In the middle of August, I visit a backcountry campground in California’s Sequoia National Park to survey trees. Two teenage boys nap while their fathers roam the nearby woods, looking for firewood. I introduce myself as a forestry technician and mention that a dying white fir is leaning over one of their tents. Dropping my […]
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The Latest: battles in the West’s bitter wild horse wars
BackstoryThe 37,000 wild horses roaming the West’s public lands strain ecosystems, ranches and taxpayers alike. Despite fertility drugs designed to lessen their numbers, today, more mustangs live in captivity than in the wild, costing the Bureau of Land Management about $76 million annually. Slaughter and hunting may be the clearest solutions, but public outrage makes […]
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An interview with John Maclean
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, Nelson Harvey talks with John Maclean, author of Fire on the Mountain, a book about the 1994 South Canyon Fire in Colorado, which took 14 lives. Maclean believes the […]
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Veteran photographer shines light on US immigration
Death and deportation at the US-Mexico border, and lives after crossings.
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Ted Turner: A Good Guy After All?
The author of a new biography of one of the West’s largest landholders speaks with HCN about conservation, capitalism and Cousteau.
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Stand down from Western wildfires
A prominent wildfire expert, reacting to the deaths of 19 Arizona firefighters, says it’s time for a major change in policy.
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Problem-solving in the West
A conversation with Lucy Moore, one of the Southwest’s premier environmental mediators
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EPA’s abandoned Wyoming fracking study one retreat of many
When the federal Environmental Protection Agency abruptly retreated on its multimillion-dollar investigation into water contamination in a central Wyoming natural gas field last month, it shocked environmentalists and energy industry supporters alike. In 2011, the agency had issued a blockbuster draft report saying that the controversial practice of fracking was to blame for the pollution […]
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A long-time defender talks grizzly conservation
A Q&A with Louisa Willcox, who has spent 30 years fighting for grizzly protections.
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Researchers go to Utah to experience another planet: Mars
In March, photographer and science enthusiast Jim Urquhart ventured into the Utah desert to join a team of researchers at the Mars Desert Research Station. He came back with a collection of surreal images both extra-terrestrial and intriguing.
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Federal Helium Reserve faces uncertainty amid global shortage
While browsing the Bureau of Land Management’s website, I found an odd piece of trivia. True or False: Inhaling helium causes your vocal cords to constrict, raising the pitch of your voice. I was surprised. What was the agency in charge of overseeing the dry husks of the West’s open spaces doing with a colorless, […]
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Taking the park to the people
There will be no Fiesta Day this year at Saguaro National Park, a mountainous, cactus- and shrub-studded landscape surrounding Tucson. No mariachi band at the visitor’s center, no spread of tacos and enchiladas, no candy-filled pinatas for the kids to knock down. But the cancellation of the five-year running event, conceived by park officials as […]
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How fish consumption determines water quality
Jim Peters lives near Puget Sound in Washington, and during fishing season his kids eat smoked salmon like candy. Peters is a council member of the Squaxin Island Tribe of South Puget Sound. Fish permeate nearly every aspect of their culture; in the 1850s tribal members gave up most of their land to settlers in […]
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Feds enabled oil drillers, others to cheat Fort Berthold tribes
Editor’s note: This ProPublica story follows up on our 2012 story “The Other Bakken Boom” with additional information on lawsuits alleging that the U.S. government allowed the Fort Berthold tribes to be cheated by energy companies. Native Americans on an oil-rich North Dakota reservation have been cheated out of more than $1 billion by schemes […]
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My low-impact life
My low-impact life did not grow out of my concern for the environment, or anything the least bit altruistic. It sprang from my desire to get an education without falling into debt. Just back from caretaking an isolated Canadian fishing camp, I faced the challenge of finding an inexpensive place to rent in Bozeman, Mont., […]
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Protecting culture in the ancient Sky City
About an hour west of Albuquerque, N.M., a sandstone bluff rises above the high desert floor. For more than 800 years, the people of Acoma Pueblo have lived there, protecting their culture, language and many traditional ways. Archaeologist Theresa Pasqual, the director of the Acoma Pueblo’s Historic Preservation Office, works with state and federal agencies […]
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Photographing migrant foragers
Eirik Johnson’s photographs document the life and landscape of the Pacific Northwest, where he lives. He’s been featured on National Public Radio and in Orion and Audubon Magazine, among others. Johnson’s series of images on the region’s logging industry, Sawdust Mountain, was recently published by the Aperture Foundation. High Country News assistant designer Andrew Cullen, […]
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You can’t keep a cow from water (or Jon Marvel from grazing issues)
In September, the Western Watersheds Project announced that it was seeking a successor to Jon Marvel, its founder and executive director. Marvel, who lives in Hailey, Idaho, began his campaign to end public lands grazing back in the early 1990s, following a dispute with a neighboring rancher whose cattle bedded down on Marvel’s property and […]
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In Montana, Dark Money Helped Democrats Hold a Key Senate Seat
In the waning days of Montana’s hotly contested Senate race, a small outfit called Montana Hunters and Anglers, launched by liberal activists, tried something drastic.It didn’t buy ads supporting the incumbent Democrat, Sen. Jon Tester. Instead, it put up radio and TV commercials that urged voters to choose the third-party candidate, libertarian DanCox, describing Cox as […]
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West of 100: Goodbye, listeners
We hope the seven episodes of West of 100 we’ve produced this year have stimulated your curiosity and warmed your ears. Unfortunately, we’ve decided to discontinue the podcast. We’ve concluded that our small staff can better serve our audience by concentrating our resources on conducting the best in-depth reporting on the American West that you […]