I remember the billboard controversy in Tucson in the 1980s described in Ray Ring’s story (HCN, 1/23/12, “Billboards vs. Democracy”). As a scientist, I try to look for simple, logical solutions to problems. My take on corporate money in politics is a simple one. We, the voters, elect someone to represent us. If a candidate […]
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Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
A life measured in cordwood: A review of Into the Heat: My Love Affair with Trees, Fire, Saws and Men
Into the Heat: My Love Affair with Trees, Fire, Saws and MenCindy Bellinger159 pages, softcover: $14.95.High-Lonesome Books, 2011. What does it mean for one woman to take an active, eventful life and root it ever more deeply in one spot, settling down in the mountain foothills where a nearby pine forest becomes a close companion, […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
Growing grizzly population conflicts with USDA sheep research station
The recovery of Yellowstone’s grizzly bears has been remarkable. When the species was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, there were just 136 wandering in and around the national park. Now, there are more than 600. And though a federal court confirmed in November that the population should remain protected, it’s […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
Bucking the stereotypes: A review of West of 98
West of 98: Living and Writing the New American WestEdited by Lynn Stegner and Russell Rowland380 pages, softcover: $21.95.University of Texas Press, 2011. Any anthology is a collage, a series of snapshots imperfectly melded into one composition. That’s why we read them: They allow us to look at a topic from a variety of angles, […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
Craig Childs is HCN’s latest contributing editor
We’re excited to announce that author Craig Childs has just joined our list of contributing editors. Many of you are already fans of Craig’s work, which appears regularly in these pages and in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Men’s Journal, Outside and Orion. His writing focuses on natural sciences, archaeology and his remarkable […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
Obama praises natural gas, but is there enough to satisfy U.S. demand?
Poor President Obama. On Jan. 24, he delivered a State of the Union speech promising “a future where we’re in control of our own energy,” and packed it with something for nearly everyone — more oil, safe natural gas and abundant clean energy. And still almost no one went home happy. Domestic oil production is […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
Photojournalist Lisa Hamilton explores rural California
For her project, Real Rural, photojournalist Lisa Hamilton traveled throughout California, interviewing and photographing scores of rural people.
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
Monkey-wrenchers to the rescue
I was surprised and dismayed at the apparent power wielded by billboard companies (HCN, 1/23/12, “Billboards vs. Democracy”), but even more surprised and dismayed at the apparent lack of power that governments at all levels have to prevent their various affronts to our senses. Unlike junk mail, telemarketers, and political advertisements on TV, billboards are […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
The error of the well-intentioned
Thank you for the billboard and “untrammeled” wilderness articles (HCN, 1/23/12, “The law, the lookout and the logging town” & “Billboard vs. Democracy”). Boycotting Utah and/or monkey-wrenching seem like the only viable options for correcting these corporate billboard crimes. Wilderness Watch, by contrast, is well intentioned, but apparently ignorant of the harm it’s doing. Wilderness […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
The shine of the golden saddle
The grazing buyout is sometimes referred to as a “golden saddle” (HCN, 1/23/12, “Detente in the grazing wars?”). I like that. Even though grazing permits are not rights, the buyouts recognize that grazing permits have been treated as such and are of value to the permittee. I like how it is a free market solution, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Winning the wildfire jackpot
THE WESTMany of us harbor a sneaking suspicion that Westerners aren’t quite real to D.C. Beltway officials, particularly to the Easterners in their employ. The habitat of these politically engaged men and women so close to power is usually a crowded room where they toil from morning to night, and so the poor wretches rarely […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
Following the Oregon Trail, digitally and on foot
As a kid, I loved playing Oregon Trail, a popular and notoriously difficult computer game in which avatars inevitably drown, run out of water or die of dysentery en route from Missouri to the Promised Land at the Pacific’s edge. An imaginative child, I took my virtual pioneer adventures offscreen, loading up my small red […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
Montana court defends law defying Citizens United
Judge William Clancy, who presided over a state district court in Butte, Mont., was a heavy drinker who often dozed off during lawyers’ arguments; when awake, he showered a spittoon with tobacco juice gobs. Another Butte judge, Edward Harney, cheated on his wife with an employee of a mining company that was a defendant in […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
A young wolf wanders the West
As 2011 came to a close, a wolf that biologists call “OR-7” made history by loping across the Oregon border into Northern California. He was the first wild wolf seen in that state since 1924. But that’s only one of OR-7’s milestones. Two months earlier, he became the first wolf in over 50 years to […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Ready-made solar houses
COLORADO AND THE WESTWouldn’t it be grand if you could live in a house that never racked up a single electric bill? Some homeowners have pursued that goal by retrofitting their homes with solar or wind power, though it’s not easy to achieve the wondrous state of “net-zero” — defined as any building that produces […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
John Mionczynski: naturalist, accordionist, and Bigfoot expert
ATLANTIC CITY, WYOMINGOn an overcast August afternoon, John Mionczynski is crouched underneath an aspen by the porch of his one-room log cabin, attending to his motorcycle’s broken headlight. Over 30 years ago, he assembled this machine using pieces from four different BMWs — a 1951, ’53, ’63 and ’65. He named it “Serendipity.” “Whenever I […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
The suburban squeeze
I find the perilous journey across Wyoming’s energy fields to be far less harmful to the well-being of pronghorns than the rampant development along Colorado’s Front Range and elimination of their habitat entirely (HCN, 12/12/11 & 1/9/12, “Perilous Passages”). Try finding a pronghorn anywhere south and west of Greeley, in a huge range that they […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
Viva la revolución!
I read with interest “Growing a Revolution” in the Nov. 28 issue by Jennifer Langston. While that approach certainly has great merit, there are other approaches to getting local food to local neighborhoods that can be equally successful. I am on the board of trustees of St. Luke’s Health Initiatives in Phoenix, and we have […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
High Country News welcomes new interns
Two new editorial interns just joined us for six months of “journalism boot camp” at our Paonia, Colo., office. Danielle Venton was born in Petaluma, Calif. Early backpacking trips sparked her curiosity about the natural world, which eventually led her to study biology at Humboldt State University. Unlike her classmates, Danielle couldn’t settle on just […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
Fearful of Agenda 21, an alleged U.N. plot, activists derail land-use planning
In November, La Plata County Commissioner Kellie Hotter called local land-use planning “a blood sport.” She wasn’t kidding. Since last spring, as this southwestern Colorado county considered a new comprehensive land-use plan, carnage has piled up. By mid-December, casualties included a fired planning commissioner, a resigned county planning director and the plan itself — a […]