Articles by Eric de Place

Landscaping for water-runoff management

Not quite two months ago, my wife and I became homeowners. We love it. But in addition to the pride of ownership, there are also the worries: Can we really afford this house? Should we get earthquake insurance? Why does a small lake appear in the backyard when it rains?

That last one has been on our minds a lot lately. After 26 consecutive days of rain (and counting) here in Seattle, there's a frighteningly large pool of water that has swamped the roses and turned the lawn into something resembling the Everglades. My dad jokingly suggested that we stock it with trout. But I have a better idea: I'm going to landscape my way out of the problem.

The decline of hunters and anglers augers poorly for conservation

Over the weekend The Oregonian ran a good short series on the diminishing numbers of hunters and anglers in the state. While the state's population has doubled since 1950, the number of hunters and fishermen has declined. (Read the articles here, here, here, and here.) This is not just a Beaver State phenomenon -- it's true nationwide, and it may have some troubling implications for wildlife protection.

The Oregonian seems mostly concerned that without hunting and fishing, fewer people will want to protect wildlife and natural areas. I think that's wrong. Northwesterners are still getting out into nature in vast, teeming, trail-clogging hordes. In fact, wildlife watchers generate substantially more economic activity than hunters and anglers combined.

The more important question -- and the one that The Oregonian gives comparatively short shrift to -- is a basic policy question. As the paper has it:

... who will pay the costs of preserving habitat and managing fish and wildlife? Hunters and fishermen now foot most of the bill, not just through the steep license, tag and access fees they pay, but also through countless hours of volunteer labor, pulling out abandoned fences, cutting down water-sucking juniper trees, planting streamside willows and tending boxes of fish eggs.

In Oregon, as in many other states, hunting and fishing licenses, together with taxes on items like ammunition and fishing rods, pay for a huge variety of conservation benefits -- everything from fieldwork by professional biologists to refuges like Sauvie's Island on the Columbia River. Without those (declining) sources of revenue, the future of conservation may look even more bleak than it already does. So what to do?

Is buying up hunting rights a smart conservation move?

From the wilderness of British Columbia comes an innovative conservation tactic about which I am strongly ... ambivalent. Raincoast Conservation Foundation is acquiring the guide-outfitting hunting rights to five areas along the central BC coast, a remote area of vast wilderness home to the rare "spirit bear," among other species. The angle here is probably obvious: Raincoast bought the rights in order to put a stop to hunting.

Raincoast and other conservation groups have a strong interest -- one I share -- in protecting biodiversity and relatively pristine wild places. So what's my beef? It's a two-parter.

First, I'm not sure that hunting is bad for the species being hunted. Second, I'm not sure the price -- Can $1.35 million plus annual licensing fees -- is the best conservation use of the money.

Public lands: Mine, all mine

In an ominous new development, Congress may soon authorize private "patents" of public land, a wildly outdated and abused provision of an 1872 mining law. The patents are functionally equivalent to fee-simple purchases of the land, which raises the distinct possibility that private individuals and corporations could stake mining claims -- and then buy the land -- in national forests, wilderness areas, and even national parks.

Mining, as it is currently practiced, is so ecologically disastrous there are too many examples of environmental degradation to mention here. But the new Congressional legislation would actually worsen matters. Not only would it make it easy for mining corporations to snatch up public land at bargain-basement prices -- and never pay royalties on their profits -- but there's nothing preventing the buyer from dropping plans to mine and then re-selling the land as real estate. If mining doesn't pencil out, there's always the possibility of ski areas, amusement parks, condos ...

At risk are roughly 20 million acres of public lands. Already, nearly 900 patents have been staked inside national parks and that number is almost certain to rise under the new legislation. It's hard to imagine a worse deal for the American public, not to mention our ever-more fragile natural heritage that public lands safeguard.

Read the coverage in the Christian Science Monitor and the Seattle Times.