Amidst the haste, the fighting, the devastation, the chaos, it can outright medicinal to take in and digest a simple act of beauty. However flawed and human, however compromised. Last June, Senator Max Baucus, (D-MT) often not our favorite Dem, helped the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land preserve a massive swath of western Montana!

This region holds perhaps the greatest store of ecologic riches in the Lower 48. -- Kat Imhoff, director for the Nature Conservancy in Montana

Pictures and details below the flap...

We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.  Theodore Roosevelt

Most Americans cherish our National Parks, those iconic places first envisioned by GOP stalwart Teddy Roosevelt.  

According to USA Today, presumptive Republican nominee John McSame McCain loves Teddy:

McCain has long identified Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1909, as a political idol. Roosevelt made national parks and nature preserves a priority...

Of late however, McCain’s flip-flops in support of Draining America First shed new light on the Maverick’s™ commitment to protecting wildlife refuges, parks, and other cherished public lands.

More after the fold—

This is mostly just photos as a follow up to my diary last week showing bird photos from Ecuador.  This week I will show some examples of the non-avian fauna of eastern Ecuador.  I'm going to use two themes to hopefully make this diary a bit more substantive: our perception of wilderness and what the current biodiversity loss really means.

On Tuesday morning, I was listening to President Bush’s press conferenceon the radio as I drove to work. He once again had me frustrated that not once in his years in office has he made an effort to be my president - what's new. But this bit really got my attention:

The Department of Energy estimates that ANWR could allow America to produce about a million additional barrels of oil every day, which translates to about 27 millions of gallons of gasoline and diesel every day. That would be about a 20-percent increase of oil -- crude oil production over U.S. levels, and it would likely mean lower gas prices. And yet such efforts to explore in ANWR have been consistently blocked.

snip

Well, I'm hoping now people, when they say "ANWR," means you don't care about the gasoline prices that people are paying.

Below the fold, I’ll explain why.

Summer solstice in the Arctic Refuge.

It seems like right now, the world has turned against this man. The press, always eager to stoke racial fires and deliver ratings, won't let up. The Clintons, always ready to take advantage, take umbrage, just take anything they can, are in rare form.

But you know what?

We're. Going. To. Win.

Not because the world, or politics, is fair. But because every once in a while, the world screws up and gets it right.

Whether we speak of it as a material surrounding or as a symbolic landscape, wilderness links us to the natural world.  It serves as wildlife habitat, a facility for clean water production and other natural processes, a bank of biodiversity and a focus for recreation, inspiration, and personal and spiritual restoration.

This is not intended to be a candidate diary.  I get that most of you support Obama, and in another week, this interparty skirmish may well be over.  

I'm one of the last defenders of Hillary on this site, so I get to see you all at your worst.  I call you out on Obama's weakest policy positions, and the responses I've received have shocked me.  What I have found disturbing during this primary period is the willingness of so many on this site to spout right wing talking points and to trash liberal policies because Hillary Clinton shares that position, or because Barack Obama cast a bad vote (and he's had a few doosies in his time).

Picking a candidate is not about an issues list. (Over the years, I've tried to explain to Kucinich supporters that I don't care about his platform because he has no personal charisma).  Obama's messages -- yes, we can and change -- are a lot more important than the details of his proposed policies or his voting record.  But in defending those details, or attacking Hillary, keep your eye on the ball -- we want to stand for liberal values.

This is a book review of Joan Martinez-Alier's 2002 classic "The Environmentalism of the Poor."  This is a book about the history of environmentalism that tries to fit the struggles of native peoples into that history.  

My last review was of a recently-published biography of Sup Marcos, the EZLN (Zapatista) figure; my next review will to a certain extent integrate the insights of Zapatismo into Martinez-Alier's framework.  This, to a certain, extent, forms the knowledge background for my interest in people's movements (centered on, but not exclusive to, peasant movements) as a counterweight to the environmental predations of the mainstream of capitalist industry.

(Crossposted at Docudharma)

This is an ecological ballet, as most ecosystem descriptions are. Instead of a young girl, a weird uncle, a decorative kitchen utensil with a sword, and armies of mice, its corps de ballet includes birds, trees, squirrels, grizzly bears, alien invaders (lots of aliens), and even Indians and their successors. It is set on a stage above 8000 feet extending from Yellowstone to Glacier National Park.

The final acts remain unfinished, subject to revision. It is rated R, since it contains some sex and violence. You may wish to provide your own adult language.

Rep. Diana DeGette held a media round table today to highlight Democratic accomplishments from the past session and to answer questions about the year ahead.

"For a do-nothing-Congress, I don't know why I am so tired."

Recounting legislative accomplishments on college loan programs, an expanded minimum wage and lobby reform, the Representative underlined the record number of House votes and a wide range of measures that her chamber passed along to the Senate only to see them languish without the sixty votes needed for cloture.

She acknowledged the frustration of those who had hoped that the narrow Democratic majority would bring a speedy end to the war, and pointed to the "firm stand in the House," that Speaker Pelosi had taken to offer no Iraq war funding without benchmarks and time tables, on a bill which is now stalled in the Capitol building's northern wing.

At this moment, the Alaska delegation on Capitol Hill is attempting to gain passage for another "Road to Nowhere" at the expense of a pristine area called Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. H.R. 2801 (introduced by Rep. Don Young) and S. 1680 (introduced by Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski) would build a $15.6 million, nine-mile gravel road through federally designated wilderness at Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. And on Wednesday, it is expected that Dale Hall -- Bush's director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service -- will be the first head of the Service to offer support for the road in a House hearing on Capitol Hill.

Big Game Hunting season starts in Colorado with Archery at the end of August and runs to the end of September.  Muzzle loaders get a week long season mid-September and the first rifle seasons get started the second week of October and runs through middle of January.  I hunt for Elk, Mule Deer, and Antelope.  Here's a picture of part of the area I hunted for Elk and Deer this year.

During the course of scouting my hunting grounds, archery hunting and finally rifle hunting, I had quite a few experiences that capture the beauty and tension in the wild places of Colorado.

"The Forest Service dropped sacks full of rattlesnakes into the Crawfish!    

From helicopters!"

Everybody on the Board of Supervisors and half the people in the room gasped. The Forest Service person stood up, said that they had not!!!!!!, never happened!!!!!, then sat back down again.

I grinned. And told them that I knew that was not true, but it was a fine example of a myth that many people take as fact. Like they believe that you can't fight fires in Wilderness Areas.

Ride up the trail with me, in to these woods, and I'll tell you all about it.

Hat Tip to DESIGNSNAKE for seeding this story.
The largest fire in Alaska this year,  has turned out to be the tundra .... the largest tundra fire ever seen.

There is no doubt, the hoopla surrounding ID Senator Larry Craig is a well deserved condemnation of hypocrisy that's been years in the coming and nobody is celebrating his descent more than progressives in the Northwest.    

But the shamefull manner in which a powerful Republican Senator squandered his standing is thankfully failing to completely overshadow just what it is many in Idaho and throughout the West are celebrating:

In the meantime, his actions in backrooms of the nation's capital deserve attention. Call it a Craig's List of how to block good deeds, or at least see that they don't go unpunished.

some background music...

Derrick Jensen’s Endgame, a two-volume work about the conflict between "civilization" and nature that was one of last year's best releases, is an extension of the motif of wilderness which is rooted in American literature, and thus its anti-civilization argument is less alien to American literary culture than its less sympathetic readers might imagine.  Jensen’s argument, though unduly pessimistic about human versatility, effectively disturbs the easy environmentalism of the "civilized," in which environmental concerns are ineffectually added to the status quo.

Here are the Top Ten Good News Stories of the Week -- published every weekend...

1) Wars are on the Wane Worldwide - The world has become dramatically more peaceful since 1992, according to the Human Security Report. The number of wars, coup d'etats, and acts of genocide has declined by 40 percent. (Civics)

2)  US Mayors Embrace Kyoto Protocol - In the fight against global warming, 320 mayors of US cities have boldly gone where the U.S. president would not -- into the forefront along with 164 nations embracing the Kyoto Accord and setting targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2012... (Earth)

Here are the Top Ten Good News Stories of the Week -- published every weekend...

1) Schools, Roads and Clinics Opening in Iraq and Afghanistan - The U.S. military celebrated the opening of remodeled schools in Kirkuk, two new healthcare facilities, and delivered school supplies to children in Iraq. Meanwhile, from Afghanistan, the U.S. announced plans to double their construction workload in the next year to some 600 projects providing new roads, electric power and water distribution systems for
the Afghan people. (Iraq ) (Afghanistan)

2) Enterprise Rent-A-Car Commits to Plant 50 Million Trees - Enterprise Rent-A-Car will commemorate its 50th anniversary by pledging the unprecedented gift of 50 million trees to The National Arbor Day Foundation to be planted over the next 50 years  – a gift of more than $50 million. (Business)