by Jason Rainey





Water is life. Our bodies are about 60% water. Over two thirds of the surface of the Earth is covered by water, but only 0.006% of the Earth’s freshwater reserves is stored in rivers. As Patagonia's Our Common Waters campaign points out, the rivers of today’s world are broken. Roughly two-thirds of the world’s rivers have been dammed and diverted, and many major rivers of the world are tapped out before they reach the sea. Fifteen percent of the annual rainfall around the globe is now sequestered in reservoirs instead of replenishing floodplains and carrying nutrients to the sea.

The Colorado, the Indus, the Nile and the Yellow are just a few of the rivers that have had their perennial connection to the ocean broken. And nations that are rapidly industrializing threaten the remaining great rivers of the world with new dam-building schemes.





In the Amazon Basin, over 60 large dams are proposed for key tributaries to the Amazon River. The world’s most productive inland fishery, the mighty Mekong River, is threatened with a series of proposed dams across the mainstream, beginning with the Xayaburi Dam in Laos.

But this is the wrong climate for investing in dams. What’s most cynical about these mega-dam schemes and literally thousands of other proposed destructive dams globally is that energy corporations are arguing that dammed rivers are necessary for a “sustainable” future. But, the trillions of dollars poured into big dams don’t provide affordable, decentralized and truly sustainable energy for the millions around the globe who live in energy poverty. Dammed rivers lose their resiliency in the face of a changing climate, and they lose their life-sustaining biodiversity. A world of healthy rivers is essential to sustaining healthy communities and a healthy planet.

What Can Be Done?



courtesy Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum

Communities and organizations are coming together to stop the most destructive proposed dam projects. My organization works with a network of partner groups and dam-affected people to campaign against the worst big dams, and to reform climate and international finance policies to ensure we’re investing in real solutions for meeting the energy and water challenges facing communities throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. We help amplify the voices throughout the world saying “No!” to damming rivers and “Yes!” to development pathways that respect indigenous cultures and their aspirations of self-determination.

We’re also working to counter the mis-representation by hydro-energy corporations that attempt to greenwash the public into believing that damming rivers will somehow save our ailing planet. Did you know that methane emissions from dams are responsible for around 4% of human-caused climate change – roughly the equivalent of global emissions from the aviation industry? Further, big dams have displaced about 80 million people worldwide, with perhaps 10 times that number impacted downstream of dams.

We need to build a new model of human development that abandons big dams and elevates truly sustainable, decentralized and democratic water and energy solutions. This will take more than just the dam-affected communities banding together. It will take you and me and thousands of other people who care about rivers. We need to deepen our resistance to dam-building and organize a political force to demand policy shifts toward just economies and a restorative ecology.



courtesy of Fabiola Bueno Sanchez

How Can You Get Involved?



For the past 15 years, March 14 has been the time when communities across the globe stand up for their common waters and shine a light on the broken rivers that follow in the wake of destructive big dams during the International Day of Action Against Dams and for Rivers.

Actions to highlight the plight of our world’s rivers on March 14 take many forms – from kayaking trips to conferences, film screenings to music festivals, religious ceremonies to the occupation of dam sites. Here in Berkeley, my organization International Rivers will be holding our own annual March 14 event to celebrate the world’s rivers, while others on our staff will be involved with events in Guatemala, Marseilles and Chiang Mai.

Our friends and partners around the world have already confirmed that more than 50 River Actions are planned in over 30 countries. Here are some of the ways communities around the world are organizing to protect Our Common Waters:


Activists in Chile will gather in front of the offices of HidroAysén in the capital of Santiago to protest the company's proposal to build 5 dams on two of the most beautiful rivers in Patagonia.




At the World Water Forum in Marseille, France, activists will counter corporate attempts to greenwash dams as clean energy.
Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum will begin a campaign against the Bhasha Dam on the Indus River.
In Taiwan, the Meinung People's Association will gather many anti-dam organizations and people affected by dams to show support for free-flowing rivers.
The Movement of People Affected by Dams in Brazil is bringing together a wide range of social movements and communities in protest of corporate control of rivers.
Activists and community members in Portugal are organizing a week-long camp to protest construction of the Foz-Tua Dam, which would flood a World Heritage Site, farmland and other ecosystems. The camp will also serve as a place of networking, cultural exchange, artistic expression and campaign planning.
In the Philippines, the campaign against the Pulangi Dam 5 in the Southern Bukidnon province will show Wrong Climate for Damming Rivers, translated into the local dialect.

Are you inspired to be part of the action? Find out if there’s an International Day of Action for Rivers event near you. If not, get your friends together and organize one yourself. Have a picnic by a river, go ice-skating on a frozen lake, or clean up a stretch of river or beach. Whatever you do on March 14, know that you are not alone. Thousands of people around the world will be celebrating their rivers along with you.

 courtesy of COAGRET

Jason Rainey is the Executive Director of International Rivers, a global river advocacy organization with staff on four continents. International Rivers has been coordinating March 14th as the International Day of Action for Rivers since 1998. Before joining International Rivers in 2011, Mr. Rainey served as Executive Director of the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) in northern California from 2005-2011, where he built a grassroots movement to restore a healthy Yuba River, championed the decommissioning of two federal dams, protected wild salmon runs, improved water quality and habitats, and fought new dams.

by Taylor McKinnon


The Obama administration rang in the New Year with a gift to wildlands and wildlife: a 20-year ban on new mining on 1 million acres of public lands around Grand Canyon National Park. The move, in the face of a rash of new uranium-mining claims, bans new claims and prohibits exploratory drilling and mining on existing claims lacking “valid existing rights” — the vast majority of claims in the area. It’s a historic decision for an iconic landscape that will save streams and rivers from pollution and protect scores of species from the scourge of industrial mining waste.

Editor's note: We're late getting this good news posted, but it's worth celebrating nonetheless. We asked you twice to take action on this issue — first in February with a special video from Jonathan Waterman, then again in April — and your voices have been heard. Thank you. Photo: James Q Martin

The decision is clearly popular. Nearly 400,000 people from 90 countries wrote the Interior Department urging the ban. And since it was enacted, it’s won praise from Indian tribes, businesses, elected officials, scientists and outdoor enthusiasts who value the canyon’s environmental health and its economic value as a tourist attraction.


Given the uranium industry’s track record, the ban is critical. The Navajo Nation — just east of Grand Canyon — is riddled with pollution from abandoned mines. At Grand Canyon’s south rim, the Orphan Mine still leaches uranium into Horn Creek at 10 times federal limits. North of the canyon, in 2010, federal scientists chronicled elevated uranium at every previously mined site they visited.

[Perched on the rim above Kanab Creek just north of Grand Canyon National Park, the Kanab North mine has been in “stand-by mode” for twenty years — a regulatory purgatory whereby the mine is neither operating nor required by the Bureau of Land Management to be reclaimed. The U.S. Geological Survey has documented high concentrations of uranium in pond sludge that persists at the mine; average soil concentrations of uranium downwind of the mine up to the canyon rim average 10 times natural background concentrations — believed to be a result of wild-transported mine dust. Photo: James Q Martin]


[Taylor McKinnon investigates mining claims on the rim of Kanab Creek and contemplates the fate of the Kanab North mine. Photo: James Q Martin]


[A view east through the Kanab North mine across Kanab Creek which is just north of and drains into Grand Canyon National Park. This part of the southern Colorado Plateau is ground zero for new uranium mining pressure. Photo: James Q Martin]The new protections span the Kanab Creek watershed north of Grand Canyon, portions of the Kaibab National Forest along the canyon’s south rim, and House Rock Valley just north and east of the park.  In addition to curbing industrialization of these iconic wildlands, the mining ban protects aquifers feeding Grand Canyon’s precious springs and creeks from uranium pollution — pollution that, if it were to happen, would be impossible to clean up. Those springs — like Elves Chasm, Showerbath Spring and Havasu Creek — harbor up to 500 times the number of species than adjacent uplands, including endangered species and some species found nowhere else on Earth.




[The 1-million-acre withdrawal area spans three parcels of land north, east, and south of Grand Canyon National Park. Map: Center for Biological Diversity.]


[In June, 2011, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar visited Grand Canyon National Park and announced his preference for a 20-year, 1-million-acre mineral withdrawal around Grand Canyon. Photo: James Q Martin]


[Public lands surrounding Grand Canyon are riddled with thousands of mining claims like these. The new protections will prohibit mining development on the vast majority of them. Photo: James Q Martin]But, by virtue of property rights given to mining corporations under the 1872 mining law, some old mines will be grandfathered in. The Bureau of Land Management has already let one of four mines shuttered in the 1990s reopen without updating 24-year-old environmental reviews — a decision now contested in court by tribes and conservation groups.Importantly, though, this battle may not be entirely over yet. The new mining ban isn’t impervious to being undone by acts of Congress or future administrations — making it permanent would require either legislation or a new national monument designation. And it’s no substitute for reforming the antiquated 1872 mining law — a badly needed task that’s proven elusive to Congress.But in the history of public lands administration, precautions against damage that can’t be undone are too rare. The uranium-mining ban around Grand Canyon is a visionary decision and should be celebrated.  Taylor McKinnon is the public lands campaigns director at the Center for Biological Diversity.


[Elves Chasm is one of the springs that the mining ban protects - Aquifers feeding Grand Canyon’s precious springs and creeks from uranium pollution that, if it were to happen, would be impossible to clean up. Photo: James Q Martin][With thanks to Taylor, Q and countless others for all their work on this issue.]

Photo: Patagonia advertisement from the Friday, November, 25, 2011 edition of The New York Times (click image to read as a PDF, 1.5MB).

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Why run an ad in The New York Times on Black Friday telling people, “Don’t Buy This Jacket”?

It’s time for us as a company to address the issue of consumerism and do it head on.

The most challenging, and important, element of the Common Threads Initiative is this: to lighten our environmental footprint, everyone needs to consume less. Businesses need to make fewer things but of higher quality. Customers need to think twice before they buy.

Why? Everything we make takes something from the planet we can’t give back. Each piece of Patagonia clothing, whether or not it’s organic or uses recycled materials, emits several times its weight in greenhouse gases, generates at least another half garment’s worth of scrap, and draws down copious amounts of freshwater now growing scarce everywhere on the planet.

We’re placing the ad in the Times because it’s the most important national newspaper and considered the “paper of record.” We’re running the ad on Black Friday, which launches the retail holiday season. We should be the only retailer in the country asking people to buy less on Black Friday.


But we’re in business to make and sell products. Everyone’s paycheck relies on that. Moreover, we are a growing business, opening new stores and mailing more catalogs. What do we tell customers who accuse us of hypocrisy?
It’s part of our mission to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

It would be hypocritical for us to work for environmental change without encouraging customers to think before they buy. To reduce environmental damage, we all have to reduce consumption as well as make products in more environmentally sensitive, less harmful ways. It’s not hypocrisy for us to address the need to reduce consumption. On the other hand, it’s folly to assume that a healthy economy can be based on buying and selling more and more things people don’t need – and it’s time for people who believe that’s folly to say so.

Nevertheless, Patagonia is a growing business – and we want to be in business a good long time. The test of our sincerity (or our hypocrisy) will be if everything we sell is useful, multifunctional where possible, long lasting, beautiful but not in thrall to fashion. We’re not yet entirely there. Not every product meets all these criteria. Our Common Threads Initiative will serve as a framework to advance us toward these goals.

Why the provocative headline if we’re only asking people to buy less and buy more thoughtfully?

To call attention to the issue in a strong, clear way.

We used the line “Don’t Buy This Shirt” several years ago in a catalog essay, to strong response. It is our hope that this headline will prompt as many people as possible to read the full ad, then go to our website to take the Common Threads Initiative pledge.

 Take the pledge



REDUCEWE make useful gear that lasts a long timeYOU don’t buy what you don’t need

REPAIRWE help you repair your Patagonia gearYOU pledge to fix what's broken

REUSEWE help find a home for Patagonia gear you no longer needYOU sell or pass it on (eBay is a great place to start)

RECYCLEWE will take back your Patagonia gear that is worn outYOU pledge to keep your stuff out of the landfill and incinerator

REIMAGINETOGETHER we reimagine a world where we take only what nature can replace

 

One of the unique perks of working for Patagonia is the chance to leave, to participate in an environmental internship on work time. I chose to go to Guatemala to see how coffee is grown before it is exported for roasting.  I divided my time with two organizations involved with coffee farming in Latin America, Coffee Kids and the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. I documented their work through photography.My hope is that my work will serve as a tool to reinforce and foster positive change in the coffee industry.Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC) To increase coffee production, coffee farms use synthetic fertilizers and convert from “shade grown” plantations, where shrubs are planted in the shade of trees, to “sun grown,” where coffee plants grow quickly, fully exposed to heat in fields.  [My work lead me to Finca Nueva Armenia, nestled in the Sierra Madre valley of Huehuetenango, one of only eight farms designated as bird friendly by the SMBC in Guatemala. All photos: Mark Shimahara]


To prime a sun grown farm, trees and natural forests are destroyed. Scientists believe that these practices lead to the sharp decline of bird migration in Latin America and a loss of habitat of other animals, insects and plants of the tropical forest. To preserve biodiversity in coffee farms and to encourage sustainable farming practices, the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center established a Bird Friendly certification. To be certified as “Bird Friendly,” a farm must practice organic farming in a diverse and native forest—in other words, provide a bird friendly habitat.  After a dusty five hour drive from Guatemala City we arrived at their farm, which is a forest.  Birds tweeted, insects buzzed, and pollen floated in the air. [A flycatcher perched on a high shade tree, one of many birds found on the farm.]But the tranquility was broken by the violent buzzing of chainsaws from neighboring farms that were tearing down trees to make way for sun grown coffee.  The Recinos bothers, who own Finca Nueva Armenia, grow bird friendly coffee because they know they are investing in a habitat that will sustain itself in the long term. Their farm will be spared the long term consequences of monoculture which can lead to disease, land/soil overuse, and the destruction of animals and beneficial insect habitats. [One of the Recinos brothers hike up the plantation with coffee buyer Kim Bullock and roaster Jeff McArthur.]The US-based coffee buyers I met, from Counter Culture Coffee, buy from this farm because it's committed to sourcing from organic, sustainable land. This farm is also willing to take on special requests such as harvesting and drying their crops in micro-lots, or selective picking by micro climate or varietal.Coffee KidsCoffee Kids develops programs in education, health awareness, micro-credit loans and food security for coffee-farming communities.  I visited the hosts of two projects with Jose Louis Zarate, the program director at Coffee Kids. The first was Finca Santa Felica, in Acatenengo which is managed by the farm's owner Anabella Meneses, whose goal is to empower workers to become advocates of their own professional development. Coffee Kids’ sponsored ADESPA (Association for Sustainable Development of Paraxaj) achieves this though education and training in practical business skills. Two of her projects (textile and shoe workshops) focus on literacy in economic diversification. ADESPA also provides childcare so that parents do not have to arrange for it themselves. [I accompanied the kids from the ADESPA child care program on a parade to celebrate environmental awareness.]My trip made me keenly aware of the harsh socio-economic conditions that coffee farmers in this region face. Worker’s wages are used up in providing basic necessities—food, clothing, shelter for their families. As a result, there are few resources left to invest in projects that might eventually yield greater financially stability or environmental sustainability, in the long run.The second project I visited was in Chajul, a remote place seven hours north of Guatemala City—including two hours driving on unpaved roads—where Ixil, an indigenous Mayan language is spoken. The women uniformly dress in traditional cranberry-colored skirts signifying the Chajul region. [This community too is heavily reliant on coffee as an income. ] [After the last coffee crisis, women workers were the first to be dismissed.] To address gender inequities, the Coffee Kids program here offers microcredits to women and their families to start businesses. This provides them with alternative means to earn their living, besides coffee. [Loans are used to start local shops and textile manufacturing.]I was flattered my blog entry about milk in coffee got the attention of Coffee Common, a collaborative experiment at the TED conference to serve and educate the audience about this wonderful drink. Similarly, it's my hope this work will encourage more businesses in the industry to examine and improve the land and communities where coffee comes from.  If you are interested in trying Counter Culture's selection of fresh, seasonal coffees, Counter Culture is graciously offering free shipping in the continental US to Cleanest Line readers through May 27.  The new crop of Finca Nueva Armenia is scheduled to be released later this month (use Promo Code: THECLEANEST).

Doug Chadwick is a writer of natural history based in Whitefish, Montana. His work has taken him all over the world to research books and articles about whales, grizzlies, ants and elephants. Six years ago, wanting to spend more time in the field – and less at the keyboard – he began working closer to home with the Glacier Wolverine Project.


Though Doug never intended to write about the wolverine, as he learned more about its exploits and the threats this badass but vulnerable animal faces on a warming planet, he decided the best way to help it was to tell its story. His new book, The Wolverine Way, is both a tale of outdoor adventure and paean to one of “the toughest mammals in the world.” Published by Patagonia, it is now available in hardback on our website, in our stores and at other booksellers.


Doug recently returned home from five days in the mountains, dragging a sled full of tracking and camping gear in pursuit of wolves and wolverines. We found him there and asked a few questions about the subject of his new book.


There's a story in your new book, The Wolverine Way, about an Alaskan gold miner who traps a wolverine, bashes in its head, and then, thinking it’s dead, ties its front legs over his shoulders to pack him out, only to find out the wolverine still had fight left in him. What, if anything, does that tell us about wolverines and man’s relationship with them?


The tale is a reminder of how wolverines have been portrayed mainly as whirlwinds of destruction – something like big backwoods goblins on crack. That’s not to say wolverines don’t have a ferocious side. They are exceptionally strong and amazingly fearless. Can you think of any other 20- to 40-pound animal willing to try driving grizzlies off carcasses? I’d rank wolverines among the toughest mammals in the world. But as we finally begin to peel away the mysteries surrounding this species’ natural history, those frontier yarns featuring perpetually pissed-off, dangerous wolverines turn out to be ... well, not complete b.s., but only one part of a much larger and more fascinating picture.







You’re a writer of natural history with a background in field biology. But when you volunteered with the Glacier Wolverine Project in 2004, you had no intention of writing about wolverines – despite the promise of some great story material. What changed your mind?


During the time I volunteered with the project, I was also traveling to report on snow leopards in central Asia, right whales in the sub-Antarctic, weaver ants in Australia, elephants in Thailand, the ecology of Southeast Alaska’s great coastal rainforest, and rhinos and tigers in Assam, among other magazine assignments. I loved each job. Nevertheless, the last thing I wanted to do back home in Montana, was continue being a journalist every day. Glacier National Park is my backyard. It may sound strange, but dragging bait to lay scent trails to wolverine capture sites, following paw prints while skiing through blizzards and dodging avalanches, radio-tracking the animals over summer passes and peaks ... this was my vacation. Besides, the researchers really needed an extra hand. They didn’t have the money to hire enough people to keep up with their radioed subjects, not ones that cover vast, rugged territories as relentlessly as wolverines do. The challenge of trying to keep up long enough to discover more about these wildest of wild lives drew an extraordinary team of mountaineers and conservationists happy to help out for free. Being part of that crew was a reward in itself.


Wolverines, I began to realize, are every bit as cool as wolves and grizzlies – and equally important as symbols of the last untamed places. Debates over better-known wildlife and protection of the homelands they depend upon seemed to be in the news almost daily. Meanwhile, wolverines were becoming rarer south of Canada than either wolves or grizz, yet hardly anyone was paying attention. The need to get wolverines on the public’s radar was largely what prompted me to start writing this book. Folks will work hard to save a species they care about, but they first have to be able to envision its life and needs. Since I had the privilege of getting acquainted with a number of individual wolverines and their offspring over half a dozen years, I decided that it was time to start sharing everything the animals and the researchers had been teaching me.


Wolverines inhabit some of the world’s least hospitable terrain, and you guys spend days and nights out in sub-zero conditions trying to find them. It must be really taxing work. Can you describe one of your forays into the field and how you guys handle one of these tightly wound bundles of tooth and claw when you live-trap one?


I’m going to answer this question with an excerpt from the first chapter:


Fine snow streaked the air, riding sideways on a gale, in early March 2006. Biologist Rick Yates led the way, breaking trail on skis through the powder. Great cliffs striped with avalanche tracks rose on all sides. Somewhere higher up among the clouds stretched the icefields that gave this valley – Many Glacier – its name. We crossed two frozen lakes and finally passed into an old-growth spruce forest that took the edge off the storm. Beneath the branches, half-buried in snow, stood a large box made of logs six- to eight-inches thick. It looked a little like a scaled-down cabin. But it was a trap, and there was a wolverine inside.


The animal had entered during the night. We knew from its radio frequency that this was M1: M for male, Number 1 because he had been the first wolverine caught and radio-tagged during a groundbreaking study of the species under-way here in Glacier National Park, Montana. Sometimes the researchers called him Piegan instead after a 9,220-foot mountain at the head of the valley. To me, he was Big Daddy, constantly patrolling a huge territory that straddled the Continental Divide near the heart of the park. His domain overlapped those of several females, and he had bred with at least three of them over the years while successfully keeping rivals at bay.


We paused a short distance from the trap to listen. M1 was silent. Predictably, he began to give off warning growls as we drew nearer. They rumbled deep and long with a force that made you think a much larger predator lay waiting inside, something more on the order of a Siberian tiger – or possibly a velociraptor. I lifted the box’s heavy lid an inch or two to peer inside. The front wall underneath was freshly gouged and splintered, its logs growing thin under Big Daddy’s assault. Raising the lid another notch, I could finally make him out as a dense shadow toward the rear of the trap. Wolverines have dark brownish eyes, but in the light from my flashlight those orbs reflected an eerie blue-green color that glowed like plutonium, surrounded by the rising steam from his breath. The next things I saw were white claws and teeth and stringers of spit all flying at me with a roar before I dropped the lid shut and sprang back.


Inside the trap, the roaring and growling continued – wolverine for “Hope you won’t be needing your face for anything, Tame Boy, because I’m going to take it off next time!” – followed by the sound of more wood being ripped apart. Given a few more hours, M1 would have an escape hole torn through the mini-log cabin. From time to time, the tips of his claws poked out just above the uppermost log of the front wall while he rammed his head against the lid. He was trying to shove the thing upward, though the ice-encrusted logs that formed the top of the box must have weighed 100 pounds.


I looked round at the trees and the snow swirls beyond and shook my head, thinking of my long-ago vow to steer clear of these creatures. Having joined the Glacier Wolverine Project in 2004, I was going into my third straight year of breaking that vow in just about every way it could possibly be broken. No regrets. These animals’ off-the-charts strengths and survival skills had become a source of inspiration for me by now. Even so, I was never going to get used to dealing with the intensity of a wolverine when it’s up close and cornered. Nobody did.


You said in your book that a male wolverine will wander 200-square miles or more, and do some crazy things along the way – like climb straight up the vertical face of a 10,000-plus-foot peak for no apparent reason. Their wandering sometimes gets them into trouble with hunters and trappers, and with increasing development and now climate change, the size of their habitat is expected to shrink. Does any animal really need that much space to survive? What exactly are they up to in their wanderings?


Large as they are, the territories of Glacier’s wolverines are a fraction the size of those claimed by wolverines elsewhere. In the central Idaho wilderness, for instance, a female might claim an exclusive domain of 300-square miles and a male more than 400-square miles. With long legs, big snowshoe paws, long claws for crampons, powerful muscles, a frost-shedding fur coat, and a revved-up metabolism, wolverines are able to master terrain too high, cold, steep, and snowbound for other predators and scavengers to use as easily. This frees the species from a lot of competition for food. Why do individual wolverines require so much of that harsh landscape for a territory? Because there is so little food in any one place. The same factors that discourage competitors also make prey animals relatively scarce compared to the numbers thriving in warmer, lower habitats. The wolverine strategy seems to be: if you’ve got a world-class nose and keep constantly on the move over a big enough area, you’re going to turn up something to eat. The key is not to be too concerned about whether what you find is a little ground squirrel, an injured deer, or the frozen[…]

Team Rios Libres is back with an update from the Neff Glacier, at the headwaters of the Río Baker. The team's first two reports can be found here (1, 2). With the Neff at their backs, the team followed the river to the sea, doing their best to document the diversity, beauty, and wildness of the region. Before completing their journey, the team will be checking in on a region of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field last believed to be last visited and documented by explorer Eric Shipton during 1960-61 expedition.

Reports from the Rios Libres team are that their travels are proceeding smoothly, but the impacts of the quakes continue to be felt and much support is still needed (information about how to help is here).

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The Voice of Ice (a report from Craig Childs)

At night I lay in my tent listening to the thunder of collapsing seracs, multi-ton columns of ice breaking free and falling a thousand feet. Smack, crack, rumble, groan. In these deeply-cut canyons, echoes build and fade. The ice-bound head of the Rio Baker is not a stable or quiet place.

[Top, Timmy O'Neill walks the line on the Neff Glacier. Above, left - Craig Childs watches as a huge chunk of ice falls 20 stories down the
Neff Glacier. Photos: James Q Martin]

In the morning we walk along an exposed wall of the Neff Glacier. A thirteen-story slab breaks away, tilts in slow motion, bursts into powder and bergs. How do you not feel fragile in this landscape?

On the ice, crampons crunch across a surface darkened by wind blown dust. The sound of meltwater emerges from deep below us, mumblings in the belly of the glacier. I peer down a hole where shadows within shadows lead into a blue Jules Verne landscape, journeying into the source of the Baker. Oxygen-rich ice near the surface is white. Below it, baby blue falls into a saturated indigo so deep and rich it seems perilous. Becoming aware of the depths, I feel dizzy.

Every hole and crack emits a sound. Some places are whispers, and some rumble like a ship engine below deck. Unseen rivers roar and hiss as one of the largest ice caps in the world melts under our feet.

Jonathan Leidich, a local glacier expert whose knowledge comes from 15 years on the ice, takes us to a measurement station that he maintains in conjunction with CECS, Centro de Estudios Cientificos de Valdivia here in Chile. A PVC pipe sticks up from a hole. Leidich runs a tape measure, says that a month ago the surface of the glacier was six feet over our heads. That much has melted in 30 days across this entire expanse.

Hearing this, I take in the scope around us, daggers and ridges of ice, holes shaped like giant's navels. Ice stretches as far as I can see, rising up through the teeth of mountains where the Patagonia Ice Cap spills through from the other side. I can feel it all melting. This is how the river starts.

[Above, right - Craig Childs gets an up-close view of the Neff Glacier. Above, left - Taking a handful of perfect glacier water - some of the cleanest in the world. Photos: James Q Martin]

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Check out the video below for a better view of how much ice has been lost from the Neff Glacier in the past year. Facebook readers can find this video here.

["Yvon Chouinard Q&A on Matilija Dam - American Express Member's Project" via YouTube. Video: Robert Richardson and Scott Hicks]


Today we're following up on Yvon Chouinard's recent commercial for the American Express Members Project. The grad student Yvon mentions in the above video was Mark Capelli who, through his group Friends of the Ventura River, helped lay the foundation for all the work being done today to remove the Matilija Dam and restore the Ventura River ecosystem.


For a report on the current state of the Matilija Dam's removal we contacted Paul Jenkin, founder of the Matilija Coalition and Environmental Director for the Ventura County Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.


Patagonia is a founding member and primary sponsor of the Matilija Coalition, an alliance of community groups, businesses, and individuals committed to the environmental restoration of the Ventura River watershed. Starting with the removal of Matilija Dam, the coalition is working for the recovery of the Southern Steelhead trout and the natural sediment supply to the beaches of Ventura.




Patagonia was a major sponsor of the October 12, 2000 Demolition Demonstration Project in which Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt removed a ceremonial block of concrete from the 200-foot high Matilija Dam. This event marked a major step toward the eventual removal of Matilija Dam.


[Logo art designed and donated by Jeff Hebner]
In 2004, a federal Feasibility Study was completed which outlines a plan for dam removal based upon ‘temporary sediment stabilization.’ This approach is intended to protect downstream interests, including the community water supply, while allowing for controlled releases of sediment and restoration of the ecosystem. This plan was developed through a multi-year, multi-agency planning process with consensus of all stakeholders. The Feasibility Plan underwent extensive review, and ultimately gained Congressional approval through the passage of the Water Resources and Development Act of 2007 (WRDA07).Since then, the project has been delayed by lack of funding and difficulties associated with the management of approximately two million cubic yards of fine sediment (approximately one third of the total sediment) that has accumulated behind the dam since its construction in 1948. Originally slated for removal using a dredge and slurry pipeline, a recent proposal calls for permanent storage of the fine sediment upstream of the dam. Disagreements on how this fine sediment should be handled threaten to stall the project. The Matilija Coalition is working with project sponsors to try to steer this complex project back on track.
Because a dam of this size has not yet been removed, this is a project of international significance. All of the large dam removals currently being planned have experienced similar difficulties, largely based upon managing huge quantities of sediment and the downstream effects on property and water supply infrastructure.
--Paul Jenkin


 
[Recent photo of the Matilija Dam courtesy of Paul Jenkin] Paul has been documenting the dam's removal on his blog since October 2007. For a detailed look into the challenging process of restoring a free-flowing river check out the posts tagged Matilija Dam at Ventura River Ecosystem.


If you want to hear stories about what the Ventura River was like before the Matilija Dam was built, check out "Tales of the Ventura" and the video Paul produced with some longtime Ventura residents.