THE RIGHT TO BE A RIVER
Water conservationists talk sometimes about the way western rivers, like the Colorado River, were divided up — a piece to this farm, and a chunk to that city. But no one carving up those shares of water ever thought to save some for the river itself, so the Colorado River dies somewhere near the Mexico border. No one thought to acknowledge that the river had a right to be a river.
The first ever Boulder Rights of Nature Film Festival will be showcasing films that recognize those long-forgotten inalienable rights for ecosystems, wildlife and traditional cultures. They name the marches in Ecuador asking for natural beings to get the same rights as corporations as the inspiration for the festival, but have found films that reflect that wish from filmmakers from Germany, South Africa, Canada, the United States and France. Films take viewers to Africa to investigate rhinoceros poaching, to the Arctic to hear from Inuit elders, to Micronesia to follow the creation of the world’s largest shark sanctuary, to American cities to meet a charismatic red-tailed hawk and to the banks of many American rivers that have been dammed to hear about the efforts to free those rivers.
Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams about Werner Herzog’s fight to make Fitzcarraldo, a film about the historic effort of a rubber baron trying to move a steamship over a Peruvian hillside to access rubber territory in the Amazon basin, will also screen and Blank’s lifetime of work will be honored.
The Boulder Rights of Nature Film Festival takes place Oct. 17-19 at the Dairy Center for the Arts. Details and tickets are at www.thedairy.org.
— Elizabeth Miller
TORNADO SEASON STARTS EARLIER, MAY SEE MORE TORNADOES
Tornado season may be starting earlier, according to research from scientists at Montana State University. They found peak tornado activity moving to start in “tornado alley” (Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and northern Texas) an average of seven days earlier throughout the region. For some states, tornado activity has begun as many as 14 days earlier.
“If we take Nebraska out [of the data], it is nearly a two-week shift earlier,” said John Long, a research scientist at Montana State University and lead author of the new paper.
The shift has occurred over the last 60 years, and showed the day of peak tornado activity moving about 1.55 days per decade.
The cause of the change is difficult to pinpoint, but the study identified one connection between a global pattern and tornado activity in Oklahoma. El Niño conditions — warmer waters in the Pacific Ocean that change the air surface pressure and atmospheric circulation — in January and April coincide with earlier peak activity in the spring.
“The relationship we do see in Oklahoma is a light but significant connection to El Niño,” Paul Stoy, one of the study’s authors, said in a press release. “This makes one suspect that if global climate change is changing these larger circulations, then there is a connection between a global [variability] and tornado activity.”
— Elizabeth Miller
