My wife recently calculated our carbon footprint for a project at the school where she teaches. Just how much CO2 are we contributing to global warming? I was smugly confident that our footprint would be tiny compared to others. We are seriously green, after all, trying to live a simple rural life. We heat with […]
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Primer 5: Wildlife
Wild animals are as much a part of the American West’s mystique and grandeur as its mountains, canyons and plains. Nowhere else in the United States can you encounter wolves, grizzlies, buffalo, elk, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, golden and bald eagles, condors, mountain goats, and moose, wandering more or less at will across a varied landscape. […]
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Putting out the welcome mats
Southwestern Wyoming’s Upper Green River Valley is home to the most extensive wetlands and riparian areas in the state, and its vast sagebrush prairies have long been a stronghold for sage grouse, antelope and mule deer. The Upper Green is also the site of the huge Jonah natural gas field. The Jonah Field stretches over […]
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Welcome to Smart Grid City, Colorado
Boulder, Colo., is known for a lot of things, including the University of Colorado, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and a distinctive hippie-progressive-outdoorsy vibe. And now, it’s about to get the nation’s first fully-integrated “smart grid.” A smart grid is exactly what it sounds like: an “intelligent” power grid that uses broadband technology to […]
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More precious than gold?
Updated May 14, 2008 In the ’80s, activist David Kliegman was worried about logging companies over-cutting the forests on Buckhorn Mountain, the high point of the picturesque Okanogan Highlands in north-central Washington state. Then he learned that a mining company just might “take the mountain right out from under the trees.” That was back in […]
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One down, three to go
Four Western states could see big chunks of new wilderness — roughly three-quarters of a million acres – thanks to a flurry of wilderness legislation. Three bills are now wending their way through Congress, and a fourth, designating the Washington State Wild Sky Wilderness, awaits President Bush’s expected signature. Many Northwesterners are enthusiastic: Idaho may […]
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Sovereign immunity on trial
Tribal governments may no longer be exempt from being sued by tribal members. Since the early 1800s, the U.S. government has acknowledged that Indian nations have full legal rights to manage their own affairs. This doctrine of tribal “sovereign immunity” has prevented legal attacks on tribal governments and shielded them from lawsuits brought by states, […]
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Can wildlife weather the gas boom?
In northwestern Colorado’s Piceance Basin, the sage and juniper landscape is home to flocks of the dwindling greater sage grouse and one of the country’s largest migratory mule deer herds. It also happens to hold one of the nation’s largest natural gas reserves. Now, Colorado Division of Wildlife researchers are beginning a $1.3 million-per-year study […]
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Jaguar’s road to recovery unmapped
Some Native American cultures attribute divine power and magical stealth to the American jaguar — traits that could come in handy now that the endangered cat won’t be getting a federal recovery plan. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in mid-January that creating a recovery plan for borderland jaguars would “not be sensible.” Under […]
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Primer 4: Water
If you want a glimpse of the unpredictable nature of water in the arid West, pick up a Utah newspaper from late fall or winter of 1983. Almost every story was about flooding. Floods that menaced Interstate 80 and the Southern Pacific Railroad with the waters of the Great Salt Lake. Floods that threatened to […]
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Up in FLAME
Last year, over 6 million acres of wildlands burned in Western states. Since 2000, wildfires have burned larger and hotter than ever, thanks to drought and a century of fire suppression. And they’ve caused millions of dollars in damage as more people build homes in or near wildlands. That’s left officials trying to figure out […]
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Why the buffalo can’t roam
Since February, some 1,400 wandering Yellowstone bison have been killed under a controversial plan meant to prevent brucellosis – a livestock disease that causes spontaneous abortions – from spreading to cattle near the park. Five agencies are charged with keeping the park’s bison population within park boundaries, but the animals keep migrating out, entering private […]
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Return of the Teton Dam?
Updated April 7, 2008 Almost 32 years ago, the Teton Dam in southeastern Idaho failed against the force of a 17-mile long, 270-foot deep reservoir. Eight months of stored stream flow and snowmelt crashed down the valley in less than six hours, swallowing the communities of Rexburg, Teton, Newdale and Sugar City. Eleven people died […]
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Primer 3: Recreation
The energy industry isn’t the only one defacing the West’s wild spaces with fresh roads and trails, trampled wildlife habitat, and fouled air and water. Unmanaged recreation, primarily the motorized sort, is one of the top threats facing the nation’s public lands, say federal officials. Other major problems, including the loss of open space and […]
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Where the rubber leaves the road
Updated April 17, 2008 As of July 1, you might want to think twice about driving your ATV off designated trails in Colorado. That’s when HB 1069 – signed by Gov. Bill Ritter, D, on March 20 – goes into effect. In what might be the strongest attempt yet to keep off-road vehicles from ripping […]
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A rough road to repair
Updated April 3, 2008 This winter’s storms hit the Northwest hard. In December, Washington’s Olympic Peninsula was thrashed for two days by 90 mph winds and saturating rains. Rivers rose up to 14 feet, twisting bridges and sweeping away roads. The storm caused $5 million of road damage in Olympic National Forest alone. While maintenance […]
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Surviving a friend’s suicide
‘I know something about black holes now—because there was one inside of him.’
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Yellowstone grazing allotments
Updated March 24, 2008 Stephen Gordon lost more cattle to grizzly and wolves than any other rancher in his neck of the woods. In the 20 years that he ran his Diamond G Ranch herd on the Dunoir federal grazing allotment just east of Grand Teton National Park, predators killed between 200 and 250 calves. […]
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The Longest Walk 2
On a chilly day in March, two dozen weary walkers are resting at the Ute Indian Museum in Montrose. In the shadow of western Colorado’s Shining Mountains, surrounded by relics of the tribe who once inhabited the area, the group is taking a two-day break on its five-month journey from California’s Alcatraz Island to the […]