High Country News December 26, 2005
Feature
A New Green Revolution
In Montana’s dying farm country, "vanguard agriculture" is putting people back to work on the land
Related Stories
Universities lag on organics
Montana’s land-grant universities have so far shown little interest in promoting organic agriculture
Organics and biofuels bring independence
More Montana farmers are starting to raise oilseed crops and produce their own biofuels to save on energy costs
Editor's Note
Thanks to the farmers
Supporting sustainable, local, organic food production is one way to reduce our ecological impact and restore the West’s rural communities
Uncommon Westerners
The ranch wife, reinvented
Andrea Malmberg of Wyoming’s Twin Creek Ranch uses her gourmet cooking to put her ranch guests in touch with the land and with the food they eat
News
Roadless forest plans draw crowds — and lawsuits
Concerned citizens overflow a meeting in Delta, Colo., as a crucial deadline for protecting roadless areas in national forests nears
The Latest Bounce
Who rewrote Park Service’s management policies?; judge permits building of U.S.-Mexico border fence; Superintendent David Hunsaker leaves Utah’s Escalante National Monument; judge says Forest Service blew his ruling out of proportion
A desperate move to protect cattle ranchers
Wyoming Game and Fish plans to test feedgrounds elk and slaughter any that are infected with brucellosis in order to keep the disease from spreading to cattle
Where have all the rangers gone?
Budget crunches have thinned Forest Service staffing even as visitor numbers soar, making it hard to enforce regulations such as trail closures
Bipartisan uprising sinks public-lands selloff
Reps. Richard Pombo’s and Jim Gibbons’ controversial proposal to sell off public lands was pulled after both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and citizens rallied against it
Energy companies score massive refund checks
A federal judge has ordered the government to buy back offshore oil and gas leases that energy companies say can’t be developed, leading some to wonder if the BLM will have to do the same with leases in potential wilderness areas
Book Reviews
Politics, prejudice and predators
In Predatory Bureaucracy, Michael J. Robinson traces the history of the U.S. Biological Survey, particularly its war on wolves
A natural and cultural history of the Rocky Mountains
Gary Ferguson explores the history and culture of the backbone of the West in The Great Divide: The Rocky Mountains in the American Mind
The Sum of our Past: Revisiting Pioneer Women
In The Sum of Our Past, Judy Busk weaves personal memoir and historical research together as she retraces the Mormon and Oregon Trails in the modern "covered wagon" of her van
The Pictograph Murders
The Pictograph Murders by P.G. Karamesines, combines archaeology, witchcraft and murder in a chilling first novel set in Utah
Essays
Scandal and war fracture conservative coalition
The war in Vietnam destroyed a long-lasting liberal coalition; now, political scandals and the war in Iraq are threatening the conservative coalition that took its place
Backcountry Ranger
Backcountry seasonal ranger Tony Prendergast has spent much of the past six summers working in western Colorado’s Gunnison National Forest
Heard Around the West
Heard around the West
Evolution Amber Ale; wolves, bears and elk in Yellowstone; Starbucks vs. Sambuck’s; cows adopt an elk; PETA vs. your daddy the fisherman
