Mountain Pine Beetle: Preservation Perspective
As a preservationist, my landscape management philosophy is that Nature is capable of managing itself and that human intervention further imposes our ideals and our knowledge/science upon the landscape. Nature is prior to our ideals and science and, thus, with the preservation of areas as Wilderness, we allow Nature to carry on as it has … Read more
Pine Beetle Outbreak: Rocky Mountain National Park
This documentary on Rocky Mountain National Park, gives a very good overview about the current outbreak of the Mountain Pine Beetle. He explains that historically outbreaks of this insect are normal, but not at the current scale. He describes this outbreak of the Pine Beetle as the perfect storm, because of warmer winters and hotter … Read more
Biodiversity begins with a B
An interesting video targeted towards younger audiences:
Conservationist Beetle Kill Management Recomendations
Conservation Biologist Management Suggestion Beetle kill in the Rocky Mountains is a natural event, one that is typically mitigated by nature through deep freezes and fires. However, due to rising global temperatures attributed to humans, as a conservation biologist I am most interested in restoring the lost balances. Thus far there are two types of … Read more
Mountain Pine Beetle: Perspectives and Policies [Begin story here]
Geography 4335 Creative Project This is the first of several blog posts that three students at the University of Colorado Denver have begun as a class creative-research project. The goal of these posts are to provide the viewer with an opportunity to hear from a key stakeholder in the Mountain Pine Beetle situation in the … Read more
Red Herrings, Pollen, and Biodiversity
Biodiversity is not an economic issue, but a red herring when you run out of real arguments… [An ecological service] is another non-economic red herring. What is an ecological service? Protecting a watershed is ridiculous. –Jerry Abboud, Executive Director of Coalition of Off Highway Vehicles Colorado (COHVCO) The Rhetoric of Nature Deficit Disorder With 80% … Read more
Hidden Gems Wilderness Campaign: Contesting and Defining Wilderness in Colorado’s Central Rocky Mountains
[This is an abridged version of a research paper for an Environmental Policy class at the University of Colorado Denver] What’s the controversial issue? Throughout the last few years, there have been heated and contentious debates regarding the type of landscapes that the Hidden Gems Wilderness Campaign (HGWC) proposes to preserve as Wilderness. The landscapes … Read more
