To Think Like a Mountain: Environmental Challenges in the American West
In the West, shortsighted human self-interest has resulted in devastating environmental losses. The fur trade decimated beaver populations, and streams and wetland ecosystems deteriorated. Though most mining ceased by the late 1920s, water running from the Pacific Mine nearly a century later still carried ten times the lead level standard set by the federal Clean Water Act. Where grazing depleted native bunchgrasses, fire-prone cheatgrass grew in its place. Migrating from Idaho streams, salmon once reached the ocean in ten to fourteen days. Now it takes fifty or more. In 2016, a snowstorm blew a flock of snow geese off course. They landed on contaminated water, and about three thousand died.

Author Niels S. Nokkentved takes a fresh look at environmental challenges affecting Northwest residents. His essays examine cultural conflicts over resource extraction, threats to watersheds from abandoned mines, wolf recovery in the northern Rocky Mountains, the lingering effects of livestock grazing on western rangelands, and the rapidly disappearing sage grouse. They discuss the importance of forest fires, the value of beavers, the failed promises of salmon hatcheries, the reasons behind the decline of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest, and how unlikely allies learned to set aside their differences in order to resolve long-standing disputes.

Nokkentved's goal is to encourage people to think like a mountain—in other words, to consider the long-term consequences. He shares his connection to each concern as well as his own evidence-based perspective. He believes that it most profits society—collectively and as individuals—when people respect the balance of nature, and he wants to draw others to the same conclusion.

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To Think Like a Mountain: Environmental Challenges in the American West
In the West, shortsighted human self-interest has resulted in devastating environmental losses. The fur trade decimated beaver populations, and streams and wetland ecosystems deteriorated. Though most mining ceased by the late 1920s, water running from the Pacific Mine nearly a century later still carried ten times the lead level standard set by the federal Clean Water Act. Where grazing depleted native bunchgrasses, fire-prone cheatgrass grew in its place. Migrating from Idaho streams, salmon once reached the ocean in ten to fourteen days. Now it takes fifty or more. In 2016, a snowstorm blew a flock of snow geese off course. They landed on contaminated water, and about three thousand died.

Author Niels S. Nokkentved takes a fresh look at environmental challenges affecting Northwest residents. His essays examine cultural conflicts over resource extraction, threats to watersheds from abandoned mines, wolf recovery in the northern Rocky Mountains, the lingering effects of livestock grazing on western rangelands, and the rapidly disappearing sage grouse. They discuss the importance of forest fires, the value of beavers, the failed promises of salmon hatcheries, the reasons behind the decline of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest, and how unlikely allies learned to set aside their differences in order to resolve long-standing disputes.

Nokkentved's goal is to encourage people to think like a mountain—in other words, to consider the long-term consequences. He shares his connection to each concern as well as his own evidence-based perspective. He believes that it most profits society—collectively and as individuals—when people respect the balance of nature, and he wants to draw others to the same conclusion.

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To Think Like a Mountain: Environmental Challenges in the American West

To Think Like a Mountain: Environmental Challenges in the American West

by Niels Sparre Nokkentved
To Think Like a Mountain: Environmental Challenges in the American West
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To Think Like a Mountain: Environmental Challenges in the American West

To Think Like a Mountain: Environmental Challenges in the American West

by Niels Sparre Nokkentved

Overview

In the West, shortsighted human self-interest has resulted in devastating environmental losses. The fur trade decimated beaver populations, and streams and wetland ecosystems deteriorated. Though most mining ceased by the late 1920s, water running from the Pacific Mine nearly a century later still carried ten times the lead level standard set by the federal Clean Water Act. Where grazing depleted native bunchgrasses, fire-prone cheatgrass grew in its place. Migrating from Idaho streams, salmon once reached the ocean in ten to fourteen days. Now it takes fifty or more. In 2016, a snowstorm blew a flock of snow geese off course. They landed on contaminated water, and about three thousand died.

Author Niels S. Nokkentved takes a fresh look at environmental challenges affecting Northwest residents. His essays examine cultural conflicts over resource extraction, threats to watersheds from abandoned mines, wolf recovery in the northern Rocky Mountains, the lingering effects of livestock grazing on western rangelands, and the rapidly disappearing sage grouse. They discuss the importance of forest fires, the value of beavers, the failed promises of salmon hatcheries, the reasons behind the decline of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest, and how unlikely allies learned to set aside their differences in order to resolve long-standing disputes.

Nokkentved's goal is to encourage people to think like a mountain—in other words, to consider the long-term consequences. He shares his connection to each concern as well as his own evidence-based perspective. He believes that it most profits society—collectively and as individuals—when people respect the balance of nature, and he wants to draw others to the same conclusion.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780874223682
Publisher: Washington State University Press
Publication date: 09/01/2019
Pages: 258
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Niels S. Nokkentved has won awards from the Associated Press, Society of Professional Journalists, and a C. B. Blethen award for distinguished investigative journalism. He spent twenty years as a newspaper reporter and eight years as a writer, photographer, and editor for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. He is the author of three other books.

Table of Contents

List of Maps viii

Preface ix

1 Selling Arctic Wilderness 1

2 Ancient Art in Nine Mile Canyon 25

3 Abandoned Mines, Tainted Water 41

4 Lurching Toward Wolf Recovery 57

5 Private Livestock, Public Lands 81

6 Vanishing Sage Grouse 99

7 The Nature of Wildfire 117

8 Bringing Back the Beaver 137

9 The False Promise of Hatcheries 151

10 Overcutting Ancient Forests 169

11 Saving America's Outback 183

Conclusion 203

Notes 207

Bibliography 225

Index 237

About the Author 244

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