Injustice in the Intermountain West

The high desert of Idaho, Utah, Oregon and Nevada is dying.

Here are some culprits:

• The military has poisoned enormous sections of land out there.
• The east coast environmentalists are continuously striving to take away local control over the wild lands, ensuring stewardship by remote legislation, and alienating the most important people in the system: the people who care the most about the local tracts.
• The mining and oil companies sometimes cause more damage in exploration than in extraction itself.
• Recreationists who don't see the land, only an "emptiness" waiting to be filled. Burning Man and similar festivals attracting dozens of thousands of people, without decent sanitation infrastructure, are causing as much damage as some open pit mines.

Paul Grant

Sole Owner and Proprieter, TurtleIslander Weblog
Penname: Locutus Est

Master of few trades, I am nevertheless willing to wax garrulous on the topic of your choosing. Despite blogging and maintaining a real job working in cyberspace, I'd rather be outside.

I read mostly about ecology, culture, geography, family and God.

American by birth, I was raised in Switzerland. After getting a history degree at Wisconsin, I married my best friend Becca.