With bad news all around, how do we keep up our strength and resolve to protect the places that matter? Chris and Alicia start an ongoing conversation in a couple of those places. In between, 90 Miles from Needles talks to LA Times reporter Louis Sahagun about his reporting on a new problem facing the desert's ancient bristlecone pines.

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There's good news: the desert offers sweet sustenance that can be had for a little bit of work. And we mean actual food, not that metaphorical well being stuff. Though that's here too. 

But first, Chris offers some thoughts on how to help 90 Miles from Needles get to more people, and Alicia recuperates from an unfortunate but temporary rambunctious-dog-related injury. (She is getting better.)

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Chris enjoys the desert at its hottest. Alicia, on the other hand, is closer to sanity. Both of them treat desert heat with respect. We talk about how to make sure your time in the desert doesn't end in tragedy. The desert needs its defenders alive! 

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Climate change has been happening in the desert for some time now. While consensus isn't complete, most experts agree that more warming will make the desert hotter and drier. But at the same time, while individual monsoon thunderstorms will get less frequent, they may become more destructive. 90 Miles from Needles visits Jan Emming, owner of Desert Sense Nursery in Yucca, AZ, who has been paying attention to the changes in his local weather for 22 years now.

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The writer Edward Abbey is revered by many desert activists, and roundly criticized by others, all based on the provocative and occasionally offensive things he wrote. Chris and Alicia talk about the prescient and helpful things Abbey wrote, and about the things they wish that neither Abbey nor anyone else had ever said, some of which have gained currency among the most violent practitioners of rightwing politics.

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From the mid-1980s until the first months of the 21st Century, a coalition of desert tribes and non-Native activists worked to keep the state of California from siting a low-level nuclear waste dump in the Mojave Desert, on land sacred to at least five tribes, above an aquifer that drains into the Colorado River. Philip Klasky, an instructor at San Francisco State and a resident of the desert in San Bernardino County, played a crucial role in that campaign, which succeeded against all odds. Phil's story is a lesson in how people working together can beat those odds. He also taught us at 90 Miles from Needles the importance of Native peoples taking the lead in land-based campaigns.

Phil died unexpectedly earlier this year. We are grateful to The Mojave Project for allowing us to use their recorded interview with Phil, and to our friend Matthew Leivas of the Chemehuevi Tribe for sharing with us the Salt Songs he sang at Ward Valley in May to honor Phil.

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Joshua trees, the iconic species of the Mojave Desert, are in serious danger of becoming extinct across most of their range... and yet the state of California is recommending against granting the trees permanent protection. We talk to desert botanist Christina Sanchez and Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity about the dangers the trees face, and what we can do to stop California from stripping the trees' protections. Plus, C&A visit a Joshua tree forest threatened by unsustainable development,

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Plus, why rock stacking is a bad habit, and how you can keep the state of California from stripping protections from the western Joshua tree. Listen to the episode either before or after you click here: https://act.biologicaldiversity.org/1PcJypNEXEq5JSsEnx64gQ2?fbclid=IwAR0kuSiQL_uwsTaWx0D01QAA-VC-mitc4ZWeFAfuKnrvE9te-cUZpiAvSz0 to register your support for keeping the trees protected.

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Considered extinct by the late 1950s, the Shoshone pupfish was rediscovered 36 years ago by a woman who changed her entire town to preserve the species. We talk to Shoshone resident Susan Sorrells about her life and the fish, with context set by Mason Voehl of the Amargosa Conservancy.

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They're more complicated than the howling silhouette on your bespoke candle holder from Santa Fe, and more interesting. Chris and Alicia discuss living with coyotes in the desert, what they offer, what they don't offer, and how we can best get along. Also: updates on Colorado River drought and Cima Dome wildflowers.  

Episode image © Peter Thoeny, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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