Shadow Creatures

Feature

Wildlife biologist John Marzluff is fascinated by the crows and other adaptable wild animals that have made a comfortable home for themselves in the suburbs and even downtown areas of Western cities such as Seattle.

Dear Friends

Asking hard questions

Whitman College students ask HCN hard questions; more visitors; congratulations to Don Sampson, Rebecca Clarren, Gretchen Nicholoff and Rita Murphy.

Farewell, Blazin' Ben

One-time Olympic runner Ben Eastman dies at the age of 91 in Hotchkiss, Colo.

Popular historian passes on

Best-selling historian Stephen Ambrose, who wrote about the West and worked to save its rivers, dies at the age of 66.

Writers on the Range

The message of 30,000 dead salmon

The 30,000 salmon that died in the Klamath River recently died because the Bush administration decided that fish do not need water after all.

News

Deer, elk disease doesn't scare hunters

Colorado hunters do not seem to be deterred by recent tests that show chronic wasting disease to be more widespread than previously thought.

The Latest Bounce

BLM allows seismic exploration gas in Utah; Chemical Depot ordered to cease test burns; Colorado streams hit record lows; Sen. Chuck Grassley asks why ranger was pulled; and National Treasury Employees Union says no control of employees' politics

Bush undermines bedrock environmental law

The Bush administration says the National Environmental Policy Act needs to be "streamlined," but conservationists say the act is in danger of being "steamrolled."

Forests could lose environmental review

Some congressional conservatives are trying to eliminate the analysis of forest-thinning projects that is required by the National Environmental Policy Act.

Jet Ski riders circle the wagons

In November, personal watercraft will be banned from Lake Powell and seven other Western reservoirs while the Park Service completes an environmental review of the machines' impacts.

Nuclear dump may be supersized

Eight years before it is likely to open, the planned nuclear waste dump in Nevada's Yucca Mountain already appears to be full - and the amount of nuclear waste around the country in need of a home continues to grow.

Bush's war on terrorism comes West

Some locals are worried about plans to expand the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont., into a "biosafety 4" facility capable of handling the kind of deadly microbes likely to be used in bioterrorist attacks against the U.S.

Judges rule gas leases are illegal

Three judges say the BLM illegally leased coalbed methane rights in Wyoming's Powder River Basin without evaluating impacts - a ruling environmentalists say could affect similar leases across the West.

Book Reviews

Yellowstone goes retro

Yellowstone National Park wants to reintroduce the old yellow convertible buses that were used to carry park tourists back in the 1920s.

Revisiting Alcatraz

PBS plans to broadcast an award-winning film, Alcatraz is not an Island, about the occupation of Alcatraz Island in the late '60s by Native American activists.

Does dam breaching make cents?

Two studies have come out, taking different sides on the question of breaching three dams on Hells Canyon on the Snake River, one by Idaho Power Company and the other by the RAND think tank.

A rez-to-rez film debut

Skins, Chris Eyre's new film about two brothers on the Pine Ridge Reservation, debuted on reservations across the country in a mobile cinema trailer.

An activist who never let up

Jeannette Rankin: America's Conscience by Norma Smith records the courageous and controversial life of the first woman elected to Congress.

Essays

Small-town determination at 25 percent off

People of Powell, Wyo., resurrects their own department store.

Heard Around the West

GI Joe's gun confiscated; model prisoner steals; candidate turns blue; handshaking record set; "My governor is stupider; corrections; Viagra climbs mountains; advice on wolves; polygamist's prolific pallbearers; and crazy about canines.

High Country News October 28, 2002

Feature