Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Writer Bruce Barcott, in The New York Times magazine, has a riveting story on the toll cats take on the environment.

Some experts:

In the scrubland canyons of Southern California, researchers have found that where coyote populations decline, the nonbird-eating carnivores are often replaced by domestic cats. Cat predation then leads to a decline in the abundance of native birds like the California quail, the greater roadrunner and the cactus wren.

… I traveled to Portland, Ore., to see the Wildlife Care Center, an emergency room operated by the city’s Audubon Society. Every year the center cares for 3,000 injured and diseased animals. In the process, center officials have compiled a rare and significant set of data. Since 1995, they have analyzed how all the wild animals admitted have been injured. The results are remarkable. Estimates for cat-injured animals, mostly birds, accounted for nearly one-quarter of all admittances. Other causes paled: car accidents (14 percent), window strikes (5 percent), dog-caused injuries (3 percent).

“The biggest complaint we get is cats,” Bob Sallinger, conservation director of the Portland Audubon Society, told me. “The statistics are actually misleading. We only record an injury as cat-caused if the person saw the cat injure the bird. I’m kind of a stickler on that. A huge number of the injuries we record as ‘unknown’ are consistent with cat injuries, and the birds recorded as ‘orphaned’ are often that way because their mothers were caught by cats. . . . We often say that up to 40 percent of the injuries we see are cat related.”

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Hall and Hall is a leading seller of Western ranches. The company, in business for 61 years, has headquarters in Billings, Montana, and more salesmen in branch offices in Bozeman and Missoula; Jackson, Wyoming; Sun Valley, Idaho; Denver and two more Colorado cities; Nebraska and Texas.

Sample listing, among dozens of ranches Hall and Hall has for sale at the moment:

Encompassing 255,371± deeded acres and a 500±-acre lake … Flanked by two large rivers flowing 80 miles along two of the ranch borders … 70 percent of this land lies within … the largest wetland in the world. Currently producing 8,000 to 10,000 calves a year and farming soybeans on 12,000± tilled acres with far greater potential. Very high quality ranch improvements and residences with a main airstrip and auxiliary runways for the cow camps. $50,000,000 …

If you’re interested and want to see the property, keep in mind, it’s called Fazenda Santo Antonio do Paraiso, and it’s in Brazil.

Hall and Hall, you see, has responded to the current mess in the U.S. ranch market — prices soaring, sellers with unrealistic expectations, buyers holding back, causing a slowdown in sales — by listing ranches in South America, where apparently bargains can still be had.

Another sample listing, from Hall and Hall’s summer 2007 newsletter:

Bahia Mala (a ranch in Chile): Located along 2.5± miles of Pacific beachfront, this ecologically-rich gemstone property includes a comfortable lodge, 4 cabins with views of the ocean and up a river valley to a snowcapped volcano. These 1,730± acres augmented by 17,000+ acres of 30-year concession are truly a paradise 12 miles south of Raul Marin Balmaceda. $3,500,000 …

Or maybe you would prefer to buy:

Estancia Pilpilcura (in Argentina): Only 45 miles NE of Bariloche, this classic Patagonia ranch has 7,375± acres with 3+ miles of the Pichileufu River, a medium–sized stream known for excellent trout fishing. Residential compound overlooks the river with a superbly constructed 8,000± SF owner’s residence plus staff accommodations. The property is a haven for wildlife — eagle, red deer and valley quail. Pilpilcura Creek crosses the ranch for 2+ miles. Easy access to the airport. This ranch is a recreational treasure complemented by a working cattle operation. $3,300,000 …

Hall and Hall’s website is here, and the summer 2007 newsletter is here.

My take? Don’t know much about it really — might be good for South American locals and landscapes, or not. But it’s definitely one more sign that we’re in a new Gilded Age, in which those with tons of money to burn, and their business associates, bless their hearts, have their way regardless.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Most people want to protect the environment — but they rank many other issues as more important.

That’s the dilemma environmentalists face, whenever they attempt politics.

It’s documented anew — in powerful terms — in voter surveys collected by American Environics (a cutting-edge consultant) for the Nathan Cummings Foundation (green-politics).

The surveys show, for example:

Even self-described environmentalists place gay marriage, abortion, and illegal immigration higher (in importance) than the environment.

For all voters, the environment ranked dead last.

Recent surveys have confirmed this finding. A late April 2007 CBS News/New York Times poll found that a majority of voters (51 percent) could still vote for a candidate who did not share their views on environmental issues.

Check out page 5 of the consultant’s report — and the rest of it is also worth reading — here. An Atlantic Monthly blogger covers it here, and the New York Times covers it as the second item here.

How can environmental issues break through?

They can, when they’re immediate, in voters’ backyards and drinking water and inhalations of air. Once in a while, environmentalists — or catastrophes — succeed in making the green issues immediate, at which point the voters respond.

That’s the essential challenge in getting action on our biggest environmental issue, global warming.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

For some grins or teeth-gnashing, thanks to writer Kimi Yoshino, check out this LA Times story about another ominous trend — the “luxury” camping experience for those who “only sorta kinda want to rough it.”

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

What’s 7 feet tall … costs $38,000 … gets greedy gas mileage (14 miles a gallon) … and was attacked by two masked vandals after midnight in our nation’s capital?

Of course I don’t condone it. But the way the Washington Post writes it up, it’s kind of an amusing window into 2007 society.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

See the full story about Cheney’s new status as a national monument, from political satirist Andy Borowitz at the Huffington Post:

Aides to Mr. Cheney confirmed that being a national monument gives the vice president not only immunity from subpoenas, but also a draft deferment in perpetuity.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

That’s correct, if you are in Montana or Wyoming (or the Dakotas for that matter), there’s no use buying the hottest new technology on the planet. Because Apple’s new iPhone doesn’t work in your state. For the sad, sad stories, click here and, alas, here.

Dennis Wagner, one of a handful of quality writer/reporters at the Gannettized Arizona Republic, offers up an excellent story about the unfortunate decline of Arizona Highways, the iconic, photo-filled magazine of an iconic, vista-filled state. On one level, it’s a story of the Internet revolution, straight and simple. Falling from a high point in the 1970s of more than half a million subscribers, the magazine now has just 182,000, and the trend continues down, at least in part because of the number of reading and viewing alternatives available on the Web.

But the Arizona Highways diminution is also a story of extraordinary business mismanagement; the state-supported magazine’s leaders apparently thought prospective readers would learn of its existence by telepathy:

[Bob] Early, the former editor, said he pleaded for direct-mail promotional campaigns but always lost. “I kept saying, ‘You can’t sell anything if people don’t know about the product,’ ” Early said. “But they just gave up. They were running out of money. And they just quit marketing.”

Apparently, the story of Arizona Highways’ fall is also one of editorial hubris. At least, that’s the story told by a long and entertaining list of comments at the bottom of the piece, many of them from rejected or otherwise disrespected writers and photographers. A few of the choicer comments: “bland and tepid writing”; “there is a certain arrogance or snobbery on the editors part to accept `new blood’”; and (my favorite) “It seems like there is an article about Sedona in every issue.”

I hate to end this story on a sad note, and for every digital-revolution loser there’s at least one winner. As you watch Arizona Highways ride off toward the sunset, then, take a look slightly off to your right, into the Northwest, where you’ll find crosscut.com, a new regional news site founded by a bunch of folks from the old Seattle Weekly. It’s a pleasant combination of original work and links to stories from news organizations, large and small, scattered about Seattle and its “great nearby.”

I interviewed publisher David Brewster a few months ago, just before Crosscut debuted, and he said the publication would focus on people who are looking to find solutions to regional problems. It does, but in a sprightly way that’s better-written and less ghoulishly snarky than most Web-zines. Give it a look now and again.

Like many people, I have a hard time feeling sorry for Republican presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona. He always seems so utterly self-sufficient and confident — even pugnaciously cocksure — of every position he takes that empathy just feels wrong, somehow. He’s withstood the rigors of the Hanoi Hilton, after all, and become a national figure; why would he need my pity or concern about anything?

Still, I do feel for Senator McCain today because it seems increasingly likely that that’s the highest office he’s going to reach in this lifetime — senator. A new Mason-Dixon poll of likely voters in the key early state of Iowa shows McCain tied for 5th among Republican presidential aspirants, pulling just 6 percent of the vote. And when you once were thought of as the man to beat for the Republican nomination, but now are effectivelly tied with knuckle-draggers like Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, who have said publicly they do not believe in evolution, the reversal of fortune has to hurt.

Yes, some of the blame for the low level of public esteem rests with never-to-be-President McCain himself. No one told him to cozy up to plummeting lame duck President George W. Bush or make unswayable support for the despised Iraq War his primary identifying characteristic. But some of the bad things happening to Sen. McCain just aren’t his fault.

Like this, courtesy of the McCain tormentors over at Wonkette:

Yes, those are a bunch of pictures of John McCain’s wife, Cindy, as published in Harper’s Bazaar magazine. And yes, the now-never-to-be-first lady is standing on a tire.

Last week, George Bush and the other G8 leaders engaged in a tug-of-war over what to do about climate change — but nobody noticed. Neither global warming nor the G8 negotiations made the top 5 news stories of the week; instead, the news was dominated by the 2008 presidential race, immigration, U.S.-Russia relations, Scooter Libby’s sentence, and Paris Hilton. The presidential race, alone, took up 15 percent of the news coverage–and the election’s still 17 months away.

Writing for his “Framing Science” blog, Matthew C. Nisbet says that, according to the Pew News Index, for the first quarter of 2007 global warming took up only one percent of news coverage, with other environmental issues together accounting for less than another one percent. The headlines were instead dominated by the presidential race, the Iraq War, and Anna Nicole Smith. (Okay, I’ll give them a pass on the Iraq War.) Nisbet quotes from the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

With coverage reaching into 30% of the newshole during the height of the saga, the Smith story was the third biggest on cable for the entire first quarter of the year. It filled 7% of the newshole, finishing behind only the Iraq policy debate and the presidential race. On daytime cable, with its greater focus on live coverage and breaking events, it proved to be the biggest story (11%). There were also differences by cable channel. For the quarter, it was the Fox News Channel that devoted the most time to the subject. The Smith saga accounted for 10% of the network’s overall coverage, narrowly finishing as the second biggest story behind the Iraq policy debate (also at 10%).

If dead or incarcerated celebrities are the only topics getting media attention these days, maybe environmentalists should co-opt Smith’s image for a global warming campaign along the lines of the tasteless Doc Marten/Kurt Cobain ads. Meanwhile, I’m looking for an isolated cabin in the Idaho wilderness to ride out the last six months or so of the 2008 election cycle.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

It’s been a constant cultural dynamic in my Baby Boomer lifetime: the belief, held by many people, that our collective sins will cause the world to end badly, any day now.

The apocalypse could come at the hands of a vengeful god or by Russian missiles or homo sapiens overloading the planet or whatever other threat might appeal to you.

Sometimes I dismiss the Supreme Fear as too wacky, or too out-of-my-control-to-worry-about. And sometimes I see signs that the apocalypse already happened a while ago while I wasn’t paying enough attention — like in this Las Vegas story.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

This is an amusing and melancholy comment on our political system: A person like Jim Gibbons, basing a campaign on a single-minded hot-button issue (low taxes), can get elected despite his apparent sloppiness, incompetence and wide-ranging ignorance.

A New York Times writer, Jennifer Steinhauer, profiles Gibbons and the politics that elected him Nevada governor last November — and his ongoing black comedy act:

In the last few months, Mr. Gibbons, a Republican, announced a plan to turn coal into jet fuel to raise money (problematic, as Nevada has no coal to speak of) and proposed paying for a $3.8 billion shortfall in highway construction money by selling water rights under state highways (it turns out the state did not actually own the rights).

He told a local editorial board he could not pronounce the name of his energy adviser because she was “Indian” — she is Turkish — and vetoed a bill that would stop budget-busting tax breaks for builders of “green” buildings before issuing an executive order to end them anyway (with the exception of four companies).

Mr. Gibbons is the subject of a Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry into whether he failed to report gifts from a military contractor while serving in Congress (before he became governor). The governor, who would not be interviewed, has denied wrongdoing, and once suggested that Democratic operatives might have paid off newspaper reporters who have written about his troubles with the F.B.I.

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

This collision fascinates me.

Edward Rothstein — holding degrees from Yale, Columbia and the University of Chicago — is the roaming “cultural critic-at-large” for the New York Times, according to an online bio.

Rothstein came out West recently to experience the tourist attractions run by the Hualapais on their Grand Canyon reservation, next to the national park.

Rothstein began by paying $74.95 for the “Spirit Package,” which includes a walk on the tribe’s new Skywalk — a glass-floored overhang on the rim, extending over a huge dropoff. (High Country News reported the Skywalk’s development in February.) And Rothstein went further: He also took a “nondescript 20-minute jaunt” in a Hualapai motorboat on the canyon-bottom river, and $125 worth of Hualapai helicopter rides, and visited the Hualapais’ fake cowboy and Indian villages.

His scathing review includes descriptions such as:

(At the Skywalk) you deposit all cameras at a security desk, slip on yellow surgical booties and stride out onto a horseshoe-shaped walkway with transparent sides and walls that extends 70 feet into space, seemingly unsupported.

Below the floor’s five layers of glass (protected from scratches by the booties) can be seen the cracked, sharp-edged rock face of the canyon’s rim and a drop of thousands of feet to the chasm below. The promise is the dizzying thrill of vertigo.

… The words imprinted on the $20 souvenir photographs taken of many venturesome souls herald completion of a daredevil stunt: “I did it!!!”

(Read on …)