Up front: I know Dan Kemmis. I’ve interviewed him, hung out with him at events, read his books and other writings. I like Dan for his careful manner and his visionary, out-of-the-box thinking about the West. I also like how he’s grounded in the real world. So add my voice to the back-channel chorus calling […]
Blogs
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Drilling and the race card
I’m old enough to remember the great civil rights struggles of the 1960s, as well as the organizations that led them, like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality. They accomplished much, and even though our next American president will be an African-American, there is doubtless […]
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Plum over, for a forest development deal
At least one last-minute Bush rule change won’t be happening, not because the administration thought better of it, but because the company involved decided to back off in the face of bad publicity. Last May, we reported on an under-the-table deal that Plum Creek Timber Company, which owns 1.2 million acres of forest in Montana, […]
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Interior design at the Interior Department
When U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado takes office later this month as Secretary of the Department of Interior, he’ll have one plush “executive washroom.” According to the Washington Post, outgoing Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne recently spent $235,000 of our tax money on a new bathroom for the fifth-floor office. The renovation included a new […]
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Ex-HCN board member named Idaho lt. guv
Brad Little is a widely respected third-generation Idaho rancher, working livestock and crops. He’s taken a leadership role in many ag and business groups. He’s also a longtime Republican legislator, now serving as a state senator and Majority Caucus Chairman. He’s involved in efforts to resolve livestock grazing and timber management controversies on public lands, […]
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Reflections on “Methow homecoming”
Christopher Solomon’s essay (Methow homecoming, 12-8-08 edition) struck a heart chord with me. Like Solomon I escaped from the East Coast with a master’s degree (mine was more useful; it came with a teaching credential) and went looking for a home in the West. And like Solomon and Rick Bass whom he quotes my wanderings […]
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EPA botched perchlorate analysis, report says
The Environmental Protection Agency apparently erred in its analysis of the potential human health impacts of perchlorate, according to a draft report by the agency’s inspector general. Perchlorate is a major element of rocket fuel that has contaminated drinking water in dozens of states. The chemical acts in concert with a handful of other chemicals […]
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Another public lands giveaway?
Energy companies will be able to drill 18,000 new natural gas wells on 1.5 million federal acres in southeastern Montana’s remote Powder River Basin over the next 20 years, thanks an amendment to the area’s Resource Management Plan released by the Bureau of Land Management in the waning days of the Bush administration. The basin, […]
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Another Colorado senate race
We just finished one U.S. Senate race in Colorado, and now we face another. In the 2008 election, Democrat Mark Udall handily defeated Republican Bob Schaffer by a 52-43 margin to replace retiring Republican Wayne Allard. But on Dec. 17, president-elect Barack Obama named Colorado’s other U.S. senator, Ken Salazar, as his choice for secretary […]
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File under Unintended Consequences
Tamarisk, a feathery green Eurasian shrub with pink flowers, was brought to the West a century ago to control erosion. It quickly became a pest along desert rivers from California to Colorado, sucking up water and choking out native willows and cottonwood. To get rid of it, federal agencies use herbicides, backhoes and chainsaws. But […]
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U.S.-Mexico border arrests sharply down in 2008
Mexico-U.S. border arrests have fluctuated widely in the past 30-plus years, from 675,000 in 1976 to 1.7 million in the mid-1980s, down to a million in the late-’80s, back up to 1.6 million in 2000. In 2008, the Border Patrol caught 705,000 people trying to enter the U.S. illegally, down 44 percent from 2006. Officials […]
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Dreaming of an oily (and gassy) Christmas
Check out this scorching Mother Jones blog post from HCN freelancer Keith Kloor. Keith talked to a senior BLM official about the Bush administration’s energy free-for-all in Utah: Also see Keith’s HCN stories about more Utah shenanigans from the BLM, Dust on the Rocks and (Un)clearing the Air. And these other articles: Trashing the earth, […]
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What goes around comes around
When the Bureau of Land Management announced last month that hundreds of thousands of acres of Utah’s redrock country would be up for oil and gas leasing, the agency made something of an end-run around public process. It announced the sale on Nov. 4, when everyone was distracted by the presidential election, and it failed […]
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Real ecoterrorism
Back in 1998, the group Earth Liberation Front (a.k.a. ELF) set a series of fires at Vail ski resort in Colorado and caused $12 million in damage. Authorities at the time called it the most expensive “ecoterrorism” to date. Burning stuff down is not an activity I personally condone (unless we’re talking about Burning Man), […]
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That dam economy again?
There may be no direct connection, but it’s hard not to speculate that the dismal state of the economy (and the massive sums the government has spent to shore it back up again) played a role in the feds’ decision this week to kill a reservoir proposed for Washington state’s fertile Yakima Valley. In 2003, […]
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A tale of two press releases
Yet another last minute rule change has come down from the Bush administration. It hasn’t hit the mainstream press yet — the only information that’s been published about it comes from the BLM itself and from a coalition of environmental groups. The press releases describe the BLM’s recent revisions to a manual that tells land […]
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Oregon sees huge rise in food stamp recipients
A record half a million Oregonians are struggling to feed their families, and the state’s unemployment figure reached 8 percent in November, the highest in five years. Jackson and Josephine counties saw increases of 19 percent, and the Bend area’s food-stamp recipients rose by 28 percent over last year. More than half of the 21,850 […]
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Copper death spiral
A mining boom. A mining bust. All summed up quite elegantly in one little chart:
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Bailout comes to the West
Turns out Washington is bailing out more than just Wall Street. Federal help is also coming to the streets and cul de sacs of Western suburbia, from Phoenix to Las Vegas. Arizona, California and Nevada will all get big chunks of cash (from $72 million to $530 million) from the U.S. Department of Housing’s Neighborhood […]
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A new consensus on public forest management?
Since it was pioneered by the likes of Daniel Kemmis (Community and the Politics of Place, 1990) “collaboration” on western natural resource issues has been a regular feature of western rural life. From the high profile Quincy Library Group to efforts that focus without publicity on a single small watershed or grazing allotment, collaborative approaches […]