To Think Like a Mountain: Environmental Challenges in the American West

by Niels S Nokkentved

In the West, shortsighted human self-interest has resulted in devastating environmental losses. The fur trade decimated beaver populations, and streams and wetland ecosystems deteriorated. Though most mining ceased by the late 1920s, water running from the Pacific Mine nearly a century later still carried ten times the lead level standard set by the federal Clean Water Act. Where grazing depleted native bunchgrasses, fire-prone cheatgrass grew in its place. Migrating from Idaho streams, salmon once reached the ocean in ten to fourteen days. Now it takes fifty or more. In 2016, a snowstorm blew a flock of snow geese off course. They landed on contaminated water, and about three thousand died. Author Niels S. Nokkentved takes a fresh look at environmental challenges affecting Northwest residents. His essays examine cultural conflicts over resource extraction, threats to watersheds from abandoned mines, wolf recovery in the northern Rocky Mountains, the lingering effects of livestock grazing on western rangelands, and the rapidly disappearing sage grouse. They discuss the importance of forest fires, the value of beavers, the failed promises of salmon hatcheries, the reasons behind the decline of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest, and how unlikely allies learned to set aside their differences in order to resolve long-standing disputes. Nokkentved's goal is to encourage people to think like a mountain--in other words, to consider the long-term consequences. He shares his connection to each concern as well as his own evidence-based perspective. He believes that it most profits society--collectively and as individuals--when people respect the balance of nature, and he wants to draw others to the same conclusion.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2019

Reviews

[Marie Neumiller · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The answer, of course, reflects our relationship to nature and how we view the resources on which we all rely. When we think like a mountain, we will have clean air and water, forests will thrive, wild salmon will spawn naturally and make thousand-mile journeys to their natural streams, sage grouse will strut their stuff on their legs in the western sagebrush grasslands, and the wild green fire will burn in the eyes of the wolf -and that will benefit us all.”