Natural Resource Management ISAT 424
Required Reading:
The debate between cat lovers and bird lovers is not a new one and steeped with passion on both sides. The debate usually ends in a stalemate: cats kill birds but it’s not the cat’s fault – it’s their nature. Rarely does the discussion deviate from these two fundamental issues. […]
Rachel Carson…she’s one of my heroes. This year is the 64th anniversary of Rachael Carson’s book, Silent Spring.
We can’t plop an expanse of solar panels just anywhere and expect it to be right. Solar panels require special conditions to function at their best, and every locality planning to welcome solar panels needs to develop a strategy for optimal placement.
In our quest to profit from the land and feed a hungry planet with annual crops such as corn and soybeans, we have abandoned one of the most powerful conservation practices known to science – contour farming.
Beef cattle biosecurity and stream exclusion are very important to this large animal veterinarian. His First Week on the Job On his first week on the job as a veterinarian back in 1993, Scott Nordstrom treated a case that would stick with him the rest of his life. Shockingly, half […]
It’s happening. Throughout the 64,000 square miles of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, there are small watersheds being restored, one by one, slowly but surely. We are going to achieve a restored Bay, one small watershed at a time.
Virginia Wildlife Magazine published my article “Fish Need Leaves” in their Jan/Feb 2015 issue. More information about Virginia’s premier wildlife magazine can be found here: www.dgif.virginia.gov/virginia.wildlife Excluding livestock from streams is a first big step for agriculture in restoring water resources and complying with the law that the US Congress passed […]
“Well-managed” farmland and other working “open-spaces” should not be taxed when they provide ecosystem services exceeding the cost of public services for the land. In many states including Virginia, local governments have a special way of collecting revenue from their constituents that have farmland or “open-space” called “land-use” taxation. It’s a method […]
Note: The text of this post was first published by the Augusta Free Press on May 7, 2026 The Environmental Protection Agency has abdicated its duty to protect Americans and the environment from dirty air. On February 12, 2026, the EPA published its final rule to repeal the Endangerment Finding […]
Celebrate the victory—the defeat of Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), a 600-mile, high-pressure, fracked-gas pipeline planned to rip through West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. It was a six-year fight for people’s land rights, our water, environmental justice, and common decency.
It was an event of a lifetime—sitting in the courtroom of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) hearing arguments in the U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River case on Monday, February 24—the case that will determine if a dirt path, known as the Appalachian Trail, is actually “land” or not.
We have a small farm in Swoope along Trimbles Mill Road. The Middle River flows through it for half a mile. We call it the River Farm. The cows were fenced away from the river in 2004, and we planted trees along the banks. Sycamores Hold the Line I walk […]
I looked up and saw smoke rising from a field far upstream. I stopped in wonder. It can’t be smoke, I thought, because it’s brown. Then I realized it was a giant cloud of windblown soil reaching over a hundred feet into the air. Then I saw the tractor. The […]
Imagine paddling a canoe upstream forever. That’s my metaphor for environmental activism. Activists have been paddling against the current with the Clean Water Act on their backs ever since its passage 54 years ago. We have made a lot of progress, but it’s been against the current the whole time—and […]
Some people wonder whether the climate crisis is real. Hasn’t Earth’s climate always changed? Yes, it has, and there are valid reasons why our climate has gone through periods of warming and cooling for millennia. We are now in a warming period, and this one is caused by an increase […]
Galveston, Texas, January 12, 2025. It was raining. Jeanne and I drove through a subdivision of houses on stilts high enough to park cars under. Water pooled everywhere except for the road that was several inches higher than the yards filled with water. Jim Stevenson’s driveway entrance was hidden among […]