Arts & Entertainment
The New West: Of harbingers and a scientist ignored
Published
5 years agoon
Posted By
Outlaw PartnersBy Todd Wilkinson EBS ENVIRONMENTAL COLUMNIST
For many young people today, it might seem as if climate change has only recently become a topic of fierce debate and, depending upon one’s own world view, a subject ripe for deep denial.
“How can global warming be happening,” I heard one person remark in Bozeman, “if it snows on the first official day of summer?”
Intense discussion about the effects of climate change, in fact, have been going on for a long while, predating the arrival of members of Generation Z, those born between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s.
The very same summer that historic forest fires swept across Yellowstone National Park in 1988, members of the U.S. Senate were holding the first formal hearings on climate change in Washington, D.C.
When the late George Herbert Walker Bush was elected president later that year, his chosen director of the Environmental Protection Agency, William K. Reilly, and Bush’s pick for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, John Turner of Jackson Hole, accepted that the science of climate change was compelling and needed attention.
In many ways, the attitude of that Republican Bush Administration was more advanced than that of the Democratic Clinton Administration that followed it and critics today say critical time in adopting a strategy for addressing carbon emissions was squandered.
Many reports, analyses, computer models and field studies have undertaken documenting average rising temperatures trending over time along with forests and marshes drying out, new diseases appearing and water in river systems heading lower faster in summer. And yet “windshield biologists” still claim climate change isn’t happening.
One person who has influenced my own perspective is the now-retired entomologist Dr. Jesse Logan who witnessed ecological changes long before many others did. Logan spent decades studying beetle outbreaks as a researcher for the U.S. Forest Service. Today he lives in Emigrant where, as a passionate angler and backcountry skier, he’s paid attention to trends, not to fickle weather variations occurring year to year.
Logan predicted the loss of Greater Yellowstone’s whitebark pine forest decades ago caused by a combination of a pathogen called blister rust, beetle infestations hastened by climate change, forest fires and a general drying out of whitebark forests that leaves them more vulnerable to all of the above.
Whitebark pine produces tiny little nutlike seeds in their cones that nourish grizzly bears, Clark’s nutcrackers and red squirrels. With grizzlies, those edibles high in fat and protein help keep the bruins well-nourished and, for females, in better health to reproduce.
Scientific colleagues of Logan’s, like Dr. David Mattson, now also retired and who spent years working for the Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Study Team, have said whitebark pine has been one of the most important dietary staples for grizzlies in our region, fueling rising numbers of bears.
Now, most of the whitebark pine forest that existed a human generation ago is gone and the outlook for the trees that remain is bleak, prompting researchers to say that whitebark, as a major seed producer, is functionally extinct, forcing bears to seek other sources of nutrition.
Logan built an esteemed career over decades that made him world-renowned. But he realized how serious the administration of George W. Bush elected in 2000 was about downplaying the effects of global warming on whitebark and grizzly bears after Logan was featured in a story in High Country News during the summer of 2004.
While he was widely commended by Forest Service employees in the field for expressing candor, it came to his attention that a high-level official in Washington was upset.
“Everything I’ve learned to believe is that a free press remains the cornerstone of our Democracy,” he told me. “But all the media training I received as a senior scientist with the Forest Service is how to spin things in order to protect the agency.”
It was not unusual for Mark Rey, the former timber industry lobbyist and then Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for the George W. Bush Administration overseeing the Forest Service, to call up and remind scientists that “if you are ever asked about climate change, I know you’ll say the right thing,” Logan says.
“With climate change,” Logan adds, “I felt implicit and explicit censorship.”
Doug Honnold, a respected attorney now retired from the environmental law firm Earthjustice, represented conservation organizations that mounted a legal challenge to bear delisting.
Honnold helped prepare a proposal to give polar bears more federal protection, based largely on the argument that as the sea ice melts, thus eliminating the tool that bears use to access seals, they could be doomed.
In our part of the world, he and Logan wanted people to ponder the rapidly diminishing presence of whitebark when they think about grizzlies. On the land, climate change isn’t an abstraction.
“It’s already here,” Honnold told me a dozen years ago. “Jesse is somebody who saw global warming many years ago and started studying it and modeling it and unfortunately many of his projections came to be true.”
Todd Wilkinson is the founder of Bozeman-based Mountain Journal (mountainjournal.org) and is a correspondent for National Geographic. He’s also the author of “Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek” about famous Jackson Hole grizzly bear 399, which is available at mangelsen.com/grizzly.
The Outlaw Partners is a creative marketing, media and events company based in Big Sky, Montana.
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We all are familiar with using a limited palette, but do you use one? Do you know how to use a
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Event Details
We all are familiar with using a limited palette, but do you use one? Do you know how to use a limited palette to create different color combinations? Are you tired of carrying around 15-20 different tubes when you paint plein air? Have you ever wanted to create a certain “mood” in a painting but failed? Do you create a lot of mud? Do you struggle to achieve color harmony? All these problems are addressed in John’s workbook in clear and concise language!
Based on the bestselling “Limited Palatte, Unlimited Color” workbook written by John Pototschnik, the workshop is run by Maggie Shane and Annie McCoy, accomplished landscape (acrylic) and plein air (oil) artists,exhibitors at the Big Sky Artists’ Studio & Gallery and members of the Big Sky Artists Collective.
Each student will receive a copy of “Limited Palette, Unlimited Color” to keep and take home to continue your limited palette journey. We will show you how to use the color wheel and mix your own clean mixtures to successfully create a mood for your paintings.
Each day, we will create a different limited palette color chart and paint a version of a simple landscape using John’s directives. You will then be able to go home and paint more schemes using the book for guidance.
Workshop is open to painters (oil or acrylic) of any level although students must have some basic knowledge of the medium he or she uses. Students will be provided the book ($92 value), color wheel, value scale and canvas papers to complete the daily exercises.
Sundays, April 14, 21 and 28, 2024
Noon until 6PM.
$170.
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14 (Sunday) 12:00 pm - 28 (Sunday) 6:00 pm
Event Details
Trivia from 7 to 9 p.m. at The Waypoint in Town Center. Participation is free, food and beverages available.
Event Details
Trivia from 7 to 9 p.m. at The Waypoint in Town Center. Participation is free, food and beverages available.
Time
(Wednesday) 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Location
The Waypoint
50 Ousel Falls Rd