Can two countries come together to save a pristine valley?

Excerpt:

Yet isolated though it is by geography, bad roads and weather, the North Fork has been at the center of some of the continent’s thorniest struggles over development.

For a century, people have tried to pull fossil fuels from the ground beneath the valley—on both sides of the border—without much success. A well drilled in the early 20th century in what is now Glacier National Park didn’t produce. During a spike in energy prices in the 1970s and 1980s, oil companies punched deep holes on the Canadian side of the border, seeking oil and gas. In Montana, oil and natural-gas developers purchased rights to drill along parts of the river. In the end, however, the prospective cost of building a permanent mining infrastructure up the wild, 80-mile valley kept the drilling rigs at bay.

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Montana is on the threshold of becoming a major wind energy producer. The benefits are clear, but at what costs?

How Montanans are conserving the state’s remaining native prairie.

Also at stake in the Gulf of Mexico: Miles of restored oyster beds

Nature Conservancy Magazine online posted an update to this article:

In December 2009 Nature Conservancy magazine reported on a project to build 1.5 miles of oyster reefs on the Alabama coast. About 60 percent of the manmade reefs were installed when the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20.

The oil spill now threatens the new reefs. The project, described below, is halted and the Conservancy and partners are helping with oil containment efforts when and where they can.

Excerpt from “The Reef Makers“:

Oysters don’t sing. But they do make music. Drag a set of long-handled oyster tongs across the muddy bottom of Alabama’s Fowl River Bay, and you might hear the melody. It’s something the old-time oystermen call chirping.

It’s an odd sound, this clinking of oyster shells on rusty steel rakes: Imagine a wind chime doing its job under a couple feet of water. While this is sweet music to an oysterman’s ears — it sounds like money, food, another day of keeping the wolf from the door — the tune rings hollow around here these days. In 2009, state officials closed Alabama’s shores to oyster harvest.

The oysters of Fowl River Bay, Heron Bay and Portersville Bay, all part of the vast Mississippi Sound/Mobile Bay ecosystem along the coast of Alabama, have been hammered over the past few years and many have died, leaving empty shells that make a flat song. They’ve suffered what the locals call a perfect storm of perils: major hurricanes, extensive drought and a proliferation of killer snails.

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Scientists in the Northern Rockies labor hard to protect the increasingly rare Canada Lynx. But first, they have to find the elusive creature. And that means diving into the deadfall. There’s no guarantee of success.

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If you hunt in grizzly country, chances are you’re breaking the rules.
That’s because you creep around. You hunt during early morning and evening. You mask your scent and walk into the wind. You usually hunt solo. You stay intensely focused on your prey. This is what hunting requires.
But it’s also the opposite of what bear safety experts say you should do in grizzly country.

       Go outside. Walk Slowly. Pay attention. Listen. Smell the air. Taste it. Look at the soil and see how it responds to your step. Notice which grasses shine brightest in the morning dew. Compare birds, the differences in wing and shape and flight pattern. Maybe kick over a rock, see what’s under there.
       This is land snorkeling. Doing it could take you almost anywhere, even if you never leave your own neighborhood.
       Think of it like snorkeling a reef. You drift over mysterious turf. You keep your head down, mostly. Everything is cool, so you look it all over, and you wonder. You come back smiling.