-foot Burro Pass, she rattles off the Latin names of flowers:<i style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Polygonum bistortoides, Tetraneuris grandiflora</i>. There are so many, it’s hard to take a step without crushing one.</div>
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We pause on a wind-scoured slope to catch our breaths and everyone crowds around Smith, who has spotted a cute if unremarkable yellow button called the La Sal daisy. She explains how to identify the flower and mark its location on a GPS. “This kind of effort, this kind of documentation, is going to be really helpful,” she says. The volunteers hold out their smartphones to take pictures.</div>
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Read the rest of the story <a href="http://www.hcn.org/issues/46.22/non-native-goats-in-utahs-la-sal-mountains" target="_blank">here.</a></div>
krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-51265074488231299552015-02-25T20:32:00.002-08:002015-02-25T20:32:53.899-08:00How Native Americans shaped -- or more often, didn't shape -- the year's biggest environmental debates. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_DdOO8mtowXXhPosVysROqejYQGi16-osRRZVm4RUA1WrGDAXmdKUZPhVpkiHGujxvKtws7POKpHsq0dc-vou2Nc8seC_XmH_EkYFVJNiPZzT97C40mzYoqVOBlDJ-0zW-NSoDu7PGGM/s1600/rio+tinto.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_DdOO8mtowXXhPosVysROqejYQGi16-osRRZVm4RUA1WrGDAXmdKUZPhVpkiHGujxvKtws7POKpHsq0dc-vou2Nc8seC_XmH_EkYFVJNiPZzT97C40mzYoqVOBlDJ-0zW-NSoDu7PGGM/s1600/rio+tinto.jpeg" height="426" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Flickr user Arbyreed</td></tr>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">This September, hundreds of thousands of Native Americans began receiving checks in the mail. The money was the final installment of the <span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Cobell settlement</span>, which altogether paid out $3.4 billion in overdue royalties to compensate for more than a century of poorly managed mining on reservations. Two months later, Montana’s Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes moved a <a class="external-link" href="http://billingsgazette.com/business/features/northwestern-purchase-of-montana-dams-complete/article_86bfb948-d78d-5098-98df-b579743b8436.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;">step</span></a> closer to closing a <span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;">deal</span> that will make them the first in the nation to own a hydroelectric dam. <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Such stories stand out, because though Native Americans have deep stakes in some of the West’s most pointed environmental debates, their voices continue to be more often marginalized or outright ignored by state and federal lawmakers. The past year has been no exception. Last week, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Arizona, incensed Native activists when he undermined decades of progress toward sovereignty and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/10/paul-gosar-native-americans_n_6305738.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;">told</span></a> an Apache leader that Native Americans are “still wards of the federal government.”</span><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span></div>
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<span class="s4" style="box-sizing: border-box;">As we head into 2015, here’s a look back at how Western tribes shaped —</span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> or tried to shape — some of the year’s biggest natural resource stories...</span></div>
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...Click <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/native-americans-shaped-biggest-environmental-debates" target="_blank">here</a> to keep reading. </div>
krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-62137965401665729402014-12-23T13:02:00.000-08:002014-12-23T13:02:24.024-08:00Drilling the Arctic comes with a 75 percent chance of a large oil spill<div class="p1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.701961); box-sizing: border-box; font-family: minion-pro, serif; font-size: 22px; line-height: 1.875rem; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">
<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Imagine an oil spill off the coast of San Diego. Now imagine the nearest port from which to launch an emergency response is in Seattle, more than a thousand miles away, and that San Diego is suddenly bereft of grocery stores, leaving most residents dependent on the ocean for sustenance. Then take the Southern California ocean in your mind’s eye, increase the biomass, encase it in ice, bathe in darkness for a few months, and sprinkle with polar bears. That’s what an oil spill in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea would look like.</span></div>
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<figure style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: auto; max-width: 100%; width: 640px;"><a data-reveal-ajax="true" data-reveal-id="image-modal" href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/drilling-the-arctic-comes-with-a-75-percent-chance-of-a-large-oil-spill/5977178606_6d8952825c_z-jpg/image_view_fullscreen" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; display: inline-block; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="5977178606_6d8952825c_z-jpg" src="http://www.hcn.org/articles/drilling-the-arctic-comes-with-a-75-percent-chance-of-a-large-oil-spill/5977178606_6d8952825c_z-jpg/@@images/12dc8b28-f4eb-4389-8717-8872638b13c9.jpeg" height="427" style="border: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin: auto; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: 640px;" title="5977178606_6d8952825c_z-jpg" width="640" /></a><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: minion-pro, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1rem; font-stretch: normal; font-style: italic; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.375rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; text-align: right; width: 640px;"><div class="caption" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
Arctic sea ice.</div>
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NASA/Kathryn Hansen</div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Whether such a spill has a chance to happen is largely dependent on what the Interior Department does with a draft <a class="external-link" href="http://www.boem.gov/uploadedFiles/BOEM/About_BOEM/BOEM_Regions/Alaska_Region/Leasing_and_Plans/Leasing/Lease_Sales/Sale_193/Lease_Sale_193_DraftSSEIS_vol1.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Environmental Impact Statement</span></a> released this month by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The report examines Lease 193, a controversial sale that, in 2012, enabled Shell to drill the first exploratory wells in the Chukchi in decades. Since then, drilling has been held up by Shell’s own <span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a class="external-link" href="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/will-drilling-cost-the-arctic-its-wildness" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="">grave missteps</a></span> and by a series of lawsuits, which prompted an appeals court this January to throw out the previous environmental impact statement because it cited an “arbitrary and capricious”</span><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">amount of recoverable oil....</span></div>
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Read the rest <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/drilling-the-arctic-comes-with-a-75-percent-chance-of-a-large-oil-spill" target="_blank">here. </a></div>
krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-4132301045571182952014-12-23T12:58:00.000-08:002014-12-23T12:59:09.676-08:00Why are Hopi rangers impounding Navajo sheep?<div class="p1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.701961); box-sizing: border-box; font-family: minion-pro, serif; font-size: 22px; line-height: 1.875rem; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">
Caroline Tohannie is an 84-year-old great-grandmother who raises sheep and weaves traditional Navajo textiles in northern Arizona. On Oct. 22, her sheep were confiscated. </div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Tohannie has lived her entire life on <a class="external-link" href="http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6025" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Black Mesa</span></a>, an arid, tawny chunk of land once veined with glittering coal and now studded with slag heaps and waste ponds. Both Hopi and Navajo claim it among their ancestral homelands; before Europeans showed up, the tribes’ relationship was “one largely of peaceful co-existence and intertribal cooperation,”</span><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> <a class="external-link" href="http://www.apple.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s4" style="box-sizing: border-box;">writes</span></a></span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> historian and Navajo activist John Redhouse. The Hopi lived in agricultural villages atop the mesa, while the more transient Navajo grazed their livestock below.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">When the U.S. government forced Navajo into internment in the 1860s, those who managed to escape fled to what’s now Hopi land at Black Mesa. Later, encroachment from white settlers forced more Navajo onto the Hopi reservation, and what eventually became an ongoing, century-long land dispute was birthed. It culminated in the 1974 <a class="external-link" href="http://www.nnhrc.navajo-nsn.gov/docs/NewsRptResolution/070612_The_Impact_of_the_Navajo-Hopi_Land_Settlement_Act_of_1974.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act</span></a>, which drew an arbitrary line down the center of Black Mesa, splitting it between the two tribes. Navajos living on Hopi land were forced to relocate, as were Hopi living on Navajo land. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ultimately, more than 12,000 Navajos were forced from their homes, compared to just 100 or so Hopis. It was the largest forced relocation since the 1880s. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">But some Navajo families refused to leave....</span></div>
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Read the rest <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/why-are-hopi-rangers-impounding-sheep-at-black-mesa" target="_blank">here. </a><br />
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krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-61237974470804374802014-12-23T12:53:00.004-08:002014-12-23T12:53:56.626-08:00A bright spot for climate activists in an otherwise dismal election. <div class="BodyCopywDropCapHCNStyle" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.701961); box-sizing: border-box; font-family: minion-pro, serif; font-size: 22px; line-height: 1.875rem; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">
Matt Isenhower was sick of sitting in traffic. As the 34-year-old Navy veteran from Redmond, Washington, van-pooled 80 minutes to and from his job at Amazon in Seattle each day, he had plenty of time to lament the state Senate’s refusal to invest in mass transit. Roughly 58 percent of Washington’s carbon emissions come from the tailpipes of cars, trucks and other vehicles, and the Republican-controlled Senate had also stymied Gov. Jay Inslee’s attempts to forge a bipartisan agreement to limit greenhouse gasses.</div>
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Hoping to end the gridlock, Isenhower decided to run for state Senate. With his freshly shaven good looks, military background and Harvard MBA, Democrats thought Isenhower had a good shot at unseating Republican Andy Hill. And in this election year, that was a big deal: If liberals could take just two seats in Washington’s Senate, Inslee — a clean-energy champion and one of America’s greenest governors — would have a pro-environment majority in both chambers. There’s no doubt what he could do with that kind of opportunity: Next year, Inslee hopes to release a sweeping plan that could make Washington the second state in the nation (after California) to slash carbon emissions across the economy by putting a price on them....<br /><br />Read the rest <a href="http://www.hcn.org/issues/46.20/a-bright-spot-for-climate-activists-amidst-dismal-election" target="_blank">here. </a></div>
krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-47442563309275133952014-12-23T12:52:00.000-08:002014-12-23T12:52:03.126-08:00Virus implicated in sea star wasting disease<div class="p1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.701961); box-sizing: border-box; font-family: minion-pro, serif; font-size: 22px; line-height: 1.875rem; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">
<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Last fall, after millions of West Coast starfish <a class="internal-link" href="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/pisaster-disaster-when-starfish-wasting-disease-strikes-the-pacific-coast-theres-only-one-man-to-call" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title=""><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box;">were found</span></a> dead and dying, a team of 25 microbiologists, epidemiologists, marine biologists and other scientists from around the country set out to determine what was killing them. Now they have an answer —</span><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box;">and even more questions. </span></div>
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Here’s what they know: The culprit responsible for one of the <a class="internal-link" href="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/dying-starfish-washed-up-sea-lions-and-other-marine-diseases-leave-too-many-questions" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #007cad; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="">most deadly</a> marine diseases ever recorded is a type of densovirus, a microbe that usually attacks crickets and other insects. While scientists had never associated densovirus with marine invertebrates before, it’s been in the ocean for at least 72 years: The researchers found traces of the virus in ethanol-preserved starfish specimens from the 1940s and in healthy sea urchins alive today in Hawaii. </div>
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But here’s what they don’t yet know: If the virus has been around for so long, why did it go from benign microbe to purveyor of an epidemic that, since June 2013, has caused up to 95 percent of local sea star populations from Baja California to Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula to dissolve into puddles of goo, altering the makeup of intertidal ecosystems for years to come? </div>
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... Read the rest <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/virus-implicated-in-starfish-wasting-disease" target="_blank">here</a>. </div>
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krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-47236338648405744792014-11-03T17:29:00.003-08:002014-11-03T17:31:08.135-08:00Blog dump, part the secondGuys! I am the <i>worst </i>at updating this. I'll do better, I swear.<br />
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A few <i>High Country News </i>blogs from the last month:<br />
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1. If you spent any time on the internet last week, you probably saw the photos: A giant, roiling mass of 35,000 walrus crowded onto a beach in northwest Alaska. The photos, captured by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were featured on the BBC, the Associated Press and more Twitter and Facebook feeds than anyone could count. <br />
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Most reports — with the exception of a few <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/01/myth-debunked-arctic-walrus-beachings-are-nothing-new/">ultra-conservative</a> sites — decisively linked the record numbers of on-shore walrus to record low sea ice offshore, and overnight, the walrus became an international symbol of climate change. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/04/opinion/gail-collins-the-walrus-and-the-politicians.html?_r=0">New York Times</a> called the situation a “walrus crisis,” and <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/adapt-or-die-walrus-join-crowd-species-facing-climate-ultimatum-n217226">NBC News</a> reported that it was a “ very visual sign of what wildlife scientists know and worry about: From the Arctic to Antarctica, some species are having to adapt, or die, in the face of the long-term threat of a warming planet.”<br />
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But two walrus experts currently using a National Science Foundation <a href="http://www.alaskapublic.org/2013/10/11/uaf-scientists-land-grant-for-most-extensive-pacific-walrus-research-to-date/">grant</a> to analyze recent, historic and prehistoric walrus samples to piece together the species’ 4,000-year history say that we don’t understand enough about “normal” walrus behavior to know whether the massive haul-out is, in fact, unusual....<br />
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<a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/the-walrus-detectives">http://www.hcn.org/articles/the-walrus-detectives</a><br />
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2. For all the strides female firefighters have made in the last few decades, wildland firefighting is still, at it’s heart, a men’s club. Only 10 percent of wildland firefighters in the U.S. are women, and across the West, recruitment and retention are ongoing challenges. Yet nowhere is this more evident than in California, where a series of lawsuits meant to get more women onto the front lines have seemingly backfired, leaving women in what some argue are worse straits than before.....<br />
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<a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/california-women-threaten-to-sue-the-forest-service-again">http://www.hcn.org/articles/california-women-threaten-to-sue-the-forest-service-again</a><br />
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3. If you live in a city, the U.S. Geological Survey has some bad news for you: There’s a good chance your water is contaminated. A USGS study released earlier this month monitored more than 200 streams from 1992 to 2011 and found that the number of urban waterways contaminated with pesticides increased from 53 percent in the 1990s to 90 percent the following decade. Most pollutants were found at levels only harmful to aquatic life like fish, frogs and insects, while the number of streams with contaminant levels that pose a risk to human health actually dropped. Yet <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/a-rising-tide-of-contaminants/">new chemicals</a> are still permeating the environment and our understanding of their negative effects is limited. <br />
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Still, the <a href="http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2014/5154/pdf/sir2014-5154.pdf">USGS study</a> is the country’s most comprehensive assessment of water quality to date, and it does offer some good news — or at least, what passes for good news on the environmental beat.<br />
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<a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/rural-rivers-get-cleaner-urban-streams-are-full-of-pesticides">http://www.hcn.org/articles/rural-rivers-get-cleaner-urban-streams-are-full-of-pesticides</a><br />
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4. It’s rare that a piece of legislation containing the word “wilderness” stands a chance in Congress these days, so when I was invited to fly over a proposed 37,000-acre parcel in southwest Colorado that could actually make it onto the president’s desk, I jumped at the chance. The fact that it was a crisp, clear autumn morning I would have otherwise spent in front of a computer really had nothing to do with it, I swear....<br />
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<a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/how-to-pass-a-wilderness-bill-in-2014">http://www.hcn.org/articles/how-to-pass-a-wilderness-bill-in-2014</a>krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-76841210134970835052014-09-17T09:33:00.000-07:002014-09-17T09:33:47.507-07:00Blog dump!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Between moving, traveling, getting engaged and becoming a dog owner, I've been terribly remiss in keeping this thing updated. Here are a few of my latest stories for High Country News:<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">1. <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/alaskas-predator-politics-get-even-hotter" target="_blank">Sweeping new rule for Alaska's predator control: Federal versus state wildlife politics get even hotter.</a></span></b><br />
<br />When Jim Stratton, deputy vice president for the National Parks Conservation Association, heard last week that the National Park Service had announced a sweeping <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/09/04/2014-20881/alaska-hunting-and-trapping-in-national-preserves">new rule</a> banning the manipulation of predators and prey in Alaska’s national preserves, his reaction was — to put it mildly — unfettered joy. “This is totally exciting news,” he says. “I’ve only been working this for ten years. Game on.”<br /><br />The reaction of the state Division of Wildlife Conservation? A little more tepid. Director Doug Vincent-Lang sees any attempt by the feds to usurp Alaska’s wildlife management authority as overreach, and this new rule — which maintains hunting rights on Alaska’s 22 million acres of national preserves but bans certain controversial practices — is overreach at its worst: “unfounded and unjust,” he told <a href="http://www.adn.com/article/20140905/firing-back-alaska-game-managers-accuse-feds-ignoring-research-predator-control">Alaska Dispatch News</a>.<br /><br />The proposed rule is currently up for public comments, and will likely be implemented next year. It prohibits the baiting of brown bears, the killing of wolves and coyotes when pups are in tow, and the use of artificial light to kill black bears in their dens. It also pre-emptively prohibits any other practice “with the intent or potential to alter or manipulate natural predator-prey dynamics.” In other words, killing predators to boost ungulate populations will no longer be allowed in Alaska’s national preserves. <br /><br />To understand just how big this is, it helps to backtrack to 2002, when former Republican governor Frank Murkowski took office...<br /><br />As always, to read the entire story, just <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/alaskas-predator-politics-get-even-hotter">click here. </a><br /><br /><div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo courtesy John Burch</td></tr>
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<br /><b>2. </b>The nice folks at the National Parks Conservation Association hooked me up with former Alaskan governor Tony Knowles for his take on Alaskan wildlife management and the new rule. Read my interview with him <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/alaskas-predator-politics-get-even-hotter/unscientific-and-unethical">here. </a><br /><br /><br /><b>3. <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/manmade-quakes-shake-the-southwest">Manmade quakes shake the Southwest: Tremors in Colorado and New Mexico linked to coalbed methane extraction. </a></b><br /><br />Colorado, northern New Mexico and even western Kansas felt their beds shake. Historic buildings crumbled and chunks of mountainsides slid onto highways, but no injuries were reported in the 5.3 magnitude quake that the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/us/24earthquake.html?_r=0">New York Times</a> deemed “the largest natural earthquake in Colorado in more than a century.”<br /><br />Except that it wasn’t natural at all. A study released Monday in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America confirms what scientists have suspected for years: That the 2011 quake — along with dozens of others in the Raton Basin of Colorado and New Mexico — were caused by a byproduct of <a href="http://www.hcn.org/issues/214/10823">coalbed methane</a>extraction. Other studies have made similar connections in <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/07/140731-oklahoma-earthquake-spike-wastewater-injection/">Oklahoma</a> and Ohio, but this is the first to conclusively link oil and gas development with increased earthquake frequency in the Southwest.<br /><br />It also skews the popular notion that fracking alone is responsible for tremors in oil and gas country. U.S. Geological Survey research geophysicist Bill Barnhart, who reviewed the study and has worked in the Raton Basin, emphasizes that the human-induced seismicity there is “completely unrelated” to fracking.<br /><br />Instead, the culprit is coalbed methane extraction — or, more specifically, the wastewater it produces...<br /><br />Again, to read the whole thing, <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/manmade-quakes-shake-the-southwest">click here. </a></div>
krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-23813597769482762062014-08-27T22:06:00.003-07:002014-08-27T22:06:49.789-07:00Alaskan cruise ship passengers to get a dose of climate change educationTwo big things have happened since John Neary arrived in Alaska's
rainy capital city 33 years ago: Juneau's most famous attraction, the
Mendenhall Glacier, has receded by more than a mile; and the number of
visitors to the glacier has nearly tripled, to 450,000 a year. “On
Monday afternoons, the busses are lined up 30 deep,” Neary says. “The
place is not suited to the volume of traffic it's receiving.”<br />
<br />
The surge can largely be explained by an increase in Alaskan tourism
over the last few decades. But visitors have more than doubled in the
past 16 years alone, and at least part of that can be attributed to
“last chance tourism,” or the flow of people rushing to see at-risk
places before they're destroyed by climate change....<br />
<br />
Read the rest here: <a href="https://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/alaskan-cruise-ship-passengers-to-get-a-dose-of-climate-change-education" target="_blank">https://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/alaskan-cruise-ship-passengers-to-get-a-dose-of-climate-change-education </a><br />
<br />krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-86074182974783470552014-08-27T22:00:00.001-07:002014-08-27T22:00:56.980-07:00Grizzlies gain ground<div class=" ">
Joe Scott remembers when Washington state banned the
transportation of grizzlies back in 1995 — he still keeps a copy of the
law by his desk and jokes that he uses it as a dartboard from time to
time. “It was very emotional,” he says. “I remember getting red in the
face testifying (against the law) in front of the state Senate
committee. I lost my temper, and the chair just kind of stared at me
wide-eyed.”</div>
<div class=" ">
<br /></div>
Scott, international conservation director for the nonprofit
Conservation Northwest, has been passionate about large predators for as
long as he can remember. So when state legislators introduced that
bill, preventing wildlife officials from bringing in new grizzlies to
augment the state’s rapidly dwindling population, Scott was outraged.<br />
<div class="image-right captioned">
<figure style="width: 850px;"><a data-reveal-ajax="true" data-reveal-id="image-modal" href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/grizzlies-gain-ground/GrizzlyBear_USFWS_FPWCscr.jpg/image_view_fullscreen">
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<figcaption>
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To others, though, the idea of bolstering grizzly populations is dangerous — and contentious. A <a class="external-link" href="http://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1521&context=etd" target="_blank" title="">proposal</a> to reintroduce bears to Montana’s <a class="external-link" href="http://missoulian.com/news/local/grizzlies-in-the-bitterroot-mountains-politically-thorny/article_9dd378a2-032b-11df-8285-001cc4c002e0.html" target="_blank" title="">Bitterroot Mountains</a>
in 2000 spurred death threats, and a biologist who suggested bringing
new bears to help the population of Washington’s North Cascades was spat
on at a public meeting. Now, under the law that Scott testified
against, Washington wildlife managers are encouraged to support
grizzlies’ “natural regeneration,” but barred from transplanting or
introducing them.<br />
<br />
So will grizzlies ever regain a foothold beyond Yellowstone and Glacier national parks?... <br /><br />
My latest for High Country News, and it's up on our brand new website! <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/grizzlies-gain-ground">http://www.hcn.org/articles/grizzlies-gain-ground</a><br />
<br />
krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-64135889109924821292014-08-04T11:52:00.000-07:002014-08-04T11:52:07.046-07:00Boreal burningRumbling afternoon thundershowers are breaking over the Southwest,
bringing gratitude and sweet relief – not that the region needed much
relieving this year. Bouts of cool, wet weather throughout early summer
helped stave off the conflagrations predicted to erupt
after a dry winter, and by mid-July, most areas had already been
deluged by a full month’s worth of rainfall. In other words, summer
monsoon season has extinguished any lingering fears that 2014 would be a
bad fire year.<br />
<br />But as the Southwest collectively inhales the smell of rain falling
on dry land, parts of the Northwest and Western Canada are bathed in
acrid smoke. Nearly a million acres are burning in Washington and Oregon
alone – more than what typically burns over the course of a whole year.
Some 12,000 firefighters have been deployed since the fires began
earlier this month.<br />
<br />
Yet though the deadly combination of drought and summer lightning
strikes have led to a particularly severe fire season in eastern
Washington and Oregon, some of the West’s biggest blazes are in Canada's
Northwest Territories, where the total acreage burned so far this year is <i>six times </i>the
25-year average. In recent years, twice as much Canadian forest has
been burning annually as in the 1970s, says University of Alberta
wildland fire professor Mike Flannigan, and the northwestern part of the
country is experiencing its hottest, driest summer in half a century.
“What we are seeing in the Northwest Territories this year is an
indicator of what to expect with climate change,” Flannigan says...<br />
<br />
To read more about what burning boreal forests mean for the environment, <a href="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/canadas-boreal-forests-are-burning-and-releasing-loads-of-carbon" target="_blank">click here</a>. <br />
<br />
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krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-76157673315205006662014-07-15T18:24:00.002-07:002014-07-15T18:24:24.966-07:00More fun with photoshop.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-74941772127746799092014-07-15T17:58:00.000-07:002014-07-15T17:58:06.817-07:00Grasshopper plagues: agricultural nightmare or ecological boon? <br />
In early June, meteorologists at the National Weather Service in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, were puzzled: There was a big splotch on the
radar that didn’t look like any weather system they’d ever seen. Maybe
their software had a bug?<br />
<br />
Turns out, the dark green blob hovering over Albuquerque wasn’t a
software glitch at all but a giant swarm of grasshoppers. John Garlisch,
an agricultural extension agent at New Mexico State University, told <a class="external-link" href="http://modernfarmer.com/2014/06/radar-picks-massive-grasshopper-swarm-albuquerque/" target="_blank"><i>Modern Farmer </i></a>that
the state’s dry winter allowed more grasshopper eggs than usual to
hatch this spring, and the ongoing drought has caused a dearth of fresh
growth on rural rangeland, forcing the swarm to take flight in search of
greener pastures. The well-watered gardens of Albuquerque must’ve
looked mighty appealing.<br />
<br />
By now, the grasshoppers have mostly died of natural causes or been
eaten by cats, says forecaster Brent Wachter of the National Weather
Service. But this summer’s incident raises the question: As climate
change continues to impact weather patterns across the West, will
grasshopper swarms big enough to show up on Doppler radar become a more
regular concern? And if so, how concerned should we be? <br />
<br />
To find out, I called population ecologist Gary Belovsky, who’s been
studying grasshoppers in western Montana for 37 years. He's currently
researching how climate change affects <a class="external-link" href="http://www.sidney.ars.usda.gov/grasshopper/Extras/map14.htm" target="_blank">grasshopper outbreaks</a>.
If you’re looking for a simple, straightforward answer, though –
something along the lines of “climate change causes drought and drought
causes more grasshoppers” – look elsewhere. While drought can indeed
increase short-term grasshopper populations, the picture Belovsky paints
over the long run is far more complex. ...<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/grasshopper-plagues-agricultural-nightmare-or-ecological-boon" target="_blank">... Click here</a> to read the rest. <br />
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<br />krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-50418516103679997712014-07-15T17:54:00.002-07:002014-07-15T17:54:31.957-07:00More Pebble Mine - Alaska sides with mining corp., tribes back EPAVictories in clean air and energy politics may be among the Obama
Administration’s lasting legacies, but the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency hasn’t been getting much love from rural communities lately.
Here in western Colorado coal-mining country, a hand-painted sign
reflects the opinion of many local miners: “Frack the EPA and the war on
energy!” In Idaho last week, demonstrators <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/01/us-usa-mining-idaho-idUSKBN0F65KN20140701">illegally dredged</a>
a protected stretch of the Salmon River to protest EPA permits for
mining in Western watersheds. Since January, Kansas and seven other
rural states have passed <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/obama-climate-rule-states-lash-out-107450.html?hp=r4">symbolic measures</a>
opposing the EPA’s new power-plant emission standards, and since 2010
Texas has spent millions in taxpayer dollars on more than a dozen
(mostly unsuccessful) <a class="external-link" href="http://houston.cbslocal.com/2012/09/09/texas-has-spent-over-2-5m-suing-feds-since-obama-took-office/" target="_blank">lawsuits</a> against the agency.<br />
<br />
Yet in rural Alaska, where sentiment against federal oversight runs deep, a group of remote residents are actually siding <i>with</i> the EPA. Not only that, they’re joining the agency in fighting a powerful lawsuit filed against it.<br />
<br />
That’s the latest news in the saga of Pebble Mine, a massive open-pit
copper mine proposed in western Alaska’s Bristol Bay region. Local
tribes and commercial fishermen fear the mine could destroy one of the
world’s most prolific salmon runs, and in 2010, tribes <a href="http://www.hcn.org/issues/45.12/alaska-tribes-attempt-to-block-the-controversial-pebble-mine">petitioned the EPA</a>
to invoke a seldom-used power under the Clean Water Act to block
development. This April, after a federal environmental assessment
concluded the mine could indeed harm salmon habitat, the EPA took the
first steps to begin using the Clean Water Act to halt the mine. ...<br />
<br />
<br />... <a href="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/the-fight-for-bristol-bay-alaska-sides-with-mining-corporation-tribes-back-epa" target="_blank">Click here</a> to read the rest. krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-11143490893573688792014-06-23T18:58:00.003-07:002014-06-23T18:58:33.977-07:00changing seasons. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When you choose to spend the summer solstice at 11,000 feet, there is likely to be snow. Taken in the Ice Lakes basin, San Juan National Forest, southwest Colorado. </div>
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krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-19569087719853902912014-06-23T18:46:00.000-07:002014-06-23T18:46:11.584-07:00Mushy starfish and washed-up sea lionsHere’s some shocking news: Since last fall, when I first wrote about Pacific sea stars falling victim to a <a href="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/pisaster-disaster-when-starfish-wasting-disease-strikes-the-pacific-coast-theres-only-one-man-to-call">mysterious disease</a>,
turning into goo and dying, the aptly-named “starfish wasting syndrome”
has not – as scientists hoped – subsided on its own. It’s gotten much,
much worse.<br /><br />
How much worse, you ask? Well, from the get-go, this iteration of
starfish wasting was more widespread and severe than previous outbreaks,
which have historically spiked during warm-water El Niño years and then
quickly subsided. By the time it was identified late last summer, the
disease had already caused localized die-offs of up to 95 percent of
ochre sea stars in Santa Cruz, California, and was spotted as far north
as Alaska. Tens of thousands of starfish simply wasted away and died,
literally before researchers’ eyes.<br /><br />
Yet it seemed for a while that Washington and Oregon would be spared.
This May, just over 1 percent of ochre sea stars in Oregon were
affected. But now – a mere four weeks later – an estimated 30 to 50
percent are dying, and scientists predict a 100 percent mortality rate
in some places. In parts of Washington’s San Juan Islands, <a class="external-link" href="http://earthfix.kuow.org/flora-and-fauna/article/unprecedented-epidemic-in-the-oceans-iconic-sea-st/" target="_blank">mortality jumped</a>
from 10 to 40 percent over the course of a single week in June, and the
disease has now been confirmed in more than a dozen species. “This is
an unprecedented event,” <a class="external-link" href="http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2014/jun/sea-star-disease-epidemic-surges-oregon-local-extinctions-expected" target="_blank">says Bruce Menge</a>, a marine biologist at Oregon State University. “We’ve never seen anything of this magnitude before.”<br />
<br />
By now, you might well be wondering what’s behind this intertidal
horror show. Funny you should ask. Though the outbreak has prompted a <a class="external-link" href="http://earthfix.kcts9.org/water/article/northwest-starfish-experiments-give-scientists-clu/" target="_blank">slew of research</a>
and emergency funding from the National Science Foundation, no one
really knows. We’re 11 months into an epidemic that could wreak havoc on
entire ecosystems from Mexico to Alaska, and we can’t pin down the
cause. It’s like the bubonic plague is striking our oceans, and we’re
stuck in the dark ages...<br /><br />Read the rest of the story here: <a href="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/dying-starfish-washed-up-sea-lions-and-other-marine-diseases-leave-too-many-questions">http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/dying-starfish-washed-up-sea-lions-and-other-marine-diseases-leave-too-many-questions</a><br /><br /><img alt="starfish wasting 2" height="374" src="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/images-2/14159301438_05acdb0d79_z.jpg/image" title="starfish wasting 2" width="499" />krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-13036010272373663062014-06-02T20:16:00.001-07:002014-06-02T20:16:09.427-07:00Mudslide!It looked like lava and sounded like a freight train. That’s how <a href="http://kvnf.org/post/three-missing-after-massive-landslide-collbran">locals described</a>
the sea of mud and debris that flowed down the green foothills of
western Colorado’s Grand Mesa on Sunday afternoon, carving a path of
destruction 3 miles long and a half-mile wide. Three men missing from
nearby Collbran are presumed dead; rescue efforts have been halted by
mud that’s up to 250 feet deep; and though the slide occurred in a rural
area away from most homes, it came within 25 feet of a natural gas
drilling pad with three active wells.<br />
<br />
“It’s an understatement to say it’s massive,” Mesa County Sheriff Stan Hilkey said in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St4RRdWDJwU">press conference</a>
on Monday. For comparison, the mudslide that captured national
attention and killed 43 people in Oso, Washington, in March covered one
square mile. The Mesa County slide was eight times that size, and the
biggest difference appears to have been luck: unlike in Oso, residents
of Collbran simply hadn’t built homes in the path of natural disaster.<br />
<br />
The county’s oil and gas wells, however, are a different story.
Though the mud just barely missed a drill pad operated by Occidental
Petroleum Corporation, 16 additional wells sit below the current slide,
and Mesa County isn’t in the clear just yet. Temperatures are expected
to reach 85 degrees Wednesday afternoon, kicking snowmelt into high gear
and <a href="http://kvnf.org/post/rescuers-halt-search-3-missing-after-sundays-landslide-near-collbran">increasing the risk</a>
of another slide. “There’s an unofficial consensus that an additional
slide is likely,” says David Ludlam, executive director of the West
Slope Colorado Oil and Gas Association, an industry trade group.<br />
<br />
Lynn Highland, a geographer with the U.S. Geological Survey’s
National Landslide Information Center, agrees that a second slide is a
real possibility. She also underscores what <i>High Country News</i> contributing editor Judith Lewis-Mernit recently <a href="http://www.hcn.org/issues/46.7/why-we-risk-life-and-property/">pointed out</a>: There’s no database of the thousands of <a href="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/avalanches-werent-and-arent-only-a-backcountry-threat">precarious hillsides</a>
looming over homes and infrastructure in the West. The last national
map of landslide risk was released in 1982, and as climate change
increases the frequency of the freak rainfall and rapid snowmelt that
lead to giant mudslides, the map has grown obsolete, Highland says...<br />
<br />
... Read the rest here: <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/colorado-mudslide-reveals-risks-in-energy-planning-1" target="_blank">http://www.hcn.org/articles/colorado-mudslide-reveals-risks-in-energy-planning-1 </a>krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-5385278236238782212014-05-21T18:37:00.000-07:002014-05-21T18:37:05.536-07:00What 'unstoppable' Antarctic ice melt means for coastal communitiesSave for a freak May snowstorm, the other day started off normally. I
woke up, made a giant mug of coffee and walked to work. But May 12 was
no ordinary Monday. “Today,” said Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the
University of California, Irvine, “we present observational evidence
that a large sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has gone into
irreversible retreat. It has passed the <i>point of no return</i>.”<br />
<br />
Language that strong isn’t often tossed about at NASA news
conferences, and the world took notice. Climate change advocate Protect
Our Winters called it “the day that all climate scientists feared.” <a class="external-link" href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/05/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapse" target="_blank">Mother Jones</a>
coined it a “holy shit moment for global warming.” The well-known
Canadian environmental writer Chris Turner tweeted that it’s “the most
important news story you'll see this week, by a wide margin.”<br />
<br />
So what’s <a class="external-link" href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2014/05/13/loss-west-antarctic-glaciers-unstoppable/#.U3JpEVPgWaa" target="_blank">all the fuss</a>
about – and why should you care? In the most basic terms, two separate
scientific studies, using two different models and released by two
reputable <a class="external-link" href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL060140/abstract" target="_blank">scientific journals</a>,
both came to the same conclusion: Glaciers on the West Antarctic Ice
Sheet are melting more rapidly than expected and have begun a domino
effect that’s virtually <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-148">unstoppable</a>,
even if we cut off greenhouse gas emissions today. Over the course of
hundreds of years, the melting glaciers will boost ocean levels by 4 to
16 feet, changing the geography of the world as we know it. ...<br />
<br />
Read the rest of the story and see super cool images of what it all means for coastal cities <a href="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/what-unstoppable-antarctic-ice-melt-means-for-western-cities">here.</a> krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-6298256663416382212014-05-19T21:28:00.000-07:002014-05-19T21:28:14.494-07:00slot canyons and sweet desert spring.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-62493747033030938652014-04-23T18:36:00.002-07:002014-04-23T18:36:28.805-07:00Tar/sandAfter four dusty days spent slithering through slot canyons and
scrambling over boulders in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument,
this morning’s walk is notably refreshing. Steve Defa, a 59-year-old
psychotherapist from Escalante, Utah, is leading me up a sandy wash
shaded by big ponderosa pines and smaller pinyons. The air is fragrant
with pine needles and sage after last night’s rain; the air pleasantly
cool.<br />
<br />
After a mile or so, we emerge into the canyon country for which the
monument is known. Sandstone walls pocked with shadows and studded with
green rise on either side. “This is backpacking heaven,” Defa says of
his 1.9 million-acre backyard. “There’s more here than a person will
ever get to in a lifetime.”<br /><br />
Soon, though, he picks up a tar ball the size of a brussels sprout
and rolls it in his hand. I notice a young conifer bent sideways from a
flood, its upper branches looking like they’ve been dipped in tar.
Plants growing in the wash are black and brittle. “This is where it
really begins,” Defa tells me, ducking under some bare willows. An acrid
smell creeps into the fresh morning air; it smells like hot summer days
of my childhood, when the new asphalt poured into cracks in the
pavement became soft and gooey and I’d poke it with a stick.<br /><br />
A quarter-mile more and we come to an eight-inch layer of crude,
dried to the consistency of warm asphalt and mixed with gravel and
rocks. The layer extends four miles up Little Valley Wash, varying in
depth and composition as it meanders across the landscape like a greasy
black snake. Similar scenes can be found in three nearby washes, all of
which drain into the Escalante River – a tributary of the Colorado – and
all of which spill down from Death Ridge, a plateau on which
Houston-based Citation Oil operates 19 wells. ...<br />
<br />
... Read the rest here: <a href="http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/tar-sands-un-reported-escalante-oil-spill-raises-questions-about-clean-ups-in-remote-places">http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/tar-sands-un-reported-escalante-oil-spill-raises-questions-about-clean-ups-in-remote-places</a>krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-66019780229157392282014-04-15T20:04:00.002-07:002014-04-15T20:04:54.864-07:00 Utah river journal<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Day 1: travel</div>
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J. and I meet at a free climbers' camp
near Moab, and though I don't climb – the very idea of hanging off
that red monolith in the distance makes my heart beat fast – I like
the climbing culture. There are probably 30 people here and last
night everything was silent, a handful of fires burning under the
stars, the bobbing headlamps of some stragglers coming off the
approach in the dark. I slept in a cocoon of warmth and happiness and
woke this morning to the bright blue skies of a desert spring,
flowers unfurling in the morning sun, a man strumming a guitar
beneath a juniper. J. has left to meet some friends for a kayaking
trip to the north and I'm leaving soon to drive south and meet
another group of friends on the banks of the San Juan River. Our
paths intersect where they can, sleeping on a bed of dirt under the
stars, and I love it. I love it all.</div>
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I dreamt last night that I climbed a
tree – a very large, very gnarled old tree. I hung from a branch
with my arms and legs wrapped around it like a sloth. I hung for a
long time; for months maybe. Time passed in a gloomy gray light with
no distinction between day and night. One day, I made the choice to
swing my arms up in the kind of all-or-nothing move that a climber
makes to reach a just-out-of-grasp fingerhold. I can't recall now
whether I fell or climbed higher.</div>
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Day 2: river</div>
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A river is a living thing, a vein
pumping the muddy blood of the desert. Early in the spring of a year
with little snow, we hardly have to dip our paddles into it except to
steer. We drift downstream, watching the landscape change from sandy
floodplains crawling with cottonwoods to undulating hills of red sand
to sheer canyon walls pocked with shadows and studded with sage.
Across it all, the sky is tugged like a sheet snapped tight. We are
on river-time now; dream-time.
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It feels like the most natural thing in
the world to float down this river with friends, surprising
stock-still herons in the shallows, trailing my fingers in the water.
But I can't help knowing that the tamarisk choking the banks aren't
supposed to be there; that the dam upstream allowing more people to
live in this scorched country has tamed the spring floods and
prevented the river from reaching its natural floodplain, an area
once farmed by ancient people now blowing dry with tumbleweeds,
another non-native plant. But what's native, anyway? Everything comes
from someplace else, and most things move on after they pass through
here.
</div>
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We climb high above the river to an
ancient cliff dwelling, to the stone rooms and windows of the
ancestral Puebloans, the Anasazi. The ones who left. We find
potshards and thousand-year-old corncobs gnawed clean, and – tucked
away in a secret alcove away from prying eyes and potential vandals –
a piece of skin placed gingerly on a rock, with a lone stitch that's
withstood centuries of wind and sand. A scrap of fabric from another
world, another time. It humbles me. </div>
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Day 3: rock</div>
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Even in March, the desert is a land of
extremes. At night the water turns to pans of ice, and I curl in my
sleeping bag with my hands jammed between my legs, waiting for the
kiss of sunlight. And then in a blink it's afternoon and we're
scrambling for shade beneath a blazing sky.</div>
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The desert is defined by water, by the
river devouring the land. Yet twenty minutes of walking later it's as
if such a thing never existed, and you're in a canyon so dry it
cracks your lips and crumbles at your touch. Each rock is as distinct
as a snowflake. In places it's hard and smooth, strata of glass and
molten rock poured over grainy substrate, sensuous tendrils of black
and red. In places it's terraced, so many layers in a single vertical
foot that to look up at the towering walls is to comprehend millions
of layers. Alone, each is flaky and unsubstantial, but together
they comprise monuments.
</div>
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Elsewhere, the canyon walls are
dripping with an alkaline water that builds into coral-like globules,
nubs of stalagmites sprouting from the earth. Sometimes the rock is
green, tinted by minerals or slimed by algae. In places it's crumbled
into billions of pebbles, each a different color and shape; and in
places it's been pulverized to sand, sometimes white, sometimes red.
Under certain overhangs, the rock is gray and rotting, and stepping
beneath it is like walking on the dry ash of a fire that's burnt out
and gotten cold.
</div>
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How slowly do you have to move to learn
the shapes and colors of a landscape, to memorize its names and
absorb its mysteries? Here, I think, it would take forever: a
lifetime of lifetimes. Even at our leisurely downstream pace, we miss
much. Walking, I can see more, but sometimes I think the only way to
see anything at all is to stop moving. When I'm still, I see two
birds couple in midair, almost violently, and I don't know whether
they've fought or made love. They freefall together for a brief
moment and break apart before they fall to the earth. </div>
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Day 4: wind</div>
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More extremes: This time, wind. Last
night was much warmer but windy, and this morning's blue sky was
swiftly replaced by a soft-gray cover of clouds. Made it four miles
through the biggest rapid of the trip before getting slammed with
wind. Absolutely pummeled. The kayak and canoe could've pushed on,
but the raft was getting nowhere. We pulled off and ate lunch huddled
next to a rock while watching the wind blow whitecaps upstream. Then
we found a flat-ish spot and killed four hours drinking whiskey,
putting up a giant tarp and abandoning it, sitting a cave, drinking
more, getting silly and wondering if we'd be forced to spend the
night there. Luckily, just before dark the wind died down and we
scrambled to pack the boats and shove off. Made it a mile before
getting slammed with another wall of wind. It's good to be out with
four other guides – when we need to get shit done or make
decisions, there is no mucking about. That night, our boats were
unpacked, camp set up, fire crackling and dinner cooked in under 40
minutes. Our faces and hands are raw with wind-burn. There is sand in
my teeth and up my nose. Tomorrow we'll make an early start to get
off the river. </div>
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Day 5: home</div>
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Back home in Colorado, a red-wind
terror sweeps the valley, knocking branches of trees and whipping
freshly-plowed fields into the sky. The sky is red with Utah sand,
kicked up hundreds of miles away and now sticking to our windshields,
traveling on currents of air across state boundaries. Utah follows me
home; the desert won't let me go so easily.
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So this is spring in this part of the
world. Dry and violent, a kiss of fire. Tomorrow, I will plant peas,
and I think I'll stay home for a while. </div>
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krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1270752252278056243.post-52207140109055001412014-04-10T19:53:00.000-07:002014-04-10T20:00:02.973-07:00suffering and beauty. <style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }</style>
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One night, driving along the dark
ribbon of Highway 550, I see movement. The movement becomes a shape;
the shape a deer. A doe, struggling to stand and move out of the
road. She rises halfway and her back legs crumple to the ground.
She is broken. I'm at a dead stop now; don't know what to do, can't
find the switch to put my hazards on, fumbling clumsily with one eye
on the deer and the other on the headlights swiftly approaching in my
rearview mirror. I drive forward, hoping that someone behind me has a
gun to put her out of her misery. Suffering is the one thing I cannot
bear to contemplate too deeply. When I arrive at the hot springs, I
decide, I'll tell someone, ask what they would've done, ask to use
the phone. Who should I call? The sheriff? There are so many deer
around here.
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There is no blood in the road. None.
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At the desk of the hot springs, the
woman who takes my $10 is beautiful and disinterested. She's talking
to a co-worker; neither of them look at my face. For the second time
this night, I am uncertain. It's light in here,
and warm. The cold dark road is so distant it feels like it may not
have been real.
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I wish I carried a rifle.
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I step outside again, naked, prancing
across the cold ground like a deer myself, then ease into the
steaming pool. There are two old men sitting at its ledge. A couple
embracing. A woman talking to no one who says she's from a city and marvels aloud at the stars, which are indeed magnificent. So many
bright pinpricks of light. I wonder who I could approach about the deer,
but weighing my options, each seems too awkward and so I float on my
back instead, submerging my ears into the silence of the pool.
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I think, likely, that she will drag
herself off the road and be killed by coyotes. That's not such a bad
end. Then I think of all the other cars speeding down that dark road
at 60 miles an hour and realize she will probably be hit again;
that she will die slowly, her blood seeping onto the roadside, watching without comprehension as loud, bright machines
roar past with no regard for her pain.
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I think about the time I moved to
Vermont and saw a dead doe and her fawn, 20 feet apart on the side of
the highway. It seemed a bad omen for starting over in a new place. I
cried for miles, wondering which died first and which, struck by
grief, wandered nearby until it too was killed.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I think about my dog, who was struck by
a car one night while I was out partying. I wasn't there, but I've
relived the scene in my mind over and over again. He didn't die right
away. He waited on the cold table of the vet's office until they
could reach me at a bar across the state and get my
permission for strangers to put him down.
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Roadkill made me cry even before that.
</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There in the water,
surrounded by lovers and strangers, thinking of suffering and death
and whatever implicit roles I've played in both, I stare through
the steaming breath of the earth to the mountains and stars beyond
and for a moment, the veil lifts. For the space of a breath, I understand that we are
small and insignificant. And yet at the same time, it doesn't feel that way. How can
this be just another night, one among billions and billions on this spinning planet?</div>
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krista lee langloishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14319615151164510427noreply@blogger.com0