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Issue 201 of El Paisano is available online now. This month’s topics include the rush to solar in the desert, a new DPC education program, toxic sludge threatening Mojave Desert Communities, an update on the Sunrise Powerlink, and more. Our new Ed Bulletin emphasizes the importance of soils as a foundation for all ecosystem processes, and the threats to soils in the American West. The bulletin is co-authored by geologist and DPC Advisory Panel member Howard Wilshire and Jane Nielsen. Their new book, with third co-author Richard W. Hazlett, The American West at Risk: Science, Myths, and Politics of Land Abuse and Recovery, is available now from Oxford University Press.
Posted June 13, 2008"Desert warfare: Solar energy plants forge strange alliances" (KPCC radio, 6/9/08)
"The fight for desert land - at least one million acres are being considered for energy use - has brought together a strange mix of allies in opposition to the solar plants." This two-hour "Patt Morrison" radio show includes interviews with Steven Borchard, director of the Bureau of Land Management's California Desert District, Stuart Hemphill, vice president of renewable & alternative power at Southern California Edison, and Terry Weiner, conservation coordinator for the Desert Protective Council.
(Note: this is a very large mp3 file, about 24 megabytes.)
http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/145/510129/91369389/KPCC_91369389.mp3
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Erosion in the Mojave Desert Photo courtesy of the authors |
This coming May, Oxford University Press will publish The American West at Risk: Science, Myths, and Politics of Land Abuse and Recovery, by DPC Advisory Panel member Howard Wilshire and co-authors Jane E. Nielson and Richard W. Hazlett. On their website, the authors say that the book “summarizes the dominant human-generated environmental challenges in the 11 contiguous arid western United States—America’s legendary, even mythical, frontier. When discovered by European explorers and later settlers, the west boasted rich soils, bountiful fisheries, immense, dense forests, sparkling streams, untapped ore deposits, and oil bonanzas. It now faces depletion of many of these resources, and potentially serious threats to its few ‘renewable’ resources.”
The authors negotiated a price with the publisher to keep it affordable for those concerned about resource issues in the West. With 50 photos and over 500 pages, the book is a steal at only $35.00. Chapter titles include “Raiding the Range,” “Routes of Ruin,” and “Tragedy of the Playground,” the latter a clever play on Garrett Hardin’s classic essay, “Tragedy of the Commons.” (We imagine this chapter will focus on recreationists, rather than herders, “maximizing their yield.”)
You can pre-order this landmark new work from Oxford University Press
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