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The Clean Water Act: An American success story
Editor's note: This column was originally published in the Washington Post on Sept. 23, 2019 The announcement that the Environmental Protection Agency was scrapping Obama-era rules designed to protect small streams and wetlands made me recall a misty morning this spring on the Potomac River above Georgetown. I brought a striped bass, locally known as…
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The Amazon forest isn’t the only one in peril
Editor's note: This first appeared in the Los Angeles Times. By Mike Dombeck and Chris Wood In the faraway Amazon, politics and commercial exploitation are fueling fires that threaten the world’s largest tropical rainforest. Closer to home, in Alaska, the Tongass National Forest, which represents the largest intact temperate rainforest, is facing a serious threat…
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Renewable energy, climate change, public lands and bipartisanship … Oh my!
Photo: USFWS/Joshua Winchell In this age of boundless partisanship, something remarkable happened this summer. A smart, forward-thinking piece of legislation addressing climate change was introduced that is sponsored by two Arizona congressmen from opposite ends of the political spectrum: Republican Paul Gosar, who rode the Tea Party wave into Congress in 2010, and Democrat Raul…
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Working with nature
America has such a well-earned reputation for innovating our way out of problems that we sometimes miss the obvious natural solution. In a series of open houses this summer in Great Basin communities, the Trump administration revealed a plan to reduce wildfire risk by constructing 11,000 acres of fuel breaks across public lands in parts…
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Why diversity matters
In the natural world, diversity creates resilience. For example, grasslands with a greater variety of native plants are more resistant to drought. They also bounce back faster from disturbance caused by insect infestations and fire. Diversity also makes organizations more resilient. And relevant, too. The more connections to people with different backgrounds that we share,…
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“Live the Stream” – Meet Joe Humphreys
“Schedule it when I'm not around.” Meigan and Lucas Bell pestered me for weeks to host a showing of Live the Stream in the national office of Trout Unlimited. I am glad my assistant didn’t listen to my direction. Live the Stream is a fantastic movie. Its cinematography captures the essence of the “quiet sport.”…
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Progress on the back 40
Download the Western Water and Habitat Program's 20 year report The great conservationist, Aldo Leopold, once wrote that “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell…
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