We take so many of the West’s open spaces for granted — the private ranches and agricultural lands that provide invaluable resources for us all – from clean air and water, wildlife habitat and crop pollination, to scenic vistas, hunting opportunities, and so much more. But landowners are rarely compensated for the far-reaching benefits they […]
Emilene Ostlind
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Experiential natural resource education thrives in the West
The environmental conundrums facing the West have never been more complex. How do you manage global problems like climate change locally? Is there any way to stop the cheatgrass invasion? Can the forest help our economy while protecting our watershed? And what’s going on with those bears east of town? The next generation must tackle […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
John Mionczynski: naturalist, accordionist, and Bigfoot expert
ATLANTIC CITY, WYOMINGOn an overcast August afternoon, John Mionczynski is crouched underneath an aspen by the porch of his one-room log cabin, attending to his motorcycle’s broken headlight. Over 30 years ago, he assembled this machine using pieces from four different BMWs — a 1951, ’53, ’63 and ’65. He named it “Serendipity.” “Whenever I […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
A mom-and-pop oil company prospects for gas in central Wyoming
In 1954, the Empire State Oil Company drilled a gas well in central Wyoming. The well turned out dry but showed some gas in an unexpected shallow formation. It wasn’t worth much at the time, so Empire plugged the well and abandoned it. A geologist named John Wold, however, believed the area merited further exploration. […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
The perilous journey of Wyoming’s migrating pronghorn
On a blustery spring day, I crouched behind sagebrush at the edge of the Green River in western Wyoming, waiting for pronghorn to pass by on their northern migration. Occasional snowflakes fluttered into the steel-colored water. I pulled my arms inside my down jacket, zipped to the chin. Hours went by. Then, across the river, […]
Posted inWotr
It’s time to kill my own food
I’m taking a hunter education class in Lander, Wyo., and at the first get-together, I share a table with Ridge, 9, and Dante, 10, cousins who’ve already hunted lots of deer and antelope with their dads and grandpa. They can’t get hunting licenses of their own until they turn 12, but they’re eager to learn […]
Posted inGoat
Antelope as indicators
When the first winter storms buried northeast Montana last November, the thousands of pronghorn antelope that spent the summer around the state’s border with Alberta and Saskatchewan started making their way south. Normally, they move into the north side of the state’s Milk River valley and find enough sagebrush sticking out of the snow to […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Locked boxes
Post offices were among the first institutions in many frontier towns. Now, as Western outposts shrink, losing grocery stores and then gas stations, they’re among the last to leave, says Postal Service spokesman David Rupert. In 1900, there were about 77,000 post offices in the U.S.; today, there are just 27,000. The USPS is funded […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
BLM shields renewable projects from mining speculation
“Some snotty bugger went in and staked a bunch of mining claims just to make a hurdle,” says Dave Shaddrick, president of the Nevada Mineral Exploration Coalition. Four claims, actually, filed last April on the site of the contentious 400-megawatt Silver State solar power plant near Las Vegas, Nev. Some believe that locals, angry that […]
Posted inGoat
Coal-to-liquids plant founders
In 2008, Montana was abuzz about a huge clean coal project in the works. The Australian-American Energy Company (AAEC) had agreed to collaborate with the Crow Tribe to build the $7 billion Many Stars coal-to-liquids plant on the reservation. The tribe would provide coal and water, both abundant on tribal lands. The energy company would […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
An interview with Carter Niemeyer, author of “Wolfer: A Memoir”
Carter Niemeyer is a wildlife biologist who started his career doing predator control and ended it working on wolf recovery in the northern Rockies. His new book, Wolfer: A Memoir, chronicles his years capturing, tracking, relocating and killing wolves for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Idaho Department of Game. The gray wolf’s […]
Posted inWotr
It may be High Noon for tumbleweed
Conjure up the lonesome sound of a harmonica in a dusty Western town where gunmen with jingling spurs reach for their six-shooters at high noon. The scene would be incomplete without a few tumbleweeds rolling past. But here’s the truth: Tumbleweed doesn’t belong on the Western plains. An exotic also known as Russian thistle, it […]
Posted inGoat
Game on in the Wyoming Range
The future of gas leasing in the Wyoming Range is being batted around like a tetherball on a playground as energy companies and conservation groups each take swings. If conservationists win, the gas leases will be scaled back or retired and the mountains protected from development under the 2009 Wyoming Range Legacy Act. If energy […]
Posted inGoat
Clean up your Act
In a High Country News story that ran last August, Pat Parenteau, a legal expert in watersheds and wetlands at the Vermont Law School said, “Sooner or later the Obama administration has got to come in and ask, ‘What the hell are we going to do with the Clean Water Act?’ Because right now, water […]
Posted inGoat
Fracking fluid spill raises concerns over regulation
On April 19, a mechanical problem at a Pennsylvania natural gas well caused thousands of gallons of briny water and fracking fluid of unknown composition to spew out of the well, overwhelm containment facilities and flow across a field and into a pond. The local emergency management agency told seven families to evacuate their homes. […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
Wind farms test efforts to cooperate on Oregon’s Steens Mountain
On a hazy autumn day, Fred Otley leans against his flatbed pickup and talks about managing the Otley Brothers Ranch in desolate, windy southeast Oregon. A careful rotation of grazing and fire sustains the open mosaic of juniper and sagebrush on the valley slopes, he explains. He points to the water tank he installed to […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Critter contraceptives
In the 1960s, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service researchers used hormone-laced bait to prevent New Mexico coyotes, the “little bad guys of the Western Plains,” from reproducing so effectively. It worked pretty well: Up to 80 percent of treated females didn’t get pregnant. But those females had to consume meds repeatedly throughout the breeding cycle, […]