Photos

Posted by egable on July 8th, 2007 filed in Journalism

Longest Walk 2 (March 2008)

The Longest Walk 2 began Feb. 11 in San Francisco and will end July 11 in Washington, D.C. The journey is a recreation of the 1978 walk organized to raise awareness of Native American rights, which successfully halted a handful of congressional bills tribes believed would have undermined their sovereignty. The first Longest Walk also helped galvanize the political will to pass two new laws that tribes had been advocating for: the Child Welfare Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Organizers of the Longest Walk 2 hope members of Congress will be similarly receptive to their concerns in 2008.

During a stop in Pueblo on March 29, Sam Tame Horse Gallegos, a member of the Mescalero Apache and Southern Cheyenne tribes, said he hopes the walk will help people understand the importance of sacred sites to Native American tribes.

“Part of this walk is to protect our sacred sites throughout this nation that are constantly being destroyed by corporations and by nonnatives,” said Gallegos, who joined the walk for a week. “Everything is part of that sacred hoop. So, the rocks, the animals, the earth, the trees, the water, everything is connected together. We’re all connected.”

Bark Beetles

Hatchet in hand, Jeff Witcosky ascends a steep, snow-covered hillside in search of an unwelcome visitor to this picturesque mountain town. He is on the hunt for a predator with a voracious appetite that has already altered the landscape of 1.5 million acres in Colorado. This invader — the mountain pine beetle — is no bigger than the tip of a matchstick, but it has a big bite.

Witcosky begins chipping away at the bark of one tree that shows lightning damage, but it appears the insects have already left for another host, so he climbs further up the hillside until he finds another tree battered by the beetle. This time, his axe finds one of the pests, squishing the insect.

As an entomologist with the Forest Service’s Lakewood Service Center, Witcosky is in Woodland Park, Colo., this chilly day in March to demonstrate why the Forest Service has joined with town officials in an attempt to stop the beetle’s advance into the town’s ponderosa pines.

Downhill, huge tree-cutting machines are eating beetle-infested ponderosa, depriving the beetles of food and shelter and hopefully keeping them at bay. The effort is part of a 150-acre, $52,000 forest thinning project where pine beetle infestation during the past four to five years has left a large amount of standing dead timber.

South Rampart Shooting Range (February 2008)

Earlier this month, the Forest Service and Colorado Division of Wildlife announced that they would address health and safety concerns at the South Rampart Shooting Range in the mountains above Colorado Springs, a site that has received criticism due to trash accumulation, rowdy behavior and noise from gunfire.

The agencies’ plan calls for reconstruction and improved maintenance at the 19-year-old range but does not resolve all of the safety concerns there. A National Rifle Association-sponsored technician has recommended supervision for the range, but the Forest Service cannot afford a range master and turning the area’s management to a private company has proven impractical so far because of the high up-front costs of setting up at the remote range.