Coyote Crossing

Blythe, if anything, is worse

I have a personal connection to the Ivanpah Valley, so that’s what you’ve been reading about here for the most part.

On Wednesday the California Energy Commission approved a solar project that would be twice the size of Ivanpah. The contractor is

Desert tortoises on film

I meant to post this when it came out in March. Don’t know why I didn’t. This is a wonderful if downbeat video by the USGS on what it’s like to be a desert tortoise these days. It’s broken up into four parts for YouTube purposes.

Part 1:

Part

Wow.

This is some great desert writing with a fantastic ending, and I mean that “fantastic” in a couple senses. Go read it … (continues)

Desert Solar Is Not Renewable Energy

[A sneak preview of a piece I wrote this week for the Desert Protective Council’s upcoming Educational Bulletin. I cribbed a few sentences from my earlier post on ancient blackbrush forests.]

As the reality of human-generated climate change grows

Rock squirrel, rock art

At Grapevine Canyon, Newberry Mountains, … (continues)

First take on the California Desert Protection Act of 2010

Dianne Feinstein introduces her much-ballyhooed desert protection bill in the Senate today. Some desert activists have been working with her staff to craft the bill, working under a pledge of confidentiality. Other activists (myself included) have

Protecting the Mojave Preserve

I’ve joined the Board of Directors of the Mojave National Preserve Conservancy, a “friends of” group whose mission is to “preserve, protect, and promote the unique natural beauty, ecological integrity, and rich cultural history” of the

Mojave Wolf

Via Basin and Range Watch, a site you should be checking out regularly, this excerpt of a story from Dennis Casebier’s Mojave Road guide (Tales of the Mojave Road):

Last wolf of the East Mojave: Pauline Watson - standing, right - trapped this

Lasthenia

… (continues)

Morning

Cactus wren call and the smell of blackbrush. Four months since I woke in the Joshua tree forest. Sage sparrows and wind through pointed leaves. Four months ago I awoke after sleeping little. Patches of snow in the shade of Joshua trees.

There are

Regarding the Mexican Wolf

Taking a break from educating the public at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

I’ve been quiet here for a little bit. Some of the reason is that I’ve been busy with a couple of other projects, one of which I’ll be saying more about here in a few

Solar Colonialism

The introductory chapter of historian Gray Brechin’s must-read Imperial San Francisco is entitled The Urban Maelstrom. The chapter begins with a reference to Edgar Allen Poe’s A Descent Into The Maelstrom, a tale of the now-eponymous sea storm with

Lasthenia in Antelope Valley

… (continues)

Desert solar updates

Arduous day of job huntage here, but I wanted to share a couple things of a non-April Fool nature.

A couple weeks back climate activist Joseph Romm posted a screed on his blog Climate Progress against those shortsighted people who would blithely

Dragon Trees and Spanish Needles

One of the steadiest jokes in the plant world — for rather nerdly definitions of the word “joke” — is the degree to which a person must constantly relearn the proper Latin names of plants. Just as soon as you get used to calling something a

Help promote the Mother Road NM

Promoted from the comments on this post, a request from Jim Conkle

It seems there are some very passionate people on this group so I am going to ask each of you to put your thinking caps on and add your input to this project. How, other then all

Route 66 national monument?

Some of the best news I’ve heard in a very long time, from the Riverside Press-Enterprise:

Preservationists worried about military expansion and renewable energy development in the California desert are pitching a plan to create a vast national

Tortoise alert: letters needed

From the Center for Biological Diversity:

Last year, the Army moved more than 750 tortoises off of pristine desert lands in order to expand its Fort Irwin army base in California’s Mojave desert. Not all tortoises were monitored, but of those that

US National Park Meme

I call the Mojave National Preserve “The Park” as often as not, but I’m painfully aware that it isn’t one. The difference between “Preserve” and “Park” status? Hunting is allowed in National Preserves. Letting hunters shoot things in the Preserve

Ripley Desert Woodland

Snow remains this afternoon, thin glazed patches underneath the junipers. Ravens fly in pairs through the Western Mojave sky. A pair approaches, not seeing us behind a stand of juniper and Joshua. First one and then the other double-takes, stumbles