The first of the 400 bison calves expected this spring was spotted earlier this month at Custer State Park. Park staff discovered the newest member of the park’s herd, a heifer, on April 7 in the south end of the park near the south fork of Lame Johnny Creek.

Historically, the bison played an essential role in the lives of the Lakota, who relied on the bison for food, clothing and shelter. Today, the bison is a major tourist attraction at Custer State Park and a thundering symbol of the American West.

Custer State Park is currently home to some 900 head of bison. The herd roams freely throughout the park, often stopping traffic and providing visitors with close animal encounters along the 18 mile Wildlife Loop Road which winds around the southern edge of the park.

“Spring is a perfect time to view wildlife in the park, and with the winter moisture everything is greening up,” said Chad Kremer, buffalo herd manager, in a Game, Fish and Parks news release. “Deer, antelope, turkey and buffalo can be seen throughout the park right now.”

Visitors are strongly advised to leave buffalo calves alone and enjoy the sight of them from a safe distance. Approaching any baby animal can be dangerous and buffalo calves are no exception — if a mother buffalo, which can weigh up to half a ton, feels she or her calf is threatened, she may charge.

“Occasionally, people will think a buffalo calf has been orphaned and try to rescue it,” Kremer said. “This is rarely true; buffalo may roam up to one mile from their calves and come back later for them.”

While most bison calves are born in May, up to 20 percent of new calves arrive in April at Custer State Park.

The herd, one of the largest publicly owned herds in the world, is expected to number around 1,300 by the Annual Buffalo Roundup in September, an event open to the public to watch cowboys, cowgirls and park crews saddle up to bring in the thundering bison herd for sorting, branding and vaccination.

Custer State Park also hosts yearly guided trophy and non-trophy bison hunts, as a management tool within the park. Trophy hunts serve to remove the oldest breeding bulls from the herd, which are typically more than 10 years old; non-trophy hunts manage excess cow and smaller bull populations.

Tribal members gathered to share their responses to the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline Project at the 20th annual American Indian Histories and Cultures Conference March 28.

The Keystone XL Pipeline, a project of oil transportation company TransCanada, will carry tar sands oil from Alberta Canada to Texas, crossing an estimated 313 miles of South Dakota land in portions of Harding, Butte, Perkins, Meade, Pennington, Haakon, Jones, Lyman and Tripp counties.

“The Keystone XL Project facilitates a long-term increase in [oil] supply, which will have a modest price effect permeating the entire economy,” said the Perryman Group, an economic and financial analysis firm, in a 2010 assessment of the potential impact of the pipeline project. “These benefits, of course, are over and above the sizeable gains from the construction stimulus, particularly in the areas directly affected.”

Aside from the benefits of increased domestic supply and a job stimulus, TransCanada has said the pipeline will provide economic gain and energy security to the United States and will be constructed in a way that is safe and of “minimal environmental impact.”

Many members of the Native American community, however, have spoken out against the proposed pipeline—which will circumvent reservation land so as to avoid issues with tribal and federal law— criticizing the plan as dangerous to natural resources, destructive to sacred sites and disrespectful to the environment.

This year’s American Indian Histories and Cultures Conference discussed the

environmental, cultural and historic implications of the proposed pipeline project, featuring speakers: Charmaine White Face, founder of the environmental group Defenders of the Black Hills; Tim Mentz Sr., tribal consultant from Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; Russell Eagle Bear, historic preservation officer at Rosebud Indian Reservation; and Ben Rhodd, archeologist and member of the Potawatomi Tribe.

Following an introduction by event coordinator Doris Giago, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe and Associate Professor in the SDSU Journalism and Mass Communication Department, White Face discussed the potential environmental impacts of the Keystone XL Pipeline, particularly to South Dakota’s water resources.

“If a pipeline breaks, anything that runs off will get into little creeks, which feed into big rivers, and remember: oil and water do not mix,” warned White Face, emphasizing that any spill runs the risk of permanently ruining aquifers across South Dakota.

White Face also discussed several species that would be endangered by the pipeline, such as the eastern gray wolf, black-footed ferret and Eskimo curlew, beseeching the audience to simplify their lives to protect natural resources.

“For me, as an environmentalist, as a Native person, we don’t dig into the Earth,” she said. “We don’t dig into her—she’s a spirit, she’s alive.”

Tim Mentz Sr. and Russell Eagle Bear discussed the historical implications of the pipeline, which, if constructed, could destroy many sites sacred to Native American culture.

Mentz shared photographs of sites threatened by the pipeline and described some of the spiritual connotation of each with the audience, explaining that he was willing to publicly discuss spirituality — which is intensely guarded in Native American culture — if it meant protecting land from the Keystone XL pipeline.

“Take an active stand,” he said. “If you believe in life, you’re going to believe that snake going into the ground is going to destroy us.”

Mentz encouraged land owners to learn more about their land and to write to Congress about their opposition to the pipeline, a sentiment echoed by Eagle Bear.

“We’re going to continue opposing the Keystone XL,” Eagle Bear said, who, like Mentz, asserted no dollar value could be placed on the sacred sites or natural resources the pipeline could threaten.

“The presidential permit hasn’t been signed, yet there’s so much activity already,” Eagle Bear said, referring to land for staging areas already being leased. “[TransCanada] is moving right along as if the permit will happen… and people’s way of thinking is like this pipeline will come through with little spigots on it.”

Rhodd, who spoke about the cultural impact of the pipeline, implored the audience to challenge this way of thinking.

“We have the power to conserve things or to destroy them,” he said, explaining that the decision to construct the Keystone XL should be in line with personal values about health and natural resource conservation rather than monetary motivation.

“The consciousness we are creating…is that we must be responsible for our home. We are responsible for it and to it.”

The conference, which panel moderator Charles Woodard, a professor in the SDSU English Department, called “an especially good opportunity for the SDSU and area community to hear tribal perspectives on an issue which is crucially important to us all,” was free and open to the public.

The SDSU American Indian Studies Program, the South Dakota Humanities Council, the SDSU American Indian Education and Cultural Center and the English Department sponsored the event.

Notice then that their grey, carbon-fiber bodies are held aloft by titanium wings. Their buzz is not the hum of natural wing beats, but that of tiny, autonomous machines.

It sounds the plot of a science fiction movie, but in Harvard’s Microrobotics Laboratory, researchers are one step closer to turning what resembles an H. G. Wells fantasy into reality.

The Micro Air Vehicles Project, known more simply as the RoboBees project, is described as a “convergence of body, brain and colony.” Researchers at Harvard have already developed the first of these RoboBees — a prototype creature dubbed the “Mobee,” short for Monolithic Bee — and anticipate demonstrating independent, flying micro-air-vehicles modeled on insects within the next two and a half years.

The task won’t be an easy one, according to Rob Wood, the project’s principal investigator, but it is within reach.

“The challenges that you get when you scale these things down mean that you have to reinvent everything, everything has to come from scratch, every one of the technologies,” Wood said in an interview with NPR. “There is nothing off the shelf.”

Aside from a pair of titanium wings, Mobee doesn’t look much like a bee, but in the world of robotic insects, function trumps aesthetics.

RoboBee visionaries say robotic insects could be used for a variety of purposes, such as military surveillance, hazardous environment exploration and climate mapping. According to Harvard, though, the over arching aspiration of the Robobee project is to create robotic pollinator technology.

Harvard researchers say they recognize such a plan is highly ambitious and are collaborating across a wide range of scientific and engineering disciplines to realize their goals. Some entomologists, however, are skeptical of the RoboBee project and concerned about what creating robotic insects could mean for real bees.

“I think that [creating robotic pollinators] is a highly optimistic speculation on the part of the engineers,” said Paul Johnson, professor of entomology at South Dakota State University. “If somebody really wants to try and develop a robotic bee that can pollinate plants as effectively as real bees, that’s going to take a long time to develop.”

As bee populations drop worldwide, however, one might begin to see a place for RoboBees in the not-so-distant future.

Instances of honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a phenomenon in which worker bees from a colony abruptly disappear, are increasing in North America, particularly in states such as North Dakota, California and South Dakota, which lead the production of honey in the United States, respectively. Native bee populations, which provide about 75 percent of pollination services worldwide, are also vanishing.

Unlike honeybees, native bees do not live in hives and are not susceptible to CCD. Instead, native bees live in solitary burrows in the ground in neighborhood-like communities. Their populations are being pushed out by the impact of the human footprint, particularly at the hand of climate change, urban development and agricultural practice.

While some see supplementing or even substituting waning bee populations with robotic replacements as a viable option, David Drons, a graduate student studying entomology at SDSU, feels otherwise.

“If we’re using little RoboBees to pollinate crops and native bees have been pushed out, there will be so few flowers. Then you’re not going to see all the animals that go with them — all these things eat in the forests or eat insects that eat flowers,” said Drons, who is taking the first inventory of native bee species in the Black Hills. “It would just be a downward spiral.”

Drons said he feels letting RoboBees do the job of native bees would circumvent the real issue of human impact and he emphasized his disheartening vision of a world in which RoboBees replace disappearing native species.

“If that were the case, the future will be as grey as the robot bees themselves,” he said.

The technology may be cool, but for many, the RoboBee project raises more questions than answers. Will RoboBees be an invaluable technological advance, or are they a shortsighted solution to a bigger problem?

Either way, researchers have made the first steps toward a future that includes robotic insects, although there are still many hurdles left to jump. Until then, only time will tell if RoboBees will act as a saving grace or simply something to swat at.

Sunrises over the south rim of the Grand Canyon will soon illuminate not only ancient layers of red rock, but a greener park as well.

Within one month, the Grand Canyon National Park will terminate the sale of bottled water under a plan to improve park sustainability, approved by the National Park Service Intermountain Regional Director, John Wessels.

The park’s ban on individual disposable containers of less than one gallon aims to reduce waste associated with disposable bottles, which comprise an estimated 20 percent of the park’s overall waste and 30 percent of the park’s recyclables. Grand Canyon National Park, which receives about 4.5 million visitors a year, has experienced increasing plastic bottle litter both on the rim and within the inner canyon, defacing canyon viewpoints and visitor experiences.

The park’s ban, announced last week, is in accordance with a new policy issued by NPS Director Jonathan B. Jarvis on Dec. 14, 2011. This policy is an initiative of the Green Parks Plan (GPP), a comprehensive plan to address greenhouse gas emissions, water and energy use, construction practices and reduction of waste within the entire National Park System.

Under the new policy, national parks are to implement a plan to recycle and reduce disposable plastic water bottles. Parks have the option of eliminating disposable water bottle sales completely, following an analysis of factors ranging from the cost and availability of BPA-free reusable water containers and the cost of installing water stations to possible public safety risks.

“Our parks should set the standard for resource protection and sustainability,” Wessels said in a statement. “I feel confident that the impacts to park concessioners and partners have been given fair consideration and that this plan can be implemented with minimal impacts to the visiting public.”

Wessels assured the safety and comfort of visitors to the Grand Canyon will continue to be met within the park, which has installed a dozen free spring-water stations where visitors can fill reusable water containers. Reusable water containers will be available for purchase within the park for visitors who do not bring their own.

This plan follows a petition signed by almost 100,000 people urging Jarvis to ban bottles from national parks nationwide. The petition was organized by 5 Gyres, a non-profit organization which researches the impact of plastic pollution in waterways, and Change.org.

“I put my faith in the superintendents of the parks because they are the people on the ground dealing with pollution firsthand,” 5 Gyres spokesperson Stiv Wilson told the Associated Press. “People get into that position because they love the space they’re working in. Giving the power back to those people is a very positive development.”

Zion and Hawaii Volcanoes National Parks have already implemented bans on disposable plastic bottles and a dozen other national parks, including Yellowstone, Death Valley and Yosemite, are considering implementing similar bans. Outdoor activists hope a ban in the Grand Canyon will set an example for parks nationwide.

If you’re lost in the woods, abandoned in the Arctic or marooned on a desert island, you better hope you’ve got a jar of coconut oil with you. You read that right. Naturalists and survival experts are crowing about the seemingly innumerable uses for it, some of which just might save your butt if you find yourself sprinting toward an episode of I Shouldn’t Be Alive.

Cooking and Eating 

Food grade, virgin coconut oil has great flavor and is the healthiest cooking oil available. It is also calorically dense, making it ideal wilderness survival food (especially during the winter). Prepare a snack in advance by adding dried fruit and nuts to liquefied coconut oil and allowing the mixture to solidify or keep a jar on you to dig into for a source of quality fuel in a pinch.

Fire Starting 

Speaking of fuel, coconut oil is an excellent one. Soak cotton balls or dryer lint in liquefied coconut oil, store them in your pack and you’ll always have an excellent fire-starter on hand.

Body and Personal Hygiene 

Coconut oil is about 50 percent lauric acid, a saturated fatty acid that acts as an anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antifungal and antiviral when processed by the human body. Apply coconut oil to cuts and scrapes to protect yourself from bacteria and viruses, or use its antibacterial properties to eliminate body odor or add a little baking soda and use it to brush your teeth.

Skin Salve 

Your skin will dig it. The softening agent in coconut oil works as an extremely effective body lotion and lip balm. It also acts as a comfort to dry, blistered or chafed skin, and is a great lubricant for massaging muscles sore from climbing mountains, searching for fresh water or assembling your own personal yacht out of driftwood.

Insect Repellent and Relief 

Sometimes the most maddening thing about the outdoors can be the small, pesky inhabitants. Coconut oil works well as a natural insect repellent when combined with a little peppermint oil extract. Coconut oil can also relieve itching and burning sensations when applied directly to a bug bite, as well as hasten the healing process.

Coconut oil is a solid at room temperature, making it easy and mess-free to carry. You can pick up a jar at any health food store and, increasingly, many grocery stores.

Stay nutty — and alive — my friends.

Snowy owls typically nest in the Arctic tundra of Canada and migrate south for the winter. This season, however, these Arctic natives are participating in a dramatic migration called an irruption, during which large numbers of birds migrate to areas where they are not commonly found.

“Every year there’s a few that migrate south because there’s simply not enough food to get all of them through the winter, but normally they don’t come this far south,” said Kent Jensen, associate professor of ornithology at South Dakota State University.

Irruptions can cause snowy owls to migrate remarkable distances from their normal ranges and this season the owls have been spotted from coast to coast in the northern United States.

One of the nation’s hotspots has been Lake Andes National Wildlife Refuge, located on the Yankton Indian Reservation, where 20 different snowy owls have been spotted.

“At their peak, there were approximately 35 sightings a day,” recalled refuge project leader Mike Bryant, who said there has not been an irruption of this magnitude since 1955.

Bryant noted that the refuge saw a spike in visitors—an estimated 500 more than usual—from Dec. 21 through the first two weeks of January, when snowy owl sightings were at their highest due to lack of snow in the area, which makes it easier for snowy owls to hunt.

“We’ve had pretty good local interest,” said Bryant, adding that the curiosity surrounding snowy owls at the refuge transcends the surrounding states. “Even a guy from England came to see it.,” he said.

While most visitors have been birders and wildlife photographers, the unusually large presence of snowy owls in Lake Andes has drawn plenty of non-birders as well.

“A large white bird attracts interest,” Bryant said. “It’s something that people haven’t seen before.”

As their name suggests, snowy owls are easily recognizable by their snow-white coloration. Males have a shock of pure white plumage, while female and juvenile snowy owls demonstrate dark scalloping and barring. Their keen yellow eyes and sharply taloned feet festooned with thick feathers make them superior hunters in their native Arctic habitat. Standing nearly two feet tall, snowy owls are powerful birds of prey.

Snowy owl irruptions are associated with cyclical lemming population crashes that occur every four to five years, but the cause of this season’s irruption of unusually large proportions has generated much speculation among ornithologists.

Jensen suggested that lemming the population was very high last spring and summer and that the large food supply resulted in a very successful breeding season, during which one snowy owl can lay up to eight eggs. The surplus of lemmings then led to the survival of an unusually high number of snowy owl chicks, which have now migrated south for the winter due to a sudden food shortage.

“The situation was just right for a real high reproductive year and then as they moved down we ended up with this doughnut hole of no snow here in the Dakotas that really concentrated the birds,” said Jensen. “That’s my best guess.”

As snowfall has increased in South Dakota, snowy owls have dispersed and sightings have become less clustered at Lake Andes, but this doesn’t mean the owls have disappeared.

“They’re somewhere,” Jensen said, adding that people will continue to enjoy snowy owl sightings until they migrate back to the Arctic in March

Mention the unseasonably nice weather and people will nod fervently, extolling the lack of ice and bitter cold while knocking on the nearest wooden surface, as though premature joy will cause tundra to descend upon our little village at any moment. I’ve even heard some complain that they wish it was a little chillier and that there was more snow to play in.

Whether you’re loving this downright tropical January or wishing you had a reason to pull out that heavy coat and brave a whiter winter (in which case I must assume you’ve got beluga blubber for blood), this is the perfect season to exercise outdoors.

Those of us who enjoy exercising outside know a South Dakota winter typically forces many indoors and onto a treadmill, track or stationary what-have-you. Weather this nice, however, makes the case for hitting the pavement rather than the gym all on its own.
Just in case you do need a little persuading, though, here are a few reasons to get outside this season:

It can help prevent Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

SAD is defined by the U.S. National Library of Medicine as episodes of depression that occur at a certain time of the year, most commonly during winter. Studies have also shown that individuals who choose to exercise outdoors during winter—whether they are sufferers of SAD or not—enjoy an improved sense of well-being and better mood overall.

There’s plenty of season-suitable gear out there to keep you warm.

There have been innumerable advances in outdoor equipment over the past decade. Outdoor gear has become lighter, more waterproof and, luckily for South Dakotans, significantly more windproof without demonstrating the breathability of a buffalo pelt. It also looks a heck of a lot more fierce than it used to. Being outside is good for you.

Enjoying time outdoors is enormously beneficial to both physical and mental health.

The Be Out There campaign is a national movement to get children and young people outside based on 14 scientific studies about the benefits of being active in an outdoor setting.

So get outside this season and keep your body hot even while it’s cold. Be winter weather smart: wear a hat, layer your core and watch for cars and those pesky patches of ice. Enjoy being outdoors and carpe the heck out of that diem, even if it snows.

To enjoy a greener holiday season, use environmentally friendly cards or make custom, hand-made greetings. (Photo by Kathy Kroeger)

The volume of waste in the average American household increases 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, which reported Americans produce an extra 1 million tons of trash around the holidays.
In the chaos of the holidays, being mindful of the environment is often put on the backburner. There are plenty of simple things we can all do, however, to enjoy more eco-friendly festivities without giving up turkey, biking all the way to grandma’s, or knitting your stocking out of organic hemp fiber.
Here are a few easy ways to have a greener holiday season that won’t have you seeing red.
•  Choose environmentally friendly holiday greeting cards.
Hallmark Inc., estimates about 1.5 billion Christmas cards are sent annually in the United States and those cards consume a large amount of natural resources. Such an amount requires the harvesting of nearly 300,000 trees and could fill a space the size of a football field almost 10 stories high when they’re thrown out come the season’s end. To reduce waste, purchase cards printed on recycled paper or make them yourself. Homemade cards may not look as elegant or professional, but they are more personal and will be just as appreciated by your family and friends.
•  Use your edition of the Collegian as wrapping paper.
In the United States, annual giftwrap and shopping bag waste totals over 4 million tons. In fact, according to the Recycler’s Handbook, half of all the paper consumed in the US each year is used to wrap consumer goods. When playing Santa this year, look for wrapping décor printed on recycled paper or wrap gifts in newspaper, magazine cutouts, or re-use wrapping paper from holidays past. If you do purchase giftwrapping, avoid wrapping paper with glossy foil or metallic details, as it is difficult to recycle.
•  Opt for energy-efficient decorative lighting.
Most people still use standard incandescent bulbs for holiday light displays, but decorative LED lights are now available in a variety of colors and shapes. Not only do LED lights have a much longer lifespan than standard lights, but they also reduce fire risks because they do not over heat like incandescent bulbs can.
•  Use a power strip for holiday decor.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 75 percent of the electricity used to power appliances and electronics is actually consumed when they are turned off. Utilizing the on/off switch of a power strip allows you to fully power down decorations and also reduces the risk of fire.
•  Shop smarter this season.
Remember to take reusable bags when you do go shopping for your holiday gifts or feast. Having a holiday party? Avoid using plastic plates and cutlery, and try to buy local and organic food and beverages for your guests.
•  Give a gift that gives back.
Rather than buying items made with toxic metals or packaged with lots of plastic, make a donation in someone’s name. Donate a flock of geese or a herd of goats to support a hungry family through Heifer International, fund the planting of trees through American Forest or give the charitable gift of clean water to villages in need. You can also support your local economy by purchasing locally made gifts or let your inner elf flourish with a personal homemade gift.
•  Treecycle.
If you have a live tree in your home this season, make sure it doesn’t end up in the dump. Check out the National Christmas Tree Association’s website and enter your zip code to find the nearest of 3,800-plus locations nationwide which accept trees, or check with your local municipality to see if they will pick it up for recycling. Instead of taking up space in a landfill, treecycled evergreens are ground into woodchips which can be use to mulch gardens and parks or to prevent erosion at a local watershed.
•  Recycle old electronics.
If a new laptop, Smartphone, or other electronic gift shows up under your tree this year, make sure any outdated electronics get recycled. Some stores like Best Buy will even pay you to recycle these things. Older models of items such as computer monitors, laptops, and cell phones will also be accepted as donations at various shelters.
Last but not least, be thankful for all the goodness in your life.
Pass these tips, as well as plenty of holiday joy, on to your friends and family.

Senia Hiltunen shows off the bull elk she shot on Oct. 20 in the southern Black Hills. (Submitted photo)

Senia Hiltunen collects holiday Barbies, she has a hot pink cell phone and she hunts bull elk.

She considers herself pretty girly.

Hiltunen, 23, was the recipient of one of the most highly sought after hunting opportunities in South Dakota: an any-elk tag. The South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks Commission approved only 865 total permits this year, down 200 permits from 2010 and 1,800 from 2005.

Her tag was one of only 125 any-elk licenses available for the southern Black Hills elk unit. She spent the past decade earning the preference points required to draw the coveted tag.

Accompanied by her father, grandfather and a guide, Hiltunen tracked a herd of 100 elk near the southern Black Hills town of Pringle, which calls itself the elk capitol of South Dakota, in pursuit of a trophy bull.

On the first day of her second trip, Hiltunen bagged her first elk—a five-by-five bull that scored a 260 on the Boone & Crockett scale. The journey to her bull was long, taking two trips across the state, walking for miles on end and climbing mountains.

Her Browning .270 barked, the bullet travelled just 120 yards to lodge in the huge animal’s shoulder. A second shot brought down the massive bull to the ground.

Hiltunen filled her elk tag on Oct. 20, a date with special significance to her.

Eleven years ago to the day, Hiltunen lost her cousin Michael O’Brien in a tragic car accident. He was just 15 years old. She harvested her first elk using his gun strap to carry her rifle.

“It just seemed to work out really, really well. The wind was straight up my face so the herd had no clue we were coming at all,” Hiltunen said.

“[The bull] came up on the fence line and part of me wanted to not shoot him because I wanted a bigger bull, obviously, but with the day being what it was, I felt like he may not have been the biggest bull, but he was the right bull at the time. I totally believe my cousin just set it all up for me … It was nice to feel like we got to hunt together.”

Hiltunen has been hunting since she was 12 years old on family land in Howard, S.D. While she was too young to carry a gun, she went on family hunts for elk and pheasants as a walker.

“My dad taught me how to hunt. Something he always drilled into me was that [hunting] is not about getting the animal, it’s the experiences you share with the people around you,” she said.

Hunting is a long-running tradition in her family. Many of her family members hunt together. Those who don’t hunt enjoy spending time together cooking wild game.

This season Hiltunen, her aunt and her grandfather, who turned 80 this year, all had tags to fill. She said filling her first elk tag while her grandfather filled what was likely his last was a special experience. The rifle she used to take her bull is a family heirloom passed down from her father, a testament to the family tradition.

Hiltunen has always preferred hunting with the boys and cooking what they brought home. Since childhood, she has enjoyed being outdoors and tracking game. Now as an adult, Hiltunen takes pride in challenging the stereotype that hunting is a male only sport.

“It really surprises people when I tell them I hunt,” she said. “It’s weird for people to put together a girly-girl hunting big game … but I like shooting prize-winning animals. I love the whole experience.”

After she graduates in the spring with a journalism degree, she hopes to work in communications for a women’s associated non-profit organization or in sexual assault awareness and advocacy.

Hiltunen plans to stay in South Dakota, where she feels she has much left to accomplish both for women’s rights and in hunting.

Riding a bicycle is about the squarest thing you could do. At least, that’s what anti-bike advertisements want you to think.

They’re always the same: some dork wearing a suit and an ill-fitting helmet is riding down a congested highway—usually in the pouring rain—looking  generally terrified and uncomfortab

Editor's note: Kalie Swails is a wildlife and fisheries major and a native of Tennesee. Contact her at kswails@gmail.com

le while he struggles to hold onto his lunch, a briefcase and presentation materials. Beautiful people in expensive cars speed past him, soaking him in exhaust or rainwater sprayed from their shiny new tires.

Cue the voiceover for State Farm Car Insurance, Audi cars or Autozone Auto Parts.

General Motors recently pulled an anti-bike ad it was running that targeted college students following loud opposition from the cycling community. The ad portrays a guy on a bicycle being passed by an attractive woman in a car. The woman is looking at the man with a snide, demeaning smile while the cyclist, obviously humiliated, hides his face with his hand. The headline reads “Reality Sucks.”

The ad, which encourages consumers to “Stop pedaling… start driving,” ran in a number of college newspapers and as a poster on college campuses, offering a discount on several GM models to college students, according to the Los Angeles Times.

While the advertisement’s intent may have only been to cheekily persuade college students to purchase GM vehicles, the negative feedback it received was so boisterous that GM pulled the ad from rotation.

The reality of riding a bicycle sucks? What about the reality of driving a car?

It certainly sucks for the environment.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that the average American drives between 12,000-15,000 miles per year. In the five years I have owned my car, I’ve put 65,000 miles on it, averaging 13,000 miles a year.

I own a small 1997 Toyota Corolla that I bought used in 2006. It has a 13 gallon tank and gets around 23 miles to the gallon. While it is a fairly efficient vehicle, driving 13,000 miles a year still emits 4.24 metric tons of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas which the EPA says contributes the greatest to global warming.

If my Corolla emits 4.24 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, then in four years of college my car would emit 16.96 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s a greater carbon dioxide emission in four years than many individuals in Africa will emit in a lifetime.

Let us not forget that the GM ad was targeting college students, the number of which the U.S Census Bureau projects at 19.1 million. If all of those students drove cars and their cars all emitted the 5.44 metric tons of carbon dioxide that the average American car emits, then in only one year the college-attending population of the United States would emit 103.9 billion metric tons of car

bon dioxide into the atmosphere.

That’s just shy of the total carbon dioxide emissions for the entire country of Japan, according to a 2009 study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The reality of driving a car not only sucks for the atmosphere, it sucks for your wallet, too.

The combined cost of fuel, insurance and activity depreciation (representing economic cost as well as maintenance and repairs) costs me $3,862.31 a year. After four years of college, this would total $15,449.24.

The financial cost of a car gets even more outrageous if you’re still making payments on it, live in a state where your car is included in property tax or just have a nicer, newer car than I do.

The reality of driving a car also sucks for your health.

Even if you only spend 20 minutes a day driving, that amounts to almost 122 hours a year sitting in your vehicle. Then add those hours to the time you spend sitting in class, sitting on the couch or sitting at an office desk. Americans spend and awful lot of time sitting down, which experts say leads to greater risk of obesity and heart attacks.

Breaking up the time we spend sitting with bouts of exercise throughout the day is a great way to keep our bodies healthy, especially when done outdoors where we can enjoy nature and soak up vitamin D from the sun. Depending on weight, you can burn 150-300 calories in just 20 minutes of biking at 15 miles per hour (which is no Lance Armstrong pace).

Since I began using my bike as my primary means of transportation this summer, I’ve noticed a difference in my cardiovascular shape and on the scale. By being more active and moderating my diet, burning body fat rather than fossil fuel has not only been fairly easy, it’s been enjoyable.

So what’s the reality of riding a bike?

You might get a little sweaty and you’ve got to hope you don’t send yourself flying over your handlebars on accident. Sometimes it does rain; sometimes you are a little overloaded with stuff.

But by biking, you’ve got so much more to feel good about than you do driving your car, like no carbon dioxide emissions, zero fuel cost and improved health. Not mention the indescribably liberating joy of soaring down a hill and feeling like a kid again.

So if GM wants to tell cyclists how lame we are for caring about the environment, saving money and being healthier, they can have at it. We’re the ones pedaling all the way to the good karma bank.

The auto industry would love for us to be fat, up to our eyes in debt and dependent on cars to get anywhere. Your body, wallet and planet disagree.