Does reality TV change the reality of Alaska?

Four years ago, when I was 25, I went to Alaska to work as a wilderness guide. I bought my first pair of XtraTuf boots and my first set of head-to-toe rubber rain gear, and between seven-week trips in the backcountry, lived above a Laundromat that smelled perpetually of halibut.

The first spring, my boyfriend and I celebrated the returning light by taking a trip to Juneau to go skiing. Only it rained the whole time, and instead of skiing we sloshed through the alleys and backstreets, lingering in bookshops and stopping at every coffee shop we could find. The last night before catching the ferry home, we stayed at the state’s oldest hotel, The Alaskan. Even on a weeknight, the bar – a former speakeasy – was utterly raucous, and the adjoining hotel was much the same. When it first opened in 1913, the building operated as a thinly-veiled Victorian brothel, and in 2010, if you squinted your eyes just right, you could imagine that it still was, that the man with the stained white beard spinning across the dance floor had just paid his tab with a sack of gold flakes and would soon slip upstairs behind a woman's lace stockings.

The wallpaper was yellowed and peeling, the wood floors scuffed and creaky; the entire place smelled faintly of spilled beer and musty sheets. The walls were thin – in most rooms, you fell asleep (or passed out) to the sound of boot-stomping fiddle music drifting from the bar. If you were in Juneau and wanted a good night's sleep, you went to the Westmark or the Best Western. If you wanted an experience to remember, you went to The Alaskan.

That was before the reality TV craze struck Alaska, turning the Last Frontier into something akin to the “Real Housewives of Orange County.” This year, in addition to “Deadliest Catch” and “Alaska State Troopers” – the old standbys – the 49th state is getting “Alaska Gold Diggers” (five Newport Beach women reviving their grandfather's old mining claim), “Ultimate Survival Alaska,” and an episode of “Hotel Impossible,” a show in which an interior designer and a consultant give hotels the touristic version of an extreme makeover. The show has been to Alaska before, to Yakutat's Glacier Bear Lodge, where celebrity consultant Anthony Melchiorri, an admitted germaphobe, was appalled by the old carpets and fish guts outside the doors. The owners reportedly spent $100,000 on renovations following his suggestions, and occupancy rates increased only 1.5 percent.

... Read the rest of the essay at http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/does-reality-tv-change-the-reality-of-alaska

Throwing stones.

Today, I'm thinking about rocks. Specifically, boulders, and even more specifically, the practice of rolling them downhill. Out of the many hours I've spent outdoors -- hiking, biking, reading, reflecting, being generally quite responsible and picking up other people's trash -- one of the best was spent hucking big rocks down a rocky bowl in New Zealand.

It started with a small rock, about the size of a basketball. One of the Kiwis I was hiking with nudged it with his toe down toward the lake below. It bounced once -- rock crashing against rock with an loud, echoing crack -- before landing in the water with an equally satisfying thump. We all stopped in our tracks, smiles tugging at the corners of our mouths. Then someone else picked up a rock, then another, and soon, the quiet mountain was alive with a resonant, joyous cacophony. It wasn't the noise so much as it was the giddiness of making big splashes and playing outside.

I think of another time -- the summer I spent doing trail work in Idaho, when one of the tasks was to create gravel where there was none to protect a trail. The work involved taking a large rock from nearby, placing it on a flattish rock, like a log about to be split, then swinging a sledgehammer ('doublejack,' in trail-crew speak) over your head and smashing the rock to smithereens. The work was backbreaking but utterly satisfying, and the chalky smell of powdered rock still brings me back to those days in the mountains.

These experiences, I understand, are different from the recent episode caught on video of two Boy Scout leaders toppling an ancient rock formation in Utah in front of their students. That was a poor example of leadership and not exactly how to teach kids respect for the outdoors. The backlash over the video also brought new attention to a 2011 essay by the inimitable Micheal Branch, a professor in Nevada's Great Basin who writes for High Country News. In his essay, What Would Edward Abbey Do?, Branch recreates a scene of he and three other grown men mischievously dislodging a giant, precariously perched boulder and "trundling" it into a canyon. His writing reminds me that there are certain impulses that transcend time and age, and that indulging in a bit of unadulterated fun in the natural world is often what forges a connection to it.

Some readers with a sense of humor seemed to agree, but Branch's essay also prompted a backlash of its own from readers who called his act "selfish," "bad karma," immature vandalism and worse. One particularly insightful reader, however, noted to the detractors that "your privileged North American consumer lifestyle does more harm to the so-called environment than an army of 'trundlers' could ever do." I imagine that gets at the reason why humble Kiwis not responsible for quite as much global environmental destruction were more unabashed about their rock trundling than we Americans are.

The online vitriol surrounding rock trundling in all forms brings up another issue described in David Sobel's 2012 Orion essay, Look, Don't Touch. In it, Sobel laments the direction that natural education has taken: A hands-off approach that sees nature as too delicate and easily disrupted to be explored in a meaningful way. Trying to make kids (and big kids) feel guilty about picking up frogs, taking home feathers and chucking rocks off cliffs only deepens our alienation from the natural world.

So, should you topple an ancient, beloved rock in front of children and gloat about it online? Probably not. Should you compare that action to the innocent pleasure of throwing rocks downhill, or villainize people who partake in such indulgences? Again, I think not.

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. But if people outside want to responsibly throw stones down a hill and laugh hysterically at themselves afterward, I fully support it.

Trundle fail.

at the hotspring.

Silver moon bath on snow

Through a veil of gauze

My hands slide against pebbles

collecting diatoms.

Loren Bahls is not your typical retiree. After stepping down as head of water quality management for the state of Montana in 1996 – then retiring again from private consulting in 2009 – Bahls finally found time to pursue his real passion: Tiny, glass-walled microbes called diatoms that practically cover the surface of the Earth. Colonies appear to the naked eye as an algae-like slime, but under a microscope, individual diatoms become magical, their silica walls forming symmetrical, lacy patterns that stand out starkly from the microscopic jumble around them. Bahls has been collecting diatoms since he was a grad student in 1966, but in 40 years’ time discovered only two new species.

That changed after his retirement. Now, Bahls, 69, curates the Montana Diatom Collection in Missoula and has added some 60 new species to the scientific literature. Scientists believe less than a quarter of the hundreds of thousands of unique diatoms of the world have been catalogued, and most of those awaiting discovery are endemic to high-elevation lakes and streams. But Bahls’ knees are shot, and he can no longer collect samples himself.

“Reservoirs are terrible,” he says. “Typically they just have your garden variety, cosmopolitan species. You’ve got to go upstream, you’ve got to go to the headwaters. Researchers have been negligent in sampling remote, atypical habitats that are hard to reach.”

Enter Gregg Treinish, a National Geographic grantee and the founder of Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (ASC), a project that pairs climbers, paddlers, bikers and hikers with scientists who need data from remote environments. Since Treinish came up with the idea in 2011, he’s helped pair more than 1,600 adventurers with 120 scientists on all seven continents. The group has worked with famed mountaineer Conrad Anker and snowboarder Jeremy Jones as well as six-year-olds and day-hikers. The idea, Treinish says, is to make the projects “idiot-proof.”....

Read the rest at: https://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/idiot-proof-citizen-science-results-in-12-new-diatom-species

trains or pipelines

What do melting sea ice, fiery train wrecks and the Bakken oil boom have in common?

No, they’re not part of the latest Hollywood blockbuster – although if I came across a trailer showing George Clooney as a roughneck leaping from a flaming train onto an ice floe with an angry polar bear, you better believe I’d watch it.

The answer is less exciting, but more important: All three factor into a Denver company’s plan to ship crude oil from the Bakken oil fields in Saskatchewan to a northern Manitoba port via railroad. Colorado-based Omnitrax, one of North America’s largest private rail companies, hopes to bring more than 2 million barrels of oil annually from Saskatchewan to the Port of Churchill in Hudson Bay along existing railroad tracks, starting as soon as 2015.

Similar but unrelated plans are on track to ship tar sands oil from Alberta to coastal British Columbia by rail, as well as crude from North Dakota to Oregon and Washington. Across North America, the number of railcars shipping oil has grown from almost zero in 2009 to a projected 150,000 in Canada and more than 700,000 in the U.S. this year. About 70 percent of North Dakota oil now moves by train, destined for refineries around the U.S. As energy strategist Julius Walker told Bloomberg, “This is a revolutionary change in crude oil logistics that has rarely happened before.” ...

Read the rest of the story: http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/at-the-end-of-the-day-its-trains-or-pipelines

 

The journey or the destination?

Published in the Sept. 2013 issue of New Zealand Wilderness magazine

Taking a drink in the Alisa Mountains, along the Routeburn track, one of the areas that would have been affected by the proposed Milford-Dart tunnel

The Journey or the Destination
Tunnel rejected, but other Fiordland projects still on the table

by Krista Langlois

Warrick Mitchell is driving 100 kilometers per hour down the Milford Road, past jagged cliffs, hanging glaciers and pristine alpine valleys – scenery that's causing his two passengers to audibly gasp as they crane their necks to take it all in. Arguably the most spectacular road in New Zealand, the 120-km long Milford Road (or SH94) is the only way to reach Fiordland National Park by land. The park's 3 million acres of soaring mountains and lush rainforest draw outdoor enthusiasts from around the world, but there's still only one way in: the twisting, turning Milford Road.

“I'll never forget the first time I made this drive,” Mitchell says, steering around a tight bend. "I love it. I love the spirit of this place."

Clattering behind his SUV is an aluminum fishing boat, which Mitchell, 35, will use to take his friends to the remote homestead off the coast where he grew up. For three days, they'll dive, fish and surf, alone in New Zealand's last great wilderness.

Although Mitchell's family homestead, like most of Fiordland, remains accessible only by boat, Milford Sound at the northern end of the park is becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination. More than 500,000 visitors a year travel the Milford Road to get there, and entrepreneurs, investors and builders see the undeveloped coast as a gold mine. Warrick Mitchell, however, just sees it as home.

On July 17, after years of heated controversy, Conservation Minister Nick Smith rejected a $170 million proposal to build an 11-kilometer tunnel through the Alisa mountains to Milford Sound. The tunnel and accompanying road would have whisked hundreds of thousands of new tourists to Fiordland by allowing them to bypass the lengthy drive from Queenstown to Te Anau to Milford, but it would have also cut through the heart of two national parks and a World Heritage site. Community leaders and conservationists waged war against the tunnel, creating petitions, signs and stickers to try to convince the government – and the public – that the plan was ill-conceived.

Though they succeeded, the fight is hardly over, says Daphne Taylor of the non-profit group Save Fiordland. "We feel now that we have the really difficult battle ahead of us."

Two more proposals seek to improve transportation in Fiordland: a toll road down the rugged coastline from Haast to Milford, and a project called Fiordland Link that would connect Queenstown to the start of the Milford Road near Te Anau.

One way or another, it seems, private companies are intent on improving access and bringing more tourist dollars to the region.

Whether they'll be allowed to move forward with their plans will be up to Smith, who is expected to hand down more decisions in the coming months. Because Smith's choice to reject the tunnel was based on protecting the ecologic integrity of Fiordland National Park, Mt. Aspiring National Park and the Te Wähipounamu World Heritage Site, environmentalists hope that other transportation projects will be rejected for similar reasons. But Fiordland Link backer Bob Robertson says that his project avoids the national parks, has less environmental impact and will bring 440 much-needed jobs to the area. If it's approved, the Fiordland Link experience will take visitors to Milford by boat, train, ATV and bus.

"It's a world-class backcountry tourist experience," Robertson wrote in an e-mail. "It is an experience in its own right and is not just another transport option to Milford Sound. Nor has it been designed just to shorten the travel time to Milford Sound."

While he expects a degree of opposition to the monorail, Robertson said it will ultimately enable more people to see New Zealand's natural beauty, instead of "keep[ing] the environment the preserve of a select few who have the time and the fitness to put a pack on their back."

Additionally, Robertson said, the electronic monorail will be largely powered by wind farms, enabling another half a million people to travel to Milford without increasing carbon emissions. The plan includes a 20km catamaran trip on Lake Wakatipu, 43km monorail, 45km ATV track and, finally, a bus ride along the Milford Road.

Though it intentionally skirts the national parks, the proposed Fiordland Link route nonetheless cuts through 29 km of ecologically unique tussock grasslands and beech forest of Te Wähipounamu. Opponents like Save Fiordland claim that the project would compromise the region's natural and cultural beauty, creating a "Disney-esque" attraction that could threaten its World Heritage status.

“If the proposal goes ahead our World Heritage status will be seriously jeopardized,” Daphne Taylor said. “One of the reasons people come to New Zealand is because of our World Heritage sites. The government is … making noise about economic development, [but] to lose that status would not be in our economic benefit – and doesn't make sense on any level.”

That, said tunnel spokesman Tom Elworthy, is “complete nonsense."

"There's been a power station, road widening, and business development in Milford,” he added. The proposed transportation projects are minor in comparison.

There are also fears that transportation projects ushering tourists straight to Milford could impact local businesses in Te Anau and other small Southland towns. Robertson has promised that Fiordland Link would promote Te Anau attractions, but that doesn't appease Glenorchy resident Thor Davis. “The people who live [in these parts] like being in a place where we've still got everything under our control. We're not on the way to somewhere else. When you start doing busloads of people ... they won't understand anything about our town. We'll just be another place on the side of the road.”

Back on the Milford Road, as the mountain pass gives way to virgin beech forest dripping with moss and ferns, Warrick Mitchell reminisces about growing up in one of New Zealand's most remote families, in the midst of the country's greatest wilderness. By the time he was a teenager, he was more comfortable in the backcountry than most adults.

Now a private yacht captain who has sailed the world, Mitchell still comes home to enjoy one of the most unspoiled places on earth. Perhaps more than anyone else, he understands what's at stake in the fight to develop Fiordland.

“It's a really stunning area, an untouched part of the world," he said. "And I think it should be left that way.”

Krista Langlois has worked as a journalist, teacher and wilderness guide. She currently lives in Colorado, U.S.A.

salvaging the forest.

Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., might have known that his proposal to salvage burned timber from Yosemite’s Rim Fire would not go over smoothly. Not only is he trying to auction off logging contracts in a national park while his own party’s antics have kept that park closed to citizens, he wants to sidestep the whole “public process” thing to prevent environmentalists from getting in the way. Even when public input is allowed and citizens aren’t being arrested for setting foot in national parks, the mere suggestion of salvage logging is enough to draw controversy.

The idea itself is simple: In the aftermath of a forest fire, the U.S. Forest Service sometimes contracts private companies to haul out dead or damaged timber, removing fuel that could feed future fires and gleaning some money from an otherwise grim situation. But opponents say the process inhibits the forests’ natural ability to heal, punching new roads into already damaged land, sending heavy machinery trundling over sensitive soil and removing the dead snags that benefit wildlife.

The most recent high-profile controversy was Oregon’s 2002 Biscuit Fire. Environmental opposition there delayed salvage logging for years, and by the time the wood finally made it out of the forest, only a fifth was sold, in part because the logs were already rotting.

McClintock wants to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to the 1 billion board feet left by Yosemite’s Rim Fire. To try to expedite salvage, he’s introduced a bill to commercially log 257,000 acres of Yosemite National Park and Stanislaus National Forest without the public notice and environmental review that applies to most salvage timber sales on federal lands. McClintock’s bill, which has 11 co-sponsors and is now in committee, would also exempt the entire process from lawsuits.

Read more at http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/are-enviros-acting-as-stubborn-as-congressmen-over-rim-fire-salvage-logging