My partner in marriage passes

Friends/readers, my wife of nearly 31 years passed on last Monday. She was a double-lung transplant recipient, for which she was given seven more years of life on this oftentimes tired planet of ours. I miss her terribly. You may read Monica’s obituary in this link to the Free-Press newspaper of Burlington, Vermont. Monica earned her first bachelor’s degree, in German language, at the University of Vermont there and went on to serve an enlistment in the U.S. Air Force, serving in West Berlin and at the National Security Agency in Maryland. Here’s a photo of my wife exploring the Great Outdoors in New Mexico  a few years ago. A dream of her’s was to move to Arizona next year. I have not decided what to do, but will, in all likelihood, be leaving Pennsylvania as I am extremely tired of the state and its withered landscape.

Ted Turner scolds nation for sliding on climate change

The media mogul of conservation fame addressed the Colorado Conservation Voters at their recent annual luncheon. Read a newspaper’s take on it all right here. Wake up, down there inside the Beltway. The globe is knocking on your campaign-contributions-riddled door.

Oldest living trees, Bristlecone pines, face threats

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/science/28pines.html?ref=science

Mysteries that howl and hunt

Nice feature about carnivores. Coyotes, that is.

The U.S. Senate and oil

Read this NY Times editorial. Then remember what a campaign contribution dollar from Big Oil buys. Hey, corporations don’t help bankroll political campaigns just for the hell of it. They expect results. And it looks like they’re succeeding again on legislation that would overhaul how the country deals with offshore oil drilling.

Feds fund wildlilfe corridor research in Rockies

The Wildlands Project – now Wildlands Network – revisited, with federal assistance. About time. I remember having rather pointed discussions about rewildling, habitat restoration and wildlife corridors with a dimwitted “outdoors” writer here in Pennsylvania about this very topic. Why bother, he said repeatedly. All’s well as long as you can stick your rifle out your pickup truck’s window and blast away at the white-tailed deer that just pranced across the road.

Read about wildlife corridor research in this piece from Montana.

Welcome to former fish habitat – now a cow mud puddle

This scene was photographed a dozen or so miles from Wellsboro, Tioga County, Pa. a few years back. Nice stream, huh? Check out the cow droppings in what used to be a native trout stream.

EPA comes up with ‘pollution diet’ for Chesapeake Bay

Unhappy with state plans, the EPA has taken a hard line in announcing a 15-year plan to accelerate cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay. Read about it here. (I don’t hold out much hope, though, for homeowners within the watershed to stop fertilizing their lawns and polluting local streams).

Off-roaders in the Jersey Pinelands: Destruction continues

One of the largest remaining natural areas in what license plates declare to be “the Garden State” is under attack, as never before, by off-road cowboys and cowgirls. Read about the debacle here. I highly recommend, by the way, the new coffee-table-size book, “Thrillcraft,” for reading by all conservationists.

Destruction of southern New Jersey natural areas by off-roaders mounting

Cretins, all of them as far as I’m concerned. What’s so damn difficult about enjoying a wildland by hiking across it on your own two feet? Read about the Jersey debacle right here.