One evening last October, I met with Anna Hamilton in the Northern California town of Garberville. A singer-songwriter with a barbwire voice, Hamilton is known locally for her radio show, Rant and Rave, Lock and Load and Shoot Your Mouth Off — which, it turns out, is a pretty good description of her approach to […]
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Posted inHeard Around the West
Guns and Arizona congressmen, airplane blowouts
COLORADO On hot summer days at the Aspen Airport, private planes from all over the world crowd the tarmac. For some reason, the pilot of an eight-seater Citation X decided that the afternoon of July 1 was the perfect time to gun the engines and do a high-powered “gauge test.” Unfortunately, the pilot failed to […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Re-watering Nevada’s dying Walker Lake
Nevada is the nation’s driest state, and Mineral County is as parched as any place in it. Past the Sierra Nevada’s rain shadow, it’s sagebrush and alkali dust, sun-bleached skies free of clouds. So as a boy, Glenn Bunch, who grew up in Hawthorne, the county seat, spent as much time as he could at […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Biochar makeover for abandoned mines?
Abandoned mines — about 31,000 of them — linger like ghosts on the West’s public lands. It’s harder to find exact numbers for old mines on private land, but Colorado, for example, has about 14,000, compared to 3,299 public-land sites. In the San Juan Mountains, water from snowmelt and rainfall picks up mining remnants like […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Settlements prompt federal decisions on hundreds of endangered species
Updated 8/8/2011 The Arctic grayling, found only in the Missouri River Basin’s upper reaches, became an endangered species candidate in 1994, meaning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that it deserved federal protection but did not list it because other species took priority. The grayling has languished there ever since, along with more than […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Yellowstone leak highlights a different kind of oil spill
As modern rivers go, the Yellowstone is relatively unadulterated. It’s the longest dam-free river in the U.S., rushing 692 miles from its headwaters in Wyoming’s Absaroka Mountains through Yellowstone National Park and Montana’s Paradise Valley and eastern plains, to its confluence with the Missouri. Cutthroat trout, vanished from much of their native range, still hold […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Economies of vice
Paonia, Colo., High Country News‘ hometown, is not an easy place to find work. As is true in many rural areas, young folks who want to stick around have few opportunities. The options are even fewer for those who can’t or don’t want to work in local coal mines. Through the warmer months, many string […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
A Western mystery with an environmental twist: a review of Buried by the Roan
Buried by the RoanMark Stevens346 pages, softcover: $14.95.People’s Press, 2011. In his second mystery novel, Buried by the Roan, Colorado writer Mark Stevens tells a “ripped from the headlines” story involving natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The story is set in and around the Roan Plateau area between Glenwood Springs and Meeker, […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Welcome, new interns!
Two new interns have just joined our editorial department for six months of “journalism boot camp” here in Paonia, Colo. “I was the shy nerd in school,” says Kimberly Hirai of Boise, Idaho. When she and her brother ordered pizza as kids, they fought over who had to talk on the phone. She’s more outgoing […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Portraits of the frontier West: A review of Western Heritage
Western Heritage: A Selection of Wrangler Award-Winning ArticlesEdited by Paul Andrew Hutton305 pages, softcover: $19.95.University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. Geronimo, Crazy Horse and the Texas Rangers all have dramatic cameos in Western Heritage, Paul Andrew Hutton’s anthology of award-winning essays. Since 1961, Oklahoma City’s National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum has given its annual Wrangler […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Wedding in the shadowed valley
When I got married, my husband was in the midst of a slide into bipolar disorder that would last for years, nearly kill us both, and ultimately end our marriage. I hadn’t told many people about what was going on. Nor had I thought to reconsider my decision to get married. We had already been […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Montana’s stream access law stays strong
In late May, as melting La Niña-fed snowpack shoved western Montana’s rivers over their banks, the state began closing fishing access sites, including several on the bloated Bitterroot River. Thus, floodwaters accomplished what some state lawmakers, earlier in the year, could not: Removing anglers from the Bitterroot and other streams. The Republican-dominated state Legislature was […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
A border crosser does not an immigrant make
I take exception to the use of the word “immigrant” by HCN or Utah (HCN, 6/27/11). As one knowledgeable about Mormon values, I pondered what had come over the Beehive State, but then I remembered Mormons are, if nothing else, pro-business. I also pondered presidential and media hypocrisy as another state “supersedes” federal jurisdiction on […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
‘Grab the bucks, gimme the jobs’
Forgive me if I am wrong in thinking it incongruous that pretty much the same people who are very cranked up about leaving our children and grandchildren with trillions of dollars in debt don’t seem to care about leaving them with environmental catastrophes related to fracking and other shortsighted “grab the bucks now, give me […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
No diving allowed
The idea that fertilizing streams — deliberately or inadvertently — is beneficial needs a complete evaluation (HCN, 6/27/11). The stream section immediately below the outfall from a sewage treatment plant may be more productive, but that can contribute to low dissolved oxygen. This means that it is less suitable for spawning; developing eggs and fry […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
The global is local
Thank you for publishing Jonathan Thompson’s article about international economic influences on the American West’s natural resources (HCN, 7/25/11). A recent drive to Victor, Colo., was a perfect illustration of the disparity between international profits and marginal local benefits. With the value of gold rising in the face of unstable national currencies, the town of […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
A former energy company lawyer now fights for the other side
In the 1990s, oil and gas was booming, and industry attorney Lance Astrella had it all: a thriving practice, a plump paycheck and a reputation as one of the best in the business. Then one night, disturbed by rumors of drillers trashing private property, he attended a community meeting in Denver. One by one, people […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Milestone in Cobell Indian trust case
In a crowded federal courtroom near the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on June 20, the first person to testify was Elouise Pepion Cobell, a member of Montana’s Blackfeet Tribe. Cobell, 65, exemplifies persistence. She grew up in a house without utilities and has worked as a banker and the treasurer of her tribe. Testifying […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Global Players in the West’s Extraction Economy
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Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Boom or bust for the West’s fossil fuel economy?
How big will the American West’s current fossil-fuel boom become, and how long will it last? Any answer involves as much art as science, but according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), which each year calculate outlooks for future energy production in the United States and around the […]