Faced with rising temperatures and a passive federal government, Western towns such as Aspen, Colo., are beginning to work out a local approach to combating global warming.
Also in this issue: President Bush revives a proposal to sell off public lands managed by the BLM and the Forest Service as part of his 2007 budget.
Save Our Snow
Can Aspen and other Western towns put a dent in a global problem?
Corporate agriculture doesn’t control universities
I would like to compliment Sam Western on a well-written and insightful article (HCN, 12/26/05: A New Green Revolution). However, I am curious about the origin of the erroneous statement in the sidebar concerning universities and organic research: “While the Legislature provides some funding, companies such as Dow, Syngenta and Monsanto fund most of the…
Time for a little outreach
In your Feb. 6 editorial, you provide a great example of one common misunderstanding: “These days, hunters seem to rarely assert their political power toward conservation ends” (HCN, 2/6/06: Time for a little outrage). I would be the first to agree that some hunting groups let their reluctance to criticize Republicans get in the way…
Neither bison nor mustangs are truly free
I was heartened to read that even though Hal Herring called it “hunting” throughout his story of the Yellowstone buffalo, he finally called it what it truly was, an ugly slaughter (HCN, 2/6/06: The Killing Fields). Killing those placid buffalo was no more hunting than going out to the back pasture and plugging your Hereford…
Most enviro cases legit
In response to your article “Judge orders litigating enviros to pony up,” do you ever fact-check for ridiculous statements like Engstedt’s — “Ninety-eight percent of these cases are not legitimate” (HCN, 2/6/06: Judge orders litigating enviros to pony up)? In truth, I’ve been the lawyer bringing these cases for Alliance for the Wild Rockies, The…
Sympathy for destroyers
In response to the story about a judge ordering environmentalists to post a $10,000 bond, rather than focus on the amount of the bond, or the legitimacy or strength of the case, HCN could have openly debated the chilling effect of prohibitive costs on the public’s right to environmental justice (HCN, 2/6/06: Judge orders litigating…
Grateful for real hunters
Thanks to Hal Herring for a fantastic article (HCN, 2/6/06: The Killing Fields)! I’m not a hunter, but I’m definitely a meat-eater. I feel honored and grateful to be on the same side of the table as the real hunters who respect and steward the game and habitat. David Wicks Rye, Colorado This article appeared…
Keep buffalo corralled
As I see it, a person has the God-given right to protect life and property (HCN, 2/6/06: The Killing Fields). Yellowstone National Park encompasses approximately 2,219,799 acres. There are approximately 4,000 head of buffalo that roam freely upon this land (taxpayers’ land). This would amount to about 554.94 acres per head of buffalo. If any…
The Latest Bounce
Rural Nevadans may ask for a little federal help in an epic water fight. Las Vegas is moving forward with a controversial plan to pump groundwater from beneath the Great Basin (HCN, 9/19/05: Squeezing Water from a Stone). Now, some citizens in rural White Pine County are looking to curtail that plan by asking their…
Big dams, big battles
Like it or not, dams define the West. This is the birthplace of big dams — Hoover, Glen Canyon, Grand Coulee — and to a large extent, these monuments have written the history of our cities and our agriculture. These days, Westerners talk more about taking down big dams than about building new ones. But…
Friends in high places
Breaking Through the Clouds is a compilation of essays by Richard Fleck, a scholar, writer and wanderer of the West’s high mountains. Fleck deftly weaves in the history and human background of each peak, quoting John Wesley Powell on the first ascent of Longs Peak in what is now Rocky Mountain National Park. Far from…
Fishermen blamed for salmon troubles
Salvation for the Northwest’s endangered salmon will come through further cuts in fishing, according to a senior White House official. James Connaughton, head of the Council on Environmental Quality, announced at Portland’s Salmon 2100 conference in January that salmon recovery will have to come through curbing fishing, along with upgrades to outdated hatcheries, which may…
Got Sun? Go Solar
Got Sun? Go Solar Rex A. Ewing and Doug Pratt 160 pages, softcover: $18.95, PixyJack Press, 2005. Tired of waiting for Washington, D.C., to make a serious commitment to solar power? Then pick up this information-packed but very readable book and get started on your own. Authors Rex Ewing and Doug Pratt explain home renewable…
Energy company stakes out wildlife refuge
Iridescent dragonflies, shimmering wetlands, and the many imperiled species that call a southeastern New Mexico wildlife refuge home may soon have a new neighbor: gas wells. Yates Petroleum Co., based in Artesia, N.M., told U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials last month it plans to drill two wells in Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge —…
Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies
Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies Fred W. Rabe 146 pages, softcover: $29.95 Aquatic Ecosystems, 2006. Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies features dozens of color photographs, maps and sketches. But it’s not a travel guide to the approximately 8,000 high-elevation lakes speckling the region; instead of trails, biologist Fred Rabe describes geology,…
Wilderness: The new anti-nuclear weapon
On Jan. 6, President Bush signed into law the first new Utah wilderness area since 1984 — and made it a little harder for nuclear power plant operators to ship radioactive waste to a nearby Indian reservation. The new Cedar Mountain Wilderness protects some 100,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land about 45 miles…
Facts about greenhouse gas emissions
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Save Our Snow.” AIR TRAVEL Each mile of commercial air travel produces a little more than half a pound of carbon dioxide per person. Each passenger on a one-way flight from Denver to San Francisco is responsible for about 608 pounds of carbon dioxide…
Hot times — hot damn
Please forgive us, this once, just a little bragging. The cover story in this issue is the capstone of a two-year special series about global warming, written by High Country News Contributing Editor Michelle Nijhuis. The series started with a story about tiny bark beetles that are moving higher into the West’s mountain forests because…
Dear friends
NEW BLOG ON THE BLOCK A new online experiment for HCN, or the last best place for a nuclear waste dump … you decide. We’ve got our own blog now, where Paolo Bacigalupi, our Web editor, comments daily about what’s happening in the West. Check it out at http://blog.hcn.org/goat and send comments, tips and suggestions…
Public acres for sale
President Bush revives proposal to sell desert and forest land
In hunting camp, the closet is closed
I saw Brokeback Mountain at the historic Wilma Theatre, just a short walk from my home in downtown Missoula. Built in 1921 by producers of a Wild West show, it’s a place where cowboy humorist Will Rogers once performed. Between the old sound system and my bad ears (courtesy of my time in the Marine…
Snowy middle ground
Wilderness advocates and snowmobilers come to terms in Montana
Fishering
In a part of Oregon where everybody says there have been no fishers for years, the writer stumbles across one of these rare and beautiful animals.
Taking the law into their own hands
Citizens are wielding an obscure legal weapon to fight energy company profiteering
Heard around the West
COLORADO The sex-change doctor who created an unusual kind of economic development for the former coal-mining town of Trinidad, Colo., died last month at the age of 82. Stanley Biber began operating on men who wanted to be women in 1969, and over a 34-year span, according to an obituary in the New York Times,…
States tighten rules, challenge feds to follow
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Save Our Snow.” During the summer of 1943, the streets of Los Angeles filled with a nauseating brown haze. Visibility shrank to three blocks, and residents endured smarting eyes, sore throats and spells of vomiting. The problem, it turned out, was a combination of…