Ed Pulaski was the kind of man traditional Idahoans admire.

The former prospector, miner and ranch foreman demonstrated craftsman skills as a blacksmith, plumber, carpenter and machine repairman. When in 1908 he took the job of ranger of the Wallace District of the recently created Coeur d’Alene National Forest at 40, about the only thing he shared with his Yale-educated colleagues was a love of the outdoors.

This is a fascinating scientific theory. The Higgs boson, an atomic particle that physicists think may create mass in other elementary particles is so dangerous that something from the future is stopping us from producing it.

That right. This force caused Congress to kill the Superconducting Super Collider in the early 1990s and now it is sabotaging the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland because they could create a Higgs that last existed within the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

What a weekend for the climate change beat.

I didn’t go to the Society of Environmental Journalists meeting in Madison so I missed Al Gore’s talk and his confrontation Friday with Phelim McAleer, the co-director/producer of an independent film Not Evil, Just Wrong. McAleer’s film points out errors in Gore’s film and after Gore talked he joined the line of journalists asking questions.

Imagine an Idaho Department of Natural Resources.

That’s essentially what I threw against the wall this morning to see what sticks in my column. Everyone from both sides of the isle loves to talk about government reform.

But when they realize it might gore their ox they quickly move on to look at ideas that gore someone else’s ox. Remember when I suggested that the state could consider closing roads, as a part of its effort to reduce the road maintenance shortfall?

Another river in the Pacific Northwest runs free today.

Construction workers removed the coffer dam from the Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River east of Grants Pass, Oregon. The 39 foot dam used to divert water for irrigation but today pumps do that, Oregon Public Broadcasting reports

Idaho’s own “Lion King,” Maurice Hornocker, has been nominated for the $100,000 Indianapolis Prize, the largest in the world for animal conservation.

Hornocker, 78, is to big cats what Jane Goodall is to chimpanzees and Dian Fossey was for gorillas. His pioneering research on cougars in central Idaho in the 1960s changed the way people view mountain lions.

The news that Tianwei New Energy Holdings took over Honolulu-based Hoku Scientific is good news for Pocatello and the state of Idaho.

The Chinese company’s takeover of cash-strapped Hoku means it will be able to finish building its Pocatello polysilicon plant and keeps Idaho nascent alternative energy industry moving forward. Hoku had put construction of the $390 million plant on hold and there were many people beginning to doubt whether the state’s investment in tax credits to lure the manufacturer here.

The same week that PBS was celebrating the United States national parks with a wonderful Ken Burns series, the College of Idaho was celebrating one of its own’s efforts to create another American national park.

The College of Idaho awarded Kris Tompkins with an honorary degree for her efforts to create a national park in the Patagonia region of Chile and Argentina. Tompkins, a 1972 graduate of the college, is a conservationist and former CEO of Patagonia, the outdoor gear and clothing company that made protecting the environment as important as making quality outdoor clothes.

Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack made waves Tuesday when he said Boise was getting the same urban forestry money that the Senate wants to stop Washington D.C. from using.

T.R. Roosevelt is everywhere this week. And as always, it is very appropriate.

PBS is running Ken Burns powerful series this week, “The National Parks, America’s Best Idea.” Historian Douglas Brinkley’s groundbreaking biography “Wilderness Warrior,” came out earlier this year. National Book Award winning author Timothy Egan of Seattle’s latest book “The Big Burn,” about the 1910 fires and the fight between Roosevelt and Idaho Sen. Weldon Heyburn, comes out in a few weeks.