The armed protesters occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon have indicated that they will leave if the locals so desire. Well, it’s time for them to go: Harney County residents, who just held a huge community meeting about this invasion, seemed to heartily agree that they want the vigilantes to pack their […]
Gina Knudson
Posted inMarch 16, 2015: Wild Ride
Rural communities in the West need a fair shake
The failure to include the Secure Rural Schools program in this year’s budget puts a spotlight on a public-lands identity crisis that has been simmering, and sometimes boiling over, for decades. President Theodore Roosevelt got it right in 1908. Roosevelt understood that his big vision of creating a national forest system would have enormous financial […]
Posted inWotr
Rural communities still have to fight off extremists
The fiery rhetoric that periodically consumes rural communities in the West is smoldering again. Some environmentalists berate those of us who try to collaborate to solve contentious public-lands issues; meanwhile, conspiracy theorists spread scary stories about the U.N. subverting our government through its “Agenda 21.” The discord has emerged in several communities dependant on natural […]
Posted inWotr
Saving the salmon, saving ourselves
The people of Salmon, Idaho, may have reclaimed their namesake river this spring. It happened during Riverfest 2011, a fund-raising event created to help build a kayak park downtown, where the Salmon River splits into two channels. The event attracted a lot of the 20-something boater crowd of river guides and semi-obsessive kayakers, many of […]
Posted inWotr
Idaho and the new spaghetti Western
President Barack Obama may have won the national health-care battle, but Idaho Gov. Butch Otter is still loaded for bear. He’s proud he was the first governor to sign into law a measure that requires the state attorney general to sue the federal government if it tries to make Idahoans buy health insurance. Idaho has […]
Posted inWotr
Call me a local and forget about my grandpappy
I live in Lemhi County, Idaho, but nobody else in my family ever did, and recently, that’s become a problem. I love the boiled-down democracy of city council meetings, the frank discussions of local school boards, the drama of planning and zoning hearings – and no, I’m not kidding. I find local politics fascinating, and […]
Posted inWotr
Montana Sen. Conrad Burns spotlights a bad burn policy
Conrad Burns, the third-term Republican senator from Montana, may have done Westerners a backhanded favor when he cornered firefighters in the Billings airport and berated them for the job they did on an eastern Montana wildfire. Burns reportedly confronted members of the Augusta Hotshots last month as they were waiting for their flight back home […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Fishing ban will make us forget salmon
When the Bush administration originally announced its intent to ban ocean fishing of chinook salmon along 700 miles of southern Oregon and Northern California coastline, many people in my hometown sneered their approval (HCN, 3/6/06: Fishermen blamed for salmon troubles). With the exception of a brief, limited and most probably token fishing season last summer, […]
Posted inWotr
Fishing ban will make us forget salmon
When the Bush administration announced plans to close ocean fishing ofchinook salmon along 700 miles of Southern Oregon and Northern Californiacoastline, many people in my hometown sneered their approval. With the exception of a brief, limited and most probably token fishing season last summer, Idaho’s upper Salmon River basin has been closed to salmon anglers […]
Posted inWotr
It’s not whether you win or lose…
The trouble with running for public office is the very real possibility that you will lose the race publicly. I considered this as I declared my candidacy for my small town’s city council. But there were three seats up for grabs, and I figured there would be a good chance I might run unopposed. When […]
Posted inWotr
Compassion can be dangerous to your health
It feels to me as if the Dalai Lama left a weapon of mass destruction in Idaho when he visited this September. I’m not a Buddhist, but I have admired the teachings and tolerance of the Dalai Lama for years. So I couldn’t miss the chance to visit the prayer wheel that he blessed at […]