An Important New Web Tool Being Created By Alaskans erin & hig

Two of the most amazing adventurers in recent Alaska history, Bretwood Higman and Erin McKittrick, have announced the launch of the beta version of an exciting new web tool they're creating. Here's how they describe Alaska's Wild Resource Web:

Alaska's Wild Resource Web allows you to explore natural resource issues in Alaska. You can read in-depth articles on the issues, browse maps, or see slide shows

of the places where these resources are found.

This site is a work-in-progress – some articles are still under construction, and content is always being added. The site is currently focused on the issue of coal in Alaska.

erin goes on, at their longtime blog, groundtruthtrekking, to further describe their hopes for the new site:

All this started with a love of wandering around the Alaska wilderness, and with a drive to understand the hard decisions that Alaska and America need to make about that wilderness. Is it possible to capture nuanced trade-offs between different options in a web site that is still interesting and understandable? Can that web site tie together the gritty on-the-ground experiences that form the foundation of our interest with the detailed research that broadens and deepens our understanding? Is it possible for our tiny organization to do the research needed to do justice to these complex issues?

By the way, erin's new book, A Long Trek Home, comes out in October. They'll be giving talks and signing books soon afterward, in many Alaska communities.

Reading through erin's description of the site, I was struck with a couple of thoughts:

1.) Why aren't there more Alaska-based, wiki-like tools, such as what erin and hig are creating? There should be.

2.) Earlier this evening, I read AK Muckraker's post at The Mudflats, about the new movie, Crude. As I read through the post and watched the trailer for the film, I thought - There should be a movie just like this about the Bering Sea trawl fishery, and what that and other egregious fishery practices - like the False Pass intercept fishery - have done to the 7,000-year-old Yupik culture on the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers. Sort of an anti-Deadliest Catch movie, to tell the real truth surrounding that adventure's premise.

image - erin & hig in the rainforest