Obama’s new political order, backed by the legal acumen of Judge James Redden, may help the Northwest’s salmon survive and end the era of the Lower Snake River dams.
Visitors going and coming
On his way out of town, Nick Berling stopped into HCN’s headquarters in Paonia, Colo. He had just quit his job on a local farm and was Boulder-bound — picking up the books again to study environmental engineering at the University of Colorado. Nick is an avid skier and an artist. While hunting for property…
Schmear campaign
Wandering through the bagel-less desert.
High Noon
As the climate warms, environmentalists square off over Big Solar’s claim to the Mojave Desert
From grass to grains
An Oregon local foods movement finds opportunity in the economic crisis
Salmon (apolitical) science
Not only did Steve Hawley’s article “Columbia Basin (Political) Science” include factual errors and omit balancing views, but it also missed dramatic, positive changes surrounding Northwest salmon protection in recent years (HCN, 4/13/09). States, tribes and federal agencies that once stood on different sides now stand together behind the region’s new salmon strategy. Consider the…
Ski in, ski out, make money
Rachel Walker’s story “Go Sell it On the Mountain” about Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s proposed expansion onto Snodgrass Mountain totally missed the point (HCN, 4/13/09). Colorado’s ski areas have gained approval for dozens of terrain expansions by claiming that more terrain would attract more skiers who would spend more money and boost local economies. However,…
Swindle-ition vistas
Proposing “smart growth” for a city as bloated as Phoenix makes no more sense than a doctor prescribing smart weight gain for a morbidly obese patient (HCN, 4/27/09). One might as well advocate socially conscious prostitution or ethical money laundering. Oxymoronic or not, a shuck is a shuck. The cabal of promoters, land agents, politicians,…
Busted in Rio Blanco
A gas boom community feels the pain
Salmon Salvation
Will a new political order be enough to finally bring the dams down?
The West dissected
Oil and gas companies — despite the efforts of “obstructionist” environmentalists — managed to drill at least 117,339 new wells in 12 Western states (including South Dakota) in the last eight years alone. That drilling rush often skirted regulations and caused significant air and water pollution. That’s according to the Environmental Working Group, which recently…
For the love of wasteland
When I was a kid, my parents would load my brother, my sisters and me into our van and haul us off to the buttes and flats of eastern Wyoming and Montana, to search for fossils left by ancient inland seas. I remember those places as all openness, meadowlark song and dusty two-lane highways that…