Mason Voehl is a climber, a writer, a philosopher, and an outdoor educator. He recently completed a graduate degree in environmental philosophy at the University of Montana and lives now in the Black hills of South Dakota. Here he writes about an experience as an instructor on a Wild Rockies Field Institute course when the forest floor suddenly …
An Owl with a Parachute
I never knew a northern spotted owl could parachute vertically through the forest. This delightful image came from a researcher who spent eight years studying the owls in the Oregon Cascades. He had personally witnessed a descent and could hardly contain his excitement when he told us about it. To find the reticent Strix for …
What a Christmas Tree Taught me about Politics
Although it happened nearly three decades ago, I still remember the smugness with which the visiting professor announced to the class that his op-ed had been published. The Washington Post had printed a piece he wrote about how nobody should be cutting down Christmas trees in order to bring them into their living room for …
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Blame and Confusion on a Hothouse Earth
Two eye-catching publications on climate change in the last couple of weeks have generated a storm of reactions. A Northern hemisphere summer filled with fire, death, and heat means nobody is contesting the broad contours of either piece. There has, however, been quite a lot dispute about the details. Nathaniel Rich’s New York Times Magazine …
Orangutans, Human Landscapes, and the Processes that Made them Both
In a recent article in Anthropocene Magazine about the future of orangutans, Brandon Keim observes “the key to their survival is us not killing them.” You would be forgiven for thinking that Keim is a master of the blindingly obvious after he offers a statement like this. We all already know that orangutans don’t fare …
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Reshaping Wildlife
Earlier this winter, I performed some mental gymnastics on this blog trying to figure out whether I could ethically justify putting a camera trap in the woods to spy on shy carnivores. I think I decided it was okay…..kind of. Even though there is no doubt the bait and the cameras are an intrusion, it seemed …
Climate Change and Buried Treasure
When the Milltown Dam upstream of Missoula, Montana came down in 2008 and the impoundment behind it was drained, a hidden treasure trove of century-old lumber was revealed. Hundreds of logs, buried in sediments, had been accumulating behind the dam throughout its life. The lumber had been cut from the surrounding forests during the early …
Camera Traps and Lynx in the Age of Humans
The attractant made me gag. We had just finished setting up the motion-activated camera in the snowy Montana woods. We were putting the finishing touches to a site that we hoped might lure in an elusive lynx or fisher. The final task was to suspend from nearby trees a couple of small sponges soaked in …
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Champagne, Truffles, and Climate Change
For a few scant years, the challenges of climate change lay only in the future. The prospect of transformed landscapes and disrupted ecologies was a threat that could be – and was – easily ignored. Although atmospheric scientists assured anyone who would listen that real problems lay ahead, interest in doing anything serious about it …
Salmon, Forests, and Protein Factories
It only took a day and a half. That was all the rainfall required to turn the lethargic assembly of fish milling around at the mouth of the creek into a full-on salmon run. For nearly two weeks, I had watched a growing school of pink salmon slowly circulate where the dwindling fresh water from …
The Plastocene 