For decades, Disney cartoons have reliably produced two stereotypes: brutish, cruel hunters and dizzy, passive princesses. But, holy daughters of Diana, times have changed. Maybe Disney’s anti-hunter bias is just the natural result of having a cast full of talking animals. But think about it: there’s Clayton, the evil hunter who nets Tarzan’s family of […]
Blogs
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Got rabies: skunks are top carrier in Colorado
Skunks get a bad rap. Of course, not every animal douses targets with rancid juice from their anal glands from 10 feet away, so perhaps it is deserved. In Colorado the striped mammals have recently earned a new form of notoriety that adds to their stinky status: They’ve jumped into the lead as the main […]
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What’s up with conservation and the farm bill
On Thursday, the House Agriculture Committee released its version of the new farm bill, a ginormous piece of legislation passed every five years or so that doles out money not only to farmers, but to food stamp recipients, school lunch programs, and conservation efforts. The Senate passed its version in May. The House Ag Committee released […]
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Critical habitat under scrutiny
Endangered leatherback sea turtles can thank the Endangered Species Act for the government’s decision to add a chunk of ocean on the West Coast to their protected habitat earlier this year. In January, the feds expanded the graceful sea dweller’s critical habit to 41,914 salty square miles off California, Oregon and Washington. The leatherback is […]
Posted inRange
Seeing the (overcrowded) forest for the trees
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House I was wandering around Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) last week, absorbing the cooling sight of snowfields and the 30-degree temperature drop earned by more than doubling my elevation from Boulder. On my way along Trail Ridge Road, I stopped at the Farview Curve overlook on the west […]
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Grand Cacophony National Park?
Peace and quiet can be hard to come by at the Grand Canyon. When I camped among the ponderosa pines just outside the park gates last summer, my nightly soundtrack was a chorus of Jeep-towing RVs, the baritone rumble of Harleys and Guns N’ Roses wafting from a nearby campsite. These sounds could be the […]
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A revision to our energy future
Last week, environmentalists settled an agreement with federal agencies over a Bush-era energy management plan, and a U.S. District Court in San Francisco is set to sign off on the agreement. Plaintiffs, including the Center for Biological Diversity, had sued federal agencies over a proposed energy pipeline and power network, part of the Energy Policy […]
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New podcast: Sun Tunnels, hitchhiking, the modern hobo
As loyal HCN readers know by now, we recently published our first-ever special travel issue, taking you to Montana’s lonely, overlooked but still spectacular eastern plains, time-traveling with Craig Childs in south-central Oregon, and to dams, nuclear test sites, renewable energy installations, and oil-themed cafes. The podcast is full of great ear candy: Journalist Scott Carrier […]
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Getting serious about fresh water with Jay Famiglietti
Editor’s note: High Country News will occasionally cross post items from Chance of Rain, a blog by Emily Green, who writes frequently on water in California and the West. Her latest story for High Country News covered Los Angeles County Flood Control District’s bulldozing of old-growth oak forests. Unfortunately, Jay Famiglietti isn’t running for office, unfortunate because […]
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Dear monsoon, please materialize
Explaining what’s driving the big, scary fires consuming Colorado to the L.A. Times, Forest Service ecologist Bob Keane didn’t mince words: “The reason Colorado is burning is they’ve had prolonged drought.” That drought can prime forests for fire is well established, and, well, kind of obvious. Parched plants and trees are easier to ignite than […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: I brake for Rants
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. I’ve […]
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Getting strange with land art
“I really like parts of it,” my editor wrote in response to a video I made about my travels to a few pieces of iconic Western land art, “and then other parts do feel a little too weird.” To the uninitiated this doesn’t sound so bad, but anyone familiar with editor-speak knows what it really […]
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Gas tracks
The shale gas boom is making a lot of executives rich, but the quiet players making the most impressive moves during this new American energy renaissance are the railroads. By now, we’ve read how cheap natural gas has supplanted some of coal’s share of the electricity market. Railroads ship coal, and thus analysts often say […]
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Pipeline plans
Moving water from one part of the West to another – it’s a time-honored tradition, a way to channel the bounty of rivers in less populated areas to drier regions with greater populations. We’ve reported on many of these projects, like the San Francisco Bay/Delta that supplies southern California, and the Central Arizona Project that’s […]
Posted inRange
Putting the West on a low-carb(on) diet
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House The day after the University of Colorado Law School’s annual summer conference — “A Low Carbon Energy Blueprint for the American West” — had ended, I was walking in downtown Fort Collins, when something above the foothills caught my eye. The dense white puff looked like a blooming […]
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Omni-busted
Welcome back to my coverage of “race-to-the-bottom 2012,” wherein I gripe futilely about this year’s toxic politics (see past editions here and here), which appear to be completely allergic to anything that protects the environment or public health. Our story today begins in March of 2009, when Congress passed the landmark, years-in-the-making Omnibus Public Lands […]
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It’s not the two-headed fish
I’m as guilty as the next headline writer. When High Country Newsran a story about selenium pollution in May, I went with the two-headed fish. After all, a headline promising a grotesque tale of a deformed fish was one of our few opportunities to even approach the clickability of adorable miniature pig videos and celebrity sideboob […]
Posted inRange
Enjoying the wilderness
Only five days left. Amidst the turmoil of final preparations – checking and re-checking gear, packing, food-shopping – I’m engaging in a little psychological battle with myself regarding the object of all this activity: a 19 day, 16 person, DIY rafting trip on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. For those of us who […]
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Friday news roundup: more wildfires and lizards
Here’s the High Country NewsBurning Man story you all have been waiting for. Thousands of scantly clothed artists and gypsies voyage out to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada for a week to build a city, burn a hundred-foot, wooden man and vanish without a trace. BLM offices in Winnemucca, Nevada, which manage permits for […]
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Old and foul-mouthed
I’ve done a few stories on air pollution in the last year, and many a source has told me this: When it comes to pollution, all fossil fuel power plants are not created equal. It’s a principle enshrined in the Clean Air Act. Power plants that began generating electricity before 1978 are grandfathered into the […]