NewMexiKen

Backpacking Destinations – Paradise Found — An excellent, reasonably balanced article on Glen Canyon and Lake Powell from Backpacker Southwest Editor Annette McGivney. Drought has reduced water levels 100 feet so “that it’s suddenly possible for backpackers to explore arches, alcoves, and Anasazi art that has been underwater for a generation.”

Link via Ah, Wilderness!. Thanks!

are needed “to recoup the shortfall from a bone-dry March” in Colorado according to a report from the Denver Post.

From Wired News:

Today, more than 4,400 GPS-toting travelers have participated in the Degree Confluence Project, covering nearly all the easily accessible points in the United States and Western Europe, and putting a sizeable dent into other populated portions of the globe.

In recent months, hard-core trekkers have ventured to remote areas from Antarctica to the jungle of East Timor to Svalbard, an Arctic territory bordering on the Barents Sea.

In all, project coordinators estimate that about 3,000 confluence points — the intersection of whole-number latitude and longitude lines — have been visited, out of a total of 16,000 global confluence points located on land and meet the goal of the project. If one includes intersections of latitude and longitude lines at sea, about 64,000 confluences exist worldwide.

Always interesting, Dahlia Lithwick discusses Monday’s Supreme Court hearing on Norton v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Of all our bizarre advertising conventions, perhaps the oddest is this: Whether one has just purchased a new Ford Explorer, Volkswagen Touraeg, or a Jeep, the good folks in Advertising Land would have it that the first thing one does is high-tail it to the desert, careen up the side of a red rock canyon, and park that now-filthy new vehicle on a precipice overlooking the Utah sunset. True, most of us just choose to celebrate the purchase of a new car with imprudent sex in the back seat. But as far as American advertisers are concerned, we are sexier, thinner, and happier when off-roading it in the vast western wilderness.

I mention all this because today’s Supreme Court case ostensibly concerns the effects of off-road vehicles on potential wilderness areas. Which sounds like it might make for some glorious, wind-blows-through-your-hair oral argument. But this case is ultimately just about statutory construction, and the only thing blowing through your hair at the high court today is the sound of Justice Antonin Scalia’s infinite follow-up questions. I also mention all this because—try as I may—I can’t understand the appeal of buzzing around the wilderness in an ATV, digging up the fragile cryptobiotic crust, eroding the delicate soil, and polluting the rivers. But someone will enlighten me, I am sure.

Read more.

From The Arizona Republic, some new thoughts on the Tucson mountain lions. An excerpt:

Ironically, the source of the problem isn’t animal behavior. When people in urbanizing areas near the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area began feeding the wildlife, it led to an unusually large prey base compared with similar habitats that are not sliced by the urban edge, say Game and Fish biologists.

The prey attracted the lions that became a problem, and new lions will move down the mountain to replace any that are removed – unless people stop feeding prey animals, such as javelina.

It’s the people who need to be managed and, unlike the old Game and Fish constituency of anglers and hunters, these people do not have an outdoorsman’s understanding of wildlife. Nor do these city folks foot the bill. Game and Fish is funded almost entirely through the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and federal excise taxes on sporting goods.

Read more.