I started my tortoise career in 1990 at the Nevada Test Site for the Yucca Mountain Project and remember a concerted effort to look for a proper translocation site for tortoise (“Mojave Squeeze,” HCN, 7/5/13). Dr. Kristin Berry accompanied my husband and me on our survey transect in 2001 for the Fort Irwin expansion area. […]
Departments
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Summer Visitors
Here in HCN‘s hometown of Paonia, Colo., the peaches and sweet corn are ripening, and we’ve been welcoming lots of visitors from around the West. Longtime subscribers Phyllis Hasheider and Jim McKee of Longmont, Colo., stopped by on their way home after a drive on the San Juan Skyway, a scenic route that passes through […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
When turtles and national security collide
Your article about desert tortoises was well researched and written (“Mojave Squeeze,” HCN, 8/5/13). I’m concerned about the U.S. Army’s unsuccessful efforts with tortoise translocation at Fort Irwin as part of its land expansion authorized by Congress in 2001. Similar land-acquisition efforts are underway by the U.S. Marine Corps in Twentynine Palms, Calif., where the military […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Conservation fund turns 50
Friends and foes agree: The 50-year-old Land and Water Conservation Fund needs a facelift. Created to bankroll conservation projects with royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling, the Fund has long been plagued by political wrangling. Congress is authorized to put in $900 million a year, but often appropriates far less. In 2015, the Fund’s […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
A war for a dollar
An energy war is sizzling in Arizona, with utilities pitted against the solar industry, environmentalists and even some free-market Republicans. The fight basically boils down to dollars: How much can an Arizonan with a solar system save on his electricity bill, and what will those savings cost other ratepayers? The savings are currently sizable, thanks […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Moving on up in the oil patch
Are the West’s energy fields the last bastion of the American Dream?
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Brewers sparrows on the move
This time-lapse video shows how Brewer’s sparrows spread north from their winter habitat in the Southwest and Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert Grasslands to their summer range in the American West. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology produced the maps with computer models that used recorded sightings and habitat data to predict where the birds were likeliest to […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Diné activist protests wastewater-to-snow scheme
Fighting for the environment is just part of this Navajo’s cultural identity.
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
The right-wing heiress who changed course in the desert
Looking back on Bazy Tankersley: publisher, rancher and conservationist.
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Dinosaur Wars
Startling, one-of-a-kind fossils are unearthed in Montana – and shunned by scientists.
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
A California Hotshot photographs his life fighting wildfires
Get a rare peek into what it’s like at the fireline.
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Severe drought forces a moment of truth for the Klamath
Irrigation shutoffs in the river’s upper basin may finally help move a historic water deal on the Oregon-California border.
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
A review of Landscape Dreams, A New Mexico portrait
Landscape Dreams, A New Mexico portrait photographs by Craig Varjabedian, essays by Marin Sardy, Jeanetta Calhoun Mish and Hampton Sides, 140 pages, hardcover: $50, University of New Mexico Press, 2012. Contemporary landscape photography often looks too pristine and over-saturated to feel authentic. But Craig Varjabedian’s monochromatic images of New Mexico transcend that. In place of […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Mourning before departure
The Days Are GodsLiz Stephens206 pages, softcover: $18.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2013. A wistful, at times mournful spirit permeates the 41 brief essays that make up Liz Stephens’ first book, The Days Are Gods. The Oklahoma-born Stephens is a “card-carrying Choctaw tribal member” and recently earned a Ph.D. in creative nonfiction. Her multifaceted memoir is […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Tools ‘R’ Us
Dirt Work: An Education in the WoodsChristine Byl256 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Beacon Press, 2013. Tired of school, broke and eager for a change, Christine Byl took to the woods with a National Park Service trail crew. Through 16 summers of manual labor in Alaska and Montana — maintaining, repairing, designing and building bridges, ditches and trails […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts
In magnitude and complexity, this Utah wilderness deal sounds less like the Washington County bill than the San Rafael Swell land deal that melted down when exposed as a multimillion-dollar rip-off of the American public (“Red Rock Resolution?” HCN, 7/22/13). The legislative language swore up and down that no threatened and endangered species habitat, wetlands, […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Writing down the bones
This issue features a story that was more than two years in the writing — and at least 60 million in the making. In 2011, Montana Hodges was studying fossil management on public lands as part of her master’s thesis in journalism at the University of Montana. “Originally,” she says, “I was going to do […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Let’s not make a deal
Greg Hanscom’s excellent article in the July 22 edition of HCN gave readers an in-depth look into Utah’s public-land politics (“Red Rock Resolution?”). I was particularly impressed by the description of how the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has operated. SUWA has reportedly been willing to compromise in order to achieve wilderness designation. But unlike public-land […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Remember us (the American people)?
Rep. Rob Bishop’s initiative to discuss the future of American public land in Utah may be a route toward resolution of many contentious issues (“Red Rock Resolution?” HCN, 7/22/13). He has invited many stakeholders to participate. Funny, all of them live in Utah. We thought these lands belonged to all Americans, not just people in […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Seek nature and ye shall find
The northwest branch of the Chicago River was my watercourse as a boy (“Pilgrim at Shit Creek,” HCN, 7/22/13). It was also polluted, but it was all we had. We rafted it, wading mostly. Since then I’ve gone back in a canoe and found all manner of wildlife — from foxes, deer and coyotes to […]