Natural Resources | ModeShift

Jim Olson Led Michigan’s Embrace Of Public Trust Doctrine To Protect Great Lakes Waters

by Keith SchneiderAugust 5, 2026August 5, 20260

I met environmental attorney Jim Olson 35 years ago, just as he was developing uncommon expertise in Michigan law and exhibiting an appealing measure of courtroom flair, both of which make him a towering figure in Great Lakes resource protection. At the time he was defending the shoreline of the Crystal River in Leelanau County from being damaged by a golf course development proposed by Bob Kuras, owner of the Homestead Resort. I was a …

Momentous Court Decisions Near For Line 5

by Keith SchneiderDecember 15, 2025December 15, 20250

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – For 72 years, in order to serve as a shortcut for crude oil from production fields in western Canada to refineries in eastern Ontario, Enbridge Inc.’s Line 5 pipeline has transported 540,000 barrels of oil and natural gas liquids daily beneath the forests and wetlands of northern Wisconsin and Michigan. Opened in 1953, the 645-mile steel pipeline starts in Superior, Wisconsin, crosses underneath streams and rivers, and passes through the reservation …

New Texas Miracle

by Keith SchneiderJune 30, 2025June 30, 20250

In the years during and immediately following the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009, the Texas Business Association and other like-minded chambers of commerce noted how America’s second most populous state had come through the ordeal with unrivaled economic vitality. Texas attracted more direct foreign investment, was the nation’s largest exporter, and was home to more than 50 Fortune 500 companies. The state also attracted new residents, businesses, and jobs at a faster pace than …

Surprise! Trump Order to Increase Timber Harvest Could Make Sense

by Keith SchneiderMarch 13, 2025March 13, 20250

Among the maddening features of Donald Trump’s presidency is this: His instinct for identifying structural weaknesses is keen. His capacity to decide and execute solutions is generally terrible. How else to explain that, for Trump, stopping the killing in Ukraine means siding with the dictator who started the conflict. Or that Trump identified the deep resentment of working people who supported him, but proposes stark changes in health, food, job, childcare, and retirement programs that …

Halt the Oil Flow Across Straits of Mackinac

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 26, 2025January 26, 20250

From the perspective of Americans who live in Michigan and Wisconsin, the Line 5 oil pipeline across the Straits of Mackinac makes no sense. It’s old, 72 years old. Line 5 is older than the U.S. interstate highway system, and that’s been in major repair for a quarter century. It’s in the wrong place. The pipeline’s 645 mile-long corridor from Superior, Wisconsin, to a refinery in Sarnia, Ontario, includes 4.5 miles of bottomlands submerged 130 …

Yvon Chouinard’s Gift to Northwest Michigan

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 21, 2022September 23, 20220

Earlier this month, last week in fact, Yvon Chouinard announced he and his family are changing ownership and management oversight of their company to enable more investment in securing the global environment. It’s a novel and enlightened business strategy for Patagonia, executed by a man who’s led an adventurous life of real value to the world. I write this to note that Yvon brought his gifts to my home region in Northwest Michigan in 1999 …

Frontline Journalism Is A Foundation of Environmental Achievements and Institutional Strength

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 12, 2021February 9, 20220

â€œThe walls of the valley are made up of rocks, mountains in size, partly separated from each other by side caÃ±ons and gorges,â€ wrote John Muir of magnificent Yosemite Valley. â€œThey are so sheer in front, and so compactly and harmoniously built together on a level floor, that the place, comprehensively seen, looks like some immense hall or temple lighted from above.â€ With this frontline account, published in the August 1890 edition of Century Magazine, the …

Idaho’s Silver Valley: A Story of Wealth, Tragedy, and Transformation

by Keith SchneiderAugust 12, 2020August 27, 20202

KELLOGG, Idaho — Completed at a cost of $30 million and opened in 2004, the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes cuts a paved path across Northern Idaho, from Mullan to Plummer, following the course of a long-abandoned Union Pacific line. One of the country’s magnificent rails-to-trails, it’s ordained by natural flourishes that exist in abundance in this part of the Mountain West — tall peaks, forests of fir and spruce, big farm fields, wetlands, clear …

Coastal Louisianaâ€™s Garden of Alligators, Zydeco, and Conservation

by Keith SchneiderApril 6, 2019May 19, 20191

LAFAYETTE, LA â€”Avery Island, which draws its name from a family that settled here in the 1830s, is renowned for the Tobasco hot sauce brand that Edmund McIlhenny invented after planting pepper seeds amidst the live oaks in 1865. Another historic breakthrough credited to the family is the work his son, Edward Avery McIlhenny, accomplished in safeguarding much of the islandâ€™s subtropical landscape as a conservation preserve and especially with the rookery he built to …

Southeast Asia’s Dam Disasters

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 2, 2018August 13, 20200

Like a herd of wild bulls, raging floodwaters stampeded across a highland plateau in July and tore a hole in the mammoth Xi-Pian Xe-Namnoy hydropower complex dam in south central Laos. The boiling torrent crashed downstream from the nearly completed $1 billion dam, drowning 39 people identified so far, leaving over 100 more missing, and forcing more than 6,600 people out of their homes and into temporary government housing. Little more than a month later, …