High Country News

A champion of 'cooperative conservation': Interior Secretary Gale Norton

Interior Secretary Gale Norton talks to High Country News about her "Four C’s" credo: "Communication, consultation and cooperation, all in the service of conservation"

by Alex Pasquariello, May 24, 2004
A Western mystery with an environmental twist: a review of Buried by the Roan

In Mark Stevens' second novel, Allison Coil, a tequila-drinking hunting guide, investigates a mysterious death in a remote landscape much sought after by oil and gas developers.

by Erica Olsen, Aug 07, 2011
A wild area gets a reprieve

The Bureau of Land Management made the right call when it closed Colorado's Vermillion Basin to oil and gas development.

by Suzanne Jones, Sep 22, 2010
As Congress adjourns, the environment is left in limbo

The energy bill is stalled for now as Congress wraps up its business for the year, but a lot of anti-environmental legislation has been passed in an end-of-season rush

by Michelle Nijhuis and staff, Dec 08, 2003
As Washington waffles, Western states go green

Western state legislatures boost wildlife and green energy, even as Washington, D.C., remains hooked on fossil fuels

by Ray Ring, Jul 25, 2005
BLM experiments with camouflage to hide renewable power structures

The Bureau of Land Management is working with landscape architects and camouflage experts to better disguise renewable energy infrastructure on public lands.

by Kimberly Hirai, Nov 03, 2011
Boom! Boom!

An energy boom of unprecedented proportions is transforming western Colorado towns like Rifle, which just recently recovered from the last big energy boom – and a catastrophic bust.

by Francisco Tharp, May 12, 2008
Brace yourselves for the counterrevolution

Don’t worry so much about what President Bush will do to the environment; worry instead about the three new justices he might put on the Supreme Court

by Jon Margolis, Dec 06, 2004
Busted in Rio Blanco

Rio Blanco County, Colo., which was just recently buzzing with oil and gas development, now faces an unexpected slowdown as the national economy tanks.

by Rebecca Clarren, May 06, 2009
Confessions of a Methane Floozy

An environmentalist who owns royalty interest in New Mexico oil and gas wells heads down to the San Juan Basin to talk to rancher Tweeti Blancett, driller Tom Dugan and others about the moral complexities inherent in Americans’ energy use

by Hannah Nordhaus, Dec 25, 2006