High Country News - Most Recent

Power from the underground

Geothermal power heats up in Reno, Nev., as the West begins to pay more attention to its underground energy resources.

Two weeks in the West

HCN looks at the various problems of Western wildlife, including Northern Rockies wolves, porcupines, fishers, pikas, and more; and Rocky Mountain National Park tests elk for chronic wasting disease and also gives out birth control.

Men with boots

The transformation of once-scrappy mining towns like Silverton, Colo., and Superior, Ariz., into trendy tourist havens is bound to leave the locals with mixed feelings and some nostalgia.

Reluctant Boomtown

A copper-mining company is courting Superior, Ariz., but the former mining town – now re-inventing itself as a modest tourist haven – is unsure whether it really wants a new marriage with extractive industry.

Heard around the West

Jim Stiles asks about perfect moments; rent-a-pet; Douglas Bruce behaves like a jerk; Forest Service meeting gets nasty in Montana.

Standing outside, late, in a charcoal forest

Die with me

Three new books about the West’s Indian wars – Ned Blackhawk’s Violence Over the Land, Kingsley Bray’s Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life, and Robert W. Larson’s Gall: Lakota War Chief – seem to romanticize a violent past.

Time to call the gas industry’s bluff

Randy Udall says Colorado needs to act now to collect severance taxes from the natural gas companies that are making a fortune from the state.

A bad idea hits the gas pumps

Dustin Heron Urban has declared war on the little black stickers at gas stations that announce the availability of ethanol.

Nevada stakes its salmon claim

Nevada sportsmen, tribes and environmentalists ask the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission not to renew licenses for Hells Canyon’s dams until Idaho Power makes it possible for salmon to survive its dams.

Two weeks in the West

A flurry of end-of-year easements saves lots of lovely landscapes; heli-skiing wins in Utah; snow-lovers help starving Colorado deer; a possible ceasefire on the Klamath; and bark beetles are destroying Colorado’s lodgepole pines.

Planning for uncertainty

A Phoenix symposium on dealing with drought and global warming echoes the larger uncertainties facing public-land and national park managers throughout the West.

The Chaparralian

Richard Halsey says Southern California’s chaparral is not to blame for the fires that scorch the region every year.

Hold the salt

The largest wetland restoration project on the West Coast tackles the tidal marshes of San Francisco Bay.

Heard Around the West

Remembering Beverly Allen, an 80-something showgirl; nation’s largest Sitka spruce dies; all religions are weird to non-believers; Ted Turner vs. Nebraska; the benefits of being a resort town; growing pains in the West.

My short tenure with a blind pigeon

Laura Pritchett reluctantly – and guiltily – agrees to take care of a blind pigeon for her mother.

Madame Merian and her passion for metamorphosis

In Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, Kim Todd uncovers the life and legacy of a pioneering 17th century woman

New West, Next West

In the short stories in Last Call, Colorado writer Blair Oliver looks at the desperate suburban lives of modern-day Western men.