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 […]
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Rantcast: Goodbye, listeners
Hi podcast listeners. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Rants from the Hill podcast for the past 6 months. We recently decided to discontinue our podcasts due to staffing limitations at High Country News. But never fear, you can still read the Rants from the Hill online, at HCN.org, on the first Monday […]
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That familiar loneliness: a writer’s own relationship mirrors a Stegner novel
During my first full summer in the West, I participated in a rite of passage: I read Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. The first character I fell in love with was the land. The stirrup-high grass near Leadville, Colorado, that “flowed and flawed in the wind, its motion revealed and hid and revealed again streaks […]
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In Montana, ‘Dr. Trout’ battles the planet’s most dangerous diseases
In his day job, Marshall Bloom is the associate director for scientific management at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a cutting-edge federal research campus in an unlikely place: Hamilton, Mont., a town of about 4,500 in the beautiful Bitterroot Valley. Nearly 500 workers in dozens of lab buildings are dedicated to studying “emerging infectious diseases” like […]
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First impressions: an Easterner’s new life in the West
Photographer Andrew Cullen used Instagram to document his summer 2012 move from Maine to Colorado, capturing Western scenes of surprise, wonder, and delight. Click on the gallery view to see the images full size.
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Abbey’s Road: Retired BLM chief gives one last look across the range
Bob Abbey, director of the federal Bureau of Land Management, retired this May after a total of 28 years with the agency. It was his second — and final — retirement: He originally left in 2005 after eight years as the Nevada state director, returning in 2009 only after a special request from Interior Secretary […]
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Rantcast: The desert shoe tree
Rants from the Hill are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in rural Nevada. They are posted at the beginning of each month at www.hcn.org. You can subscribe to the podcast for free in iTunes, or through Feedburner if you use other podcast readers. Each month’s rant is also available in written form. Musical credits for Rantcast: Bumper sticker sloganeering, licensed under […]
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West of 100: Fire & Brimstone
In this edition of West of 100, we’ve got a couple of stories about wildfire. First, the backstory to Emily Guerin’s piece, “Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like.” We’ll talk with Emily about why the debate over a new study arguing that severe fire may be more normal than we thought […]
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Rantcast: Bringing back the mammoths
Rants from the Hill are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in rural Nevada. They are posted at the beginning of each month at www.hcn.org. You can subscribe to the podcast for free in iTunes, or through Feedburner if you use other podcast readers. Each month’s rant is also available in written form. Musical credits for Rantcast: Bumper sticker sloganeering, licensed under […]
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West of 100: Droughts past, present and future
Of course, drought has always been a fact of Western life. But with the specter of climate change hanging over every extreme weather event these days, this year’s drought, and the dry years that have preceded it, have people wondering: Is this normal? Is this the new normal? So for this edition of West of […]
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Rantcast: Puppy love
Rants from the Hill are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in rural Nevada. They are posted at the beginning of each month at www.hcn.org. You can subscribe to the podcast for free in iTunes, or through Feedburner if you use other podcast readers. Each month’s rant is also available in written form. Musical credits for Rantcast: Bumper sticker […]
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Following Dad down the road
I thank you for the music, and your stories of the road;I thank you for my freedom when it came my time to go;I thank you for your kindness, and the times that you got tough.And Papa, I don’t think I’ve said “I love you” near enough. –Dan Fogelberg, from his song “Leader of the […]
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Beyond the politics of no: Luther Propst and collaborative conservation
More than two decades ago, Luther Propst jumped away from a law career back East to found the Sonoran Institute in Tucson, Ariz. Since then, the nonprofit has helped dozens of Western communities — from Driggs, Idaho, to Rifle, Colo., to Tucson itself — grapple with growth while incorporating conservation goals into their plans for […]
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The West, in pictures
SAGE Magazine, a student-run environmental magazine at the Yale Forestry School, recently ran a photo essay of Western images submitted from students and people around the region. Here, we showcase a selection of these photos, which include beautiful wildlife photography and poignant illustrations of humans’ relationship to the natural world.