I must have looked like an idiot to the folks watching me from the big diesel pickup. It was a scorching day in July of 2012, and I had been ushered out in front of the rig to toddle down a dusty, high-desert two track behind a line of greater sage grouse hens like a […]
Blogs
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Killer bees could help solve honeybee colony collapse
First, to get the blood pumping, a few shots of hysteria: A recent Los Angeles Times headline sums it up: “Killer bee season underway with a vengeance.” Whoa, and not just because of the cliché. So far this year, the list of killer-bee victims in the U.S. begins with a confirmed fatality, 62-year-old Larry Goodwin, […]
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Debunking the drill-your-way-to-low-gas-prices myth
Something funny happened over the last few weeks. First, the price of oil started climbing. Then, the announcement came that U.S. fields were producing more oil than they had since 1989. Wait? Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what’s supposed to happen under the energy independence myth? The myth goes something like this: The more […]
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Floods have hit more than just Colorado, but will they fix the Southwest drought?
Remember early July in the Southwest? New Mexico and Arizona were in the grip of record drought exacerbated by record high temperatures. Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly declared a state of emergency for drought on July 2. Feral horses across the Rez were dying of thirst. Crops withered. Lake Powell, which got only a meagre […]
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Add one to the introduced species list: mountain goats in the La Sal Mountains
You’d think we’d have learned by now. But humans, it seems, just aren’t content to let nature well enough alone – especially when hunters with money are involved. That seems to be the main reason why the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources last week released 20 mountain goats into the La Sal Mountains just east […]
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Wolf update: Montana tries to attract more hunters as feds consider national delisting
Montana’s wolf hunters hung up their bows last Saturday as archery season closed and rifle season began. Five years after the federal government dropped Montana’s wolves from the Endangered Species List and the state took over management, officials are still trying to trim the state’s growing wolf population. This year, each hunter can bag five […]
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Colorado floods will leave long-lasting impacts
Massive flooding along Colorado’s Front Range last week is finally starting to abate. In most areas water levels are dropping (although they’re now rising in some downstream communities, threatening to create further chaos). Assistant Editor Cally Carswell wrote on Monday about how geography and development made such a disaster inevitable. Five to 18 inches of […]
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Could drought and a court case stop water deliveries to the Salton Sea?
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has an unenviable job in a wet year, but in prolonged periods of drought, the task of managing the Colorado River is even harder. The agency is in charge of balancing the water levels in the country’s two largest reservoirs, the serpentine desert lakes called Powell and Mead. Seven Western […]
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True Believers would destroy the Indian health system
Congress always works on two tracks. The first rail is legislation that gives the government authority to spend money. The second rail is one that actually appropriates the funds. It’s that second law that dictates how the government can spend dollars for the Indian Health Service (or any other program) under parameters set by law. […]
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Eagle permit extensions could be a boon for the wind industry
Since U.S. Fish and Wildlife researchers released a study this month announcing that at least 85 eagles have died in collisions with wind turbines since 1997 in 10 states, discussion has heated around a federal rule change that would extend eagle casualty permits to last up to 30 years. The new rule would mean wind […]
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The next energy transportation fight: natural gas exports
Over the last few years, the fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground and their carbon and other pollutants out of the air has shifted. In addition to trying to stop the actual drilling and mining, a lot of effort, perhaps even more, has been put into stopping the stuff from being transported, be […]
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Why flooding on the Front Range is an inevitable disaster
Excuse my language, but: Holy. Shit. That’s what all of us natural disaster-curious Internet voyeurs were thinking last week, our jaws giving in to gravity as we clicked through images from Colorado’s Front Range of people trudging through baseball fields covered hip-high with water, roads sliced apart by whitewater, and cabins transformed into riverine islands. […]
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Environmentalists turn on California’s first real fracking law
Earlier this month, the Environmental Working Group — the D.C.-based nonprofit that helps the green-conscious decide which sunscreen to wear and what to wash their dishes with — was rallying California followers to contact state legislators in support of a bill to regulate fracking. The sun was about to set on California’s 2012-2013 legislative session […]
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What IS glamping, anyway?
Retired Associated Press editor William Kronholm and his wife recently spent six days on the Salmon River in Idaho, rafting during the day and enjoying a gourmet meal with wine each night before retiring to their tent, complete with a mattress, fluffy pillows and floor rug. Kronholm, whose previous standard for wilderness luxury was simply […]
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Fight the Green River nuclear reactors project in Utah
Drive south from Price, Utah for about an hour until Route 6 intersects with I-70. On your right, toward the west, the stunning San Rafael Reef rises. And on the left, the eastern Book Cliffs rise. And, just there, to the east of Route 6, if the energy development company, Blue Castle Holdings, and Utah […]
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The wilderness therapy industry seeks to reinvent itself
In the basement classroom where the first Wilderness Therapy Symposium was held in 2002, event director Jim Lavin put out a plate of cookies and a bowl of Doritos and hoped for the best. Today, the event is held at an upscale hotel in Boulder, Colo., and Lavin spends a couple thousand dollars on hors […]
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Montana takes another step toward restoring free-roaming bison herds
When 34 Yellowstone National Park bison bounded off a trailer into north central Montana this August, their century-long absence from Fort Belknap Reservation ended. The repatriation comes at a time when Montana is making gradual progress towards fostering free-roaming bison herds. While hundreds of thousands of bison live in Montana, most are commercial stock carrying cattle […]
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House Republicans give ground on immigration reform a bit too late
Last fall, many read Barack Obama’s victory over Mitt Romney – who, according to Reuters, had advocated “ ‘self-deportation,’ … essentially call(ing) on the government to make life so miserable for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, most of whom are Hispanics, that many would leave on their own” – as a sort of mandate […]
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Forgiving Winslow, Arizona – not just another Marfa
Winslow, Ariz. has been described as sad, depressed, quiet, dead and creepy. Buildings once housing bustling businesses were abandoned and not even secured, left to the pigeons. A local gas station reportedly had spelled out “God Hates Winslow” on its sign. That’s probably not fair: The reservation border town of 10,000, once the economic and […]
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Planning for drought while in one: Colorado is a model for the region
In the spring of 2002, Colorado temperatures were averaging four degrees above normal. Snowpack began disappearing at an alarming rate, and rain was scant. Then the fires started. The Hayman Fire, 215 square miles southwest of Denver, tore through nearly $200 million in firefighting costs alone. “(That summer) was hellacious,” remembers Reagan Waskom, co-chair of the […]