In the first week of May, 2012, I traveled to a remote location in western Nebraska to hunt the elusive turkey. I chose to hunt in one of Nebraska’s Wildlife Management Areas (WMA). Not all WMAs provide wildlife with good habitat. The ecological viability of the WMAs varies greatly. Many of the WMAs in western Nebraska are waste lands, abandoned or sold by their original owners because the land no longer possesses any economic value whatsoever. For instance, there is a WMA near Big Springs, Nebraska, that is nothing more than an old gravel pit that has filled in with water. The pit is surrounded by a thin belt of planted trees and invasive European grasses. I visited this “Wildlife” Management Area to see whether it contained any turkeys. It did not. I did not see a single living creature inside its borders. It took a real stretch of the imagination to consider this place as wildlife habitat. Certainly the loud, incessant traffic on Interstate 80, which darted past the site less than 50 yards to the south, did not induce birds and animals to inhabit the place. Continue Reading »
Vietnam’s Coastal Plain stretches 638 miles in a narrow arch from Vinh (in the former Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV)) to Phan Thiet (in the former Republic of Vietnam (RVN)). It is bordered on the east by the blue waters of the South China Sea and on the west by the dark green mountains of the Central Highlands. In one of its widest segments at Hoi An, the plain extends 28 miles from the coast to the mountains. In its narrowest reaches in northern Binh Dinh Province, it is less than a mile from the coastline to the highlands. Continue Reading »
Tagged Ben Hai River, Binh Dinh Province, Cam Ranh Bay, Central Highlands of Vietnam, Chu Lai, Coastal Plain of Vietnam, Cua Viet, Danang, First Indochina War, Hue, Mui Ne, South Vietnam, Street Without Joy, Vietnam War
Laos’s Plaine des Jarres (Plain of Jars) is a plateau within the Annamese Cordillera. High mountains surround it on all sides. Its flat lands are covered by grasses and a spattering of short, thin trees. Motorized traffic can move more rapidly over the open country of the plateau than through the high-walled, winding mountain passes situated around its edges. The region received its name from the thousands of stone jars lying atop the plain. The jars are of varying sizes. Some are tall and fat, others are short and narrow. Each jar possesses a hollowed out center. The largest can hold an adult man. Continue Reading »
On May 9, 2012, the Army Corps of Engineers will cut the discharge rate from Gavin’s Point Dam to zero, yes zero. That means no water will exit through the structure’s power tunnels or spillway gates. The Army must stop the flow of water through the dam in order to inspect it for any damages. Last year, the Missouri’s powerful floodwaters pounded the structure, especially its spillway. The Army wants to know just what the Missouri did to the dam. Without water pouring through Gavin’s Point Dam, the Missouri downstream through southeastern South Dakota and western Iowa will drop to a record low level. It remains to be seen just how low the Missouri will go. Much depends on tributary inflows. If the James and Big Sioux rivers do not dump large volumes of rainwater into the Missouri, we can expect the river at Sioux City to diminish to a trickle. We do know that during the eight hours the Army pinches off the river’s flow, the Missouri will drop to one of its lowest levels ever, possibly lower than at any time since the glacial formation of the stream 30,000 years ago. Continue Reading »
