Starting Sept. 22, the phrase “Pack it in, pack it out” will have a new meaning to visitors at Canyonlands National Park in southern Utah. When nature calls, backcountry campers will no longer be able to simply dig a hole to leave their organic deposit. The park’s remote southeastern Needles District is joining a growing […]
Blogs
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Lynn Scarlett, top Bush official, joins The Nature Conservancy
It’s no surprise that federal officials often end up employed by various think-tanks, nonprofits and trade groups once their stints on Capitol Hill are over. For example, here’s where some George W. Bush administration folks have gone: Dale Hall, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director, is now CEO of Ducks Unlimited. Dave Tenny, who headed […]
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New oil and gas leases throw another wrench in Utah’s big wilderness deal
The San Rafael Swell, the Book Cliffs, Desolation Canyon and the areas around Canyonlands National Park are some of Utah’s most iconic places; yet they lack federal protections. They’ve been land management battlegrounds for decades, pitting wilderness advocates and muscle-powered recreationalists against resource extraction and motor–powered recreationalists. But as reporter Greg Hanscom described recently in […]
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Legislators sparring over Land and Water Conservation Fund — again
In the early 1960s, President Kennedy, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and a few other politicians got together and hatched an idea: use money from offshore oil and gas drilling to fund conservation projects and acquire land for all Americans. The result was the Land and Water Conservation Fund, established in 1965. “It’s helped shape the […]
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Rants from the Hill: The Washoe Zephyr
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Those of us who live out in the western Great Basin Desert, up in the foothills on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Range, are all too familiar with a wind that is […]
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Volunteers track migrations of declining monarch populations
The days are getting shorter as autumn approaches, and volunteers around the country are getting their bug nets in order, preparing for the brief season when monarch butterflies will be migrating through their communities. Arguably the most recognized butterfly species in the world, monarchs captivate our imaginations with their big, colorful wings and long migrations […]
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Why aren’t experimental floods helping native fish below Glen Canyon Dam?
Before Glen Canyon Dam tamed it in 1963, the Colorado River flowed red with mud, and the seasons ruled its temperature and flow. Today, the river is a vastly different ecosystem. Now, it’s the color of a tropical ocean because the dam holds back sediment, withering the beaches that river travelers love for camping. And […]
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Energy update: renewables, coal and gas by the numbers
About a year ago, many of us in energy news land were busy scribbling out coal’s eulogy. Natural gas and renewable energy were slowly taking over the electricity fuel mix, putting coal — our favorite cheap electricity generator for generations — against the rope. It was only a matter of time before natural gas, its […]
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As Rim Fire scorches Yosemite, Forest Service cuts restoration funding
It started small enough, on Aug. 17 – a 200-acre blaze burning towards a place called Jawbone Ridge from a north-facing slope in the rugged Clavey River canyon, west of California’s Yosemite National Park. The area was isolated, and no structures were immediately threatened. By the 19th, local news sites were reporting 2,500 acres burned […]
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Watch the who’s who of Montana’s dinosaur wars
The most recent issue of High Country News features a story about one-of-a-kind fossils that were unearthed in Montana and have stirred controversy in the scientific community. Reporter Montana Hodges tells the spellbinding narrative of the fossil hunters, commercial dealers, museum curators and professors of paleontology involved in the scuffle over the pair of skeletons […]
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Woman breaks an all-time fastest Pacific Crest Trail record
On August 9, The Seattle Timespublished a story titled “‘I couldn’t give up:’ Grueling hike for man on a mission,” about vegan hiker Josh Garrett, a 30-year-old fitness coach from Santa Monica, Calif., who broke the speed record for hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Josh hiked with sponsorship (and PR help) from Whole Foods CEO […]
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Interdisciplinary science programs are important but often get less support
As spring rolled into campus each year, students at my northern Indiana college would soak up the warmth on blankets outside, surrounded by textbooks and notes. The books on my blanket covered subjects from public policy and economics to chemistry and land management; I never could choose between biology and anthropology. Luckily for me, a […]
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Colorado agencies move water to help a rare bird adapt to climate change
There’s a hiking and biking trail near Gunnison, Colo. called “Sea of Sage.” The name conjures an accurate picture of how the area’s ecosystem looks to most people. But healthy sagebrush habitat is really more diverse than that – even the Gunnison sage grouse, a rare relative of the greater sage grouse, can’t survive on […]
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New tech to trace fracking fluid could mean more accountability
As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency comes under fire for abandoning studies that linked contaminated water to hydraulic fracturing, and oil and gas companies consider how to fix their public image around the issue, states are trying to figure out how much transparency to demand from the industry. Meanwhile, researchers are racing to find the […]
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Deregulation talk shakes up Arizona energy scene
The Arizona energy fight that everyone’s been yapping about lately is the effort by the state’s largest investor-owned utility, Arizona Public Service, to tweak state regulations regarding how the utility compensates homeowners for energy they produce from rooftop solar panels. That show – over the decidedly un-sexy-sounding issue of net metering – has a wacky […]
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First settlement reached in Utah’s contentious road claims
If you’ve spent much time wandering around the rural West, especially in southern Utah, you may have come across an extensive network of highways. You might not have recognized them as such, though — these “highways,” in many cases, are nothing more than cow paths, faint two-tracks, and sandy washes. But an antique Western law […]
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Chilean kayaker kids take notes on Western dams to save their hometown river
Cochrane, Chile, has never been an international hotbed for kayakers. A road first reached the remote Patagonian community 20 years ago, and Internet arrived in the last five. The town, with about 2,000 residents, is surrounded by wide-open ranchland and wilderness, and is a 10-hour, bumpy dirt-road drive from the nearest city. So when local […]
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Sexy wildflower photos remind us to take in life’s details
Tim Crawford – an all-around maverick and High Country News subscriber in Bozeman, Mont. – has been doing photography for conservation groups, magazines, books and other purposes for more than 50 years. Now he’s debuting a series of close-ups of “Wild & Feral Flowers,” including this Mexican hat (also called the prairie coneflower) and musk […]
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Is big desert solar killing birds in Southern California?
The threat large-scale solar developments pose to tortoise in the desert Southwest has been well established, but what about the technology’s effect on birds? The question has been asked before — David Danelski of the Riverside Press Enterprise reported on it in Feburary of 2012 — but it emerged most dramatically last winter during the […]
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Kuwait’s ‘solar leaders’ study renewable energy in Colorado
It reached 115 degrees on Monday, in Kuwait City, Kuwait, which is typical for the desert city whose summer highs regularly peak well above 120. In the relatively cool 90 degrees of Colorado’s Western Slope on the same day, 15 Kuwaitis wearing neon-yellow vests embroidered with “solar leaders” on the backs, gathered around photovoltaic demonstrations […]