A cougar, silent and unseen in the thick understory, is emitting a beacon from its tracking collar. “She’s close, about a hundred meters to the north,” says Beth Orning, a Ph.D. student at Oregon State University. Orning has evidence that cougar No. C216 is raising a litter in this hidden ravine.
Fire, grazing and logging have all caused problems when they occurred in the wrong place at the wrong time for too long and too intensely. But researchers and land managers are finding that, if used strategically, these disturbances can become tools to control weeds, prevent juniper invasion and limit the extent of wildfire.
In the summer of 2012, Zachary Dunn climbed onto the roof of a red-brick schoolhouse in Lela, a small village in southwestern Kenya. A crowd of children milled about on the ground, watching him attach a small weather station to the peak.
Schools in Kenya have become crucial partners with TAHMO by installing weather stations and collaborating with sister schools in Europe and the United States. In Corvallis, Adams Elementary School installed a Decagon weather station last September and has just started communicating with the St. Scholastica Primary School north of Nairobi.
Now an award-winning assistant professor in the School of Writing, Literature and Film at Oregon State University, Elena Passarello credits her interest in her craft to the influence of her mother, an eighth-grade English teacher and the matriarch of a family she describes as “bookish, library people.” Literature was woven into casual gatherings and conversations at the dinner table.
Going forward, Stacey Harper says, zeroing in on the toxic impacts of using capsules and other “carriers” for chemicals will be critical to making sure current environmental protections are adequate.