JOURNALISM

History, Science, Mythology, and the First Americans
June 2023 – El Palacio
The discovery of 23,000-year-old human footprints at White Sands National Park upends much of what we thought we knew about the peopling of the Americas and forces us to rethink Indigenous histories, what we teach our children, and how we approach science. Read >>

What Does Forest Restoration in the U.S. Southwest Look Like in the Age of Climate Change?
October 2022 – Ensia
After megafires in the region, some forest systems may never return to their pre-fire conditions. Now, ecologists are redefining how forest ecosystems might be restored in a way that increases resiliency. Read >>

I Change into My Levi’s That I Bought With Last Year’s Potato Harvest Money
Querencia and New Mexico’s Manito Diaspora
June 2022 – El Palacio
Rosie left for Colorado when she was 6 months old. Her family travelled by covered wagon, crossing the mountains and making their way north. The year was 1921. José Delores Cordova, Rosie’s father and a recently returned veteran of the First World War, simply couldn’t make ends meet farming and ranching the high desert plateau north of Taos, New Mexico. He and his wife, Maria Refugio “Ruth” Martínez, had gotten wind of decent-paying jobs in the sugar beet fields outside of Fort Collins, Colorado, run by the Great Western Sugar Company, and so they left their ancestral village of Cerro and joined hundreds of other Hispanic New Mexico families—los Manitos—migrating north for better economic opportunities. Read >>

Panama’s Indigenous Groups Wage High-Tech Fight for Their Lands
With help from U.S. organizations, Panama’s Indigenous people are using satellite images and other technologies to identify illegal logging and incursions by ranchers on their territory. But spotting the violations is the easy part — getting the government to act is far harder.
May 2022 – Yale Environment 360
On a blazing February morning, the Indigenous Wounaan territorial monitoring coordinator, two forest technicians, and a local farmer climbed into the mountains outside the fishing and farming community of Majé, near Panama’s Pacific coast. As they crossed the river, the farmer stopped and pointed up at an anteater in a tree. It was unusual to see this type of anteater here, he said — anteaters generally live higher up in the mountains, but deforestation has pushed them out of their natural habitat. Read >>

Experts discuss long-term ecological impacts of Dec. 15 windstorm
Carson National Forest Soil and Wildlife Will Need Years to Recover
January 2022 – Taos News
New Mexico’s forests regularly see powerful storm systems with intense winds. The December storm, however, stood out for what some climatologists labeled its “ludicrous intensity.” Read>>

New Mexico's Birds - Climate Change is Here
New Mexico has some of the best birding in the country, although challenges threaten many species and force others into unfamiliar habitats.
April 2021 – New Mexico Magazine
EARLY LAST SEPTEMBER, I walked up from the wetlands at Río Fernando Park and onto the streets of Taos. I’d passed the afternoon photographing a pair of Cooper’s hawks and a massive great horned owl along the banks of the little creek that cuts through the center of town.
The hawks didn’t seem to mind. The male glanced my way, then returned his focus to the grassy bank of the creek, where, I was sure, he’d spotted dinner. I held my breath, waiting for the bird to pounce. He did, falling in a rush of brown and white into the grasses and lifting just as quickly to a scrag of Russian olive, where he dined on a plump mouse. Read >>

Land Back
Taos Pueblo recognizes the fiftieth anniversary of the return of Blue Lake
Fall 2020 – El Palacio.org
On a frigid February day in 2019, representatives from New Mexico’s Carson National Forest and the Taos Ski Valley invited members of Taos Pueblo to join them on a ride to the top of Kachina Peak. Kachina is a rocky, snow-dressed 12,841-foot mountain that towers over Taos’ world-famous ski resort. It is also an important spiritual landmark for the people of Taos Pueblo. Read >>

Call of the Plains
Finding perspective in northeast New Mexico, home to some of the best bird-watching in the nation.
September 2019 – New Mexico Magazine
ON A BLUEBIRD MORNING IN MAY, Tony Godfrey pulls his pickup off a steep gravel road winding through a stand of ponderosa pines. The New Mexico State Parks ranger slings his Canon 60D over a shoulder and straps binoculars to his chest. Then he leads me to the rim of Mills Canyon, looking for a bright red bird. Actually, several bright red birds. And a blue one. Read >>

Kristina Ortez on "fear, loathing, love"
March 2019 – Taos News
The following conversation took place February 14, 2019, between Kristina Ortez, and writer and photographer Jim O’Donnell. Ortez and O’Donnell have been friends for over five years. O’Donnell currently works part-time as the communications and policy director for the Taos Land Trust. Read >>

Why TV Meteorologists are talking about beer, chocolate, peaches and poison ivy.
March 2018 – Ensia
“Beer is mostly water, right?” the Springfield, Missouri, reporter says. “One of our local breweries gets the water they use from a nearby lake. Well, because temperatures are going up there has been an algae bloom in the lake. It’s not a dangerous bloom — but it impacts the taste of the water and, of course, the beer.” Read >>

How to Build a Park, Community Style!
December 2018 – National Parks & Recreation Association
In late 2015, the Taos Land Trust nonprofit purchased the 20-acre Amos F. Romo family farm not far from the tourist-filled Taos Plaza. Rumors swirled that a high-end condominium complex was destined for the farm, which had been abandoned for nearly 40 years. Read >>

Meet the Rural Advocates for Keeping Federal Lands Just the Way They Are
March 2017 – Sierra Club
Jimmy Sanchez, the 55-year-old farmer and mayordomo of the Acequia de la Sierra de Holman Arriba, tells me stories of the old days. His tales are laced with old New Mexico Spanish as we wade through ankle-deep snow up one of the brazos, or branches, of the ancient irrigation system. “If there is water, the people are happy,” he says. “Wilderness protects the water.” Read >>

The Return of Park Ranger Diplomacy
April 2017 – Sierra Club
It is autumn in the mountains of central Europe. Scatterings of beech trees light the forest in yellows and reds. Vlado Vançura, a former park ranger for Tatra National Park, points up a narrow, twisting valley toward one of the oldest stands of spruce in the park. The spruce are draped in light-green moss. They’re so tall they block out the sunlight. Read >>

After 350 million piñons die, scientists fear for this forest’s future.
September 2017 – Ensia
Among the rolling mesas north of Taos, New Mexico, a lush piñon pine tree reaches skyward from a rocky slope. John Ubelaker bends to its base and counts the number of branches swirling from the ground to the crown. “Young one,” he says of the tree. “It’s about 20 or so years old. Lucky one, too. It survived the dieback.” Read >>

How Vulnerable Are We to Collapse?
September 2017 – Sapiens
Along the cottonwood-lined rivers of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona, the Mimbres people did something unique: By the year 1000, these farmers were producing stunning ceramics decorated with naturalistic images of fish, people, and rabbits, as well as magical creatures and elaborate geometric patterns. And then, rather abruptly, they stopped. Read >>

The Big Business of Europe’s Migration Crisis
June 2016 – Sapiens
After three months in Rabat, the capital of Morocco, Famara (who requested his last name not be used) left for the Gourougou mountain forest of northern Morocco. Wearing nothing more than shorts, a blue jean jacket, and flip-flops, the diminutive Senegalese man joined a makeshift camp comprised of dozens of West Africans hiding in the mountains between the town of Nador and Spain’s North African city of Melilla. Read >>

Aimed at Refugees, Fences Are Threatening European Wildlife
December 2016 – Yale Environment 360
A flood of migrants from the Middle East and Africa has prompted governments in the Balkans to erect hundreds of miles of border fences. Scientists say the expanding network of barriers poses a serious threat to wildlife, especially wide-ranging animals such as bears and wolves. Read >>

80% of Europe’s wildlife habitat is at risk: Here’s what’s being done about it in Slovakiav
November 2015 – Matador Network
On a dark, plunging slope thick with spruce, Austrian wolf biologist Gudrun Pflueger and a local forest ranger by the name of Vlado Vançura are poking at — and sniffing — a pile of feces… Read >>

Climate Change Adaptation: Under the Tuscan Sun.
April 2014 – Vrai Magazine
“We have always trusted in nature to take care of us,” said Andrea Meini, the agronomist for the Cantine Leonardo da Vinci, a wine-growers cooperative in Italy’s Tuscany region. Read >>

In Leopold's Footsteps
July 2014 – New Mexico Magazine
There is a sulfur bog and a series of burping ponds in a little valley on the south end of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. The aquamarine ponds that feed the marshy area below the valley emit a very particular rottenegg smell. Read >>