Between October 2011 and September 2012, 463 people died in the desert after slipping across the U.S.-Mexico border – the most since 2005, when about three times as many entered the country illegally. Today, migrants are eight times more likely to die than a decade ago, according to the National Foundation for American Policy. Most […]
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Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Saving Alaska from itself
When will it end (“Trouble in the valley of the eagles,” HCN, 5/27/13)? Always more mines, more development, more human impact, less habitat. For every new mine, and new gas or oil well, how about a new protected reserve to mitigate all the “take,” so we humans do not impact every place? Alaska is called […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Book review: A Natural History of the Santa Catalinas, Arizona
A Natural History of the Santa Catalinas, Arizona. Richard C. Brusca and Wendy Moore, 232 pages, softcover: $24.95. Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Press, 2013. The Santa Catalina Mountains in southeast Arizona “easily become a good friend,” writes philosopher Bill Broyles in the introduction to this new book by two Southwest naturalists. A Natural History explores the […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Time is running out to get the poster!
We’re in the home stretch of our special referral promotion to enlist friends, family and colleagues to join the HCN community of people serious about the West. More than 125 new readers have stepped up to subscribe and support the work we do here. And their reward? Besides the high-quality journalism we’re known for, they’ll […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Helium rising in the West
Near the middle of the Utah-Colorado line, a two-track winds into dry hills where rusty pipes poke from the sagebrush, marking cement-capped natural gas wells. Wildcatters drilled here in the 1920s, but abandoned the holes after striking mostly nitrogen and helium instead of hydrocarbons. Now, Denver-based oil and gas company Flatirons Resources wants to tap […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Hal Herring on the Rocky Mountain Front
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, Nelson Harvey speaks with Hal Herring about his recent essay on looming energy development on the Rocky Mountain Front, where Herring lives. Thumbnail photo courtesy of Sam Beebe, Ecotrust, […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
The grid in the spotlight, where it belongs
I want to thank Jonathan Thompson for his very informative, well-researched and well-written article on the electrical grid (“Haywired,” HCN, 5/27/13). This is certainly a growing problem in this country and one that is not receiving the attention from utility companies and government agencies that it should. I suppose there will have to be some really […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Investigating an epic war of populations
The Searchers: The Making of an American LegendGlenn Frankel405 pages,hardcover: $28.Bloomsbury, 2013. In a memorable scene in John Ford’s 1956 Western, The Searchers, gun-toting cowboys ride through Utah’s stark red landscape, flanked by war-painted Native Americans. “At the heart of the matter … was land,” writes Glenn Frankel, director of the School of Journalism at […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Sequestration sinks stream gauges
Hydrologist David Evetts drove north from his office in Boise, Idaho, to the former prospecting town of Elk City on May 2. Fifty miles down a dead-end mountain road, he stopped at a gray metal box on a bridge over the South Fork Clearwater River. Reaching inside, he turned off the satellite feed that once […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
The ATV culture includes loose regulations — and kids’ funerals
Diezel De Rupp “enjoyed doing his little dance to the Dubstep” — electronic music propelled by drumbeats and heavy bass. In a photo, the 5-year-old looks delighted, his hair brushed upward in a peak and his shirtfront covered by the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s TapouT logo, celebrating martial arts. The boy lived in the Denver area, […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
The Latest: A gold tax in the Silver State?
BackstoryNevada’s tax on mining was set in its 1864 Constitution at “a rate not to exceed 5 percent of the net proceeds,” and never fundamentally changed — even with recently skyrocketing gold prices in a state desperate for revenue. Advocates for a higher mining tax have for years been frustrated by legislators unwilling to go […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Oval Intention: an essay
In the buttery early morning light at Tuolumne Meadows, my 8-year-old son and I contemplate a heap of fabric and jumbled poles. We’d woken early to claim a good campsite, but only now do I recall the difficulty of assembling my father’s ancient tent. He and my daughter are still sleeping, miles away. The instructions […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Latino radio stations connect immigrant communities
“Si, buenas tardes?” Miriam Ceja chirped into the microphone at La Nueva Mix’s studio in Glenwood Springs, Colo. It was 5 p.m., “prime drive time,” on a Wednesday evening in late March. La Nueva Mix is primarily a music station, playing Norteño ballads and other Latin American tunes. But since its debut six years ago, […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Conservation goals in Jackson Hole collide with a need for worker housing
Jackson, Wyoming As I roam around this resort town in April to meet conservationists who battle affordable housing projects, I’m struck by a tongue-in-cheek take on the argument in the Jackson Hole Daily. Smack on the front page is a photo of a pair of geese facing off against two ospreys over possession of a […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Arctic ship logs help scientists reconstruct climatic history
May they whose Lot this Log to keepBe worthy of the Task completeAnd never leave a sentence outWhich should occur the voyage about — Inscription on the cover of a 19th century ship’s logbook The morning of April 19, 1875, dawned cool and foggy in San Francisco Harbor. Aboard the United States Coast and Geodetic […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Shooting yourself in the foot–literally
COLORADO AND THE WEST The western Colorado town of Nucla only has about 730 residents, but its council is eager to tell them how to live — only in the name of freedom, of course, and to protect the Second Amendment. Recently, that meant telling residents that they must own a gun. There were loopholes: […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Is the Violence Against Women Act a chance for tribes to reinforce their sovereignty?
Victims’ advocates joined legislators at the North Dakota Capitol in Bismarck on March 26, to discuss the recently reauthorized Violence Against Women Act. The meeting began on a celebratory note: The federal law restored to tribal courts the right to prosecute non-Indians for abusing or assaulting Native American women on Indian land — something the […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
A proud, flag-waving liberal
It really annoys me that the American flag has become synonymous with right-wing politics (“Right-wing Migration,” HCN, 5/13/13). I am an avowed “liberal,” as right-wingers derisively call me, yet I grew up with a love for flags. When my parents took me to Denmark as a child to visit the country they grew up in, I immediately […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
An exterminator in land manager’s clothing
As an outdoorsman, environmentalist and hunter I personally find Neil LaRubbio’s notion that Ryan Counts deserves to hunt apex predators because he’s an experienced hunter a stretch (“When predator is prey,” HCN, 5/13/13). I sport fish, but I don’t feel I “deserve” to hunt and kill sharks, and I don’t fish for them. If folks […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
The affordable housing quandary
(This editor’s note accompanies an HCN magazine cover story about conservation goals in Jackson, Wyoming, colliding with the need for affordable housing.) Last summer, I moved back to my hometown of Durango, Colo., with my wife and daughters. It’s been a bittersweet experience — sweet because my family has been here for generations, and it’s […]