Tom's Turn: Notes from our Senior Editor

Schwarzenegger's new currency

April 15, 2004

Schwarzenegger's new currency

California's John Muir quarter

John Muir is the father of the Sierra Club, and the Sierra Club is the father of Earthjustice, so we proudly claim that the new California quarter announced by Governor Schwarzenegger in March is a second cousin of this organization. (Earthjustice was founded in 1971 as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund by three San Francisco attorneys working pro bono for the Sierra Club. We changed our name in 1997.) Word has it that the governor made the decision himself, and even prevailed on the designer to make Muir's figure larger than in the earlier rendition and to add the condor. The redesign prompted a letter-writer in the San Francisco Chronicle to wonder if Muir would be comfortable being depicted as being taller than Half Dome. The coin is to appear in 2005.

Crisis or Opportunity?

The Chinese character for these two words is the same. A tough drought in the drainage of the Colorado River has led to a situation where Lake Powell, the reservoir behind Glen Canyon Dam, has fallen to half full, and exposed miles and miles of exquisite sandstone canyons that were drowned as the huge reservoir slowly filled. (Lake Foul, as writer Ed Abbey called it, is nearly 200 miles long and can hold 28 million acre-feet of water.)

The Cathedral in the Desert, in the 1960s

Photo: Dick Norgaard

This state of affairs has people urging the Bureau of Reclamation to drain the reservoir once and for all and let this incredible place restore itself. Now that would be fun to watch. The photograph is of the Cathedral in the Desert, the most extraordinary natural place I've ever been in. This photo was taken by Dick Norgaard in the mid-sixties. Soon after, the reservoir waters entered the Cathedral and eventually filled it nearly to the brim. But now, after several years of drought, there are only a few feet of water in the bottom of the sublime grotto. Let's bring it all the way back.

The Wait Is On

Around the middle of March, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case Earthjustice brought to force the Bureau of Land Management to enforce its own rules meant to protect wilderness study areas from damage caused by off-road vehicles in Utah. We won at the trial court, won again at the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, but now the Supreme Court is reviewing the appeals court decision, which is worrisome -- the court could easily have refused to review the case and that would have been the end of it. If the court really goes off on a tear, it could severely limit citizens' rights to force the government to play by its own rules, which could be a serious setback. We'll let you know what happens. Meanwhile, here's what the rules are meant to protect against. When shown to the justices, they made quite an impression, we're told. Photos are courtesy of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a wonderful organization.

Bitterroot Valley, MT, after logging in 1909

Photo: Forest Service

Finally, a delicious story from the Sierra Nevada. According to an Associated Press story, Chad Hanson, director of the John Muir Project, was looking at this photograph in a brochure put out by the Forest Service to promote its "Forests for a Future" plan, which would triple the pace of logging on national forests in the Sierra Nevada. Hanson remembered seeing the picture elsewhere and finally tracked it down. It's supposed to show what a natural California pine forest looked like before fire suppression led to overgrown underbrush. Well. Turns out the picture was taken in the Bitterroot Valley in Montana in 1909. Following logging. Oops. The Forest Service was unapologetic.

Tom Turner, Senior Editor
yourturn@earthjustice.org