In the 1960s, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service researchers used hormone-laced bait to prevent New Mexico coyotes, the “little bad guys of the Western Plains,” from reproducing so effectively. It worked pretty well: Up to 80 percent of treated females didn’t get pregnant. But those females had to consume meds repeatedly throughout the breeding cycle, […]
Departments
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Green ‘New Urbanist’ development rises in Albuquerque suburbs
One way to explain how a Manhattan-sized mesa may become the Southwest’s largest green development is to point to its past success as an apocalyptic wasteland. In 2008, a touch of twisted metal transformed part of Mesa del Sol, a 12,900-acre expanse south of Albuquerque, into a robot-ravaged Los Angeles for the movie Terminator Salvation. […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters: Silt and the Slow Demise of Glen Canyon Dam
Updated 5/17/11 The Lower San Juan River courses through a rather forsaken landscape of clay hills and redrock plateaus in southeast Utah. At the end of a long, dusty road, there is a boat ramp at the water’s edge where, at any warm time of year, vans and roof-racked Subarus bake in the sun while […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Defense mechanisms
COLORADO “Plants can’t run and hide” in the world, so over time, some have evolved the ability to alter their structure when they perceive a threat. That’s the mechanism now being exploited by Colorado State University biologist Jane Medford, as she and some 30 undergraduate and graduate students genetically engineer plants to signal the presence […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Scapegoating Sarah
Folks like to bash Sarah Palin because she is well-known and an easy target, but predator control was going on in Alaska way before Sarah became governor (HCN, 2/21/11). As the chairman of the Alaska Board of Game, I would like people to realize that predator control in Alaska is driven by state statutes that […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
One thumb up, one thumb down
After seeing the cover of HCN in February — a fear-stricken cow moose and a defenseless calf surrounded by wolves — I was pleasantly surprised by Tracy Ross’ article (HCN, 2/21/11). It was a fair assessment of the politics behind the increasingly controversial and risky methods that Alaska is employing to rid the state of […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Cleverly clean
Kudos to Lake County, Ore., for its support and promotion of renewable energy (HCN, 3/21/11). They clearly have a joint vision, a marketing strategy, and are working together in a collaborative manner. Oregon has become a national leader in the field of clean energy and sustainability. Even with tight budgets, a myriad of agencies continue […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Air quality and equity
Lee van der Voo’s article on renewable energy development in Lakeview, Ore., was well-balanced and informative (HCN, 3/21/11). There is one energy-related issue in Lakeview that was not mentioned, however: air quality. As in most of the rural West, many folks in and around Lakeview use wood heat. But the area is prone to winter […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Consumers feel Big Beef’s squeeze, too
Thank you for covering the harm to Western ranchers from consolidation in the cattle industry (HCN, 3/21/11). It’s worth adding that this trend has terrible consequences for consumers as well. Since four corporations control 80 percent of the beef slaughtered in the U.S., in addition to paying ranchers poorly, those companies can charge consumers higher […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Bear opens bear-proof locker
CALIFORNIA The black bears that call Yosemite National Park home are legendary for their smarts. They’ve honed efficient methods of ripping the doors off minivans, and they can skillfully yank open refrigerators. That’s why campers at the park must remove all food and other bear attractants and put them in “bear-proof” lockers that are so […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
The Tao of Pow: Learning to love winter
Once, in midsummer, I stood in my garage with a buddy. We’d just returned from a hike near northern Utah’s Cache Valley. He saw my snowshoes hanging on the wall and asked, “Where are your tellies?” I thought he was making a “Monty Python” joke — about a skit in which the actors discuss the […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Golden anniversary
UTAH We’ve always loved those before-and-after photos of couples about to celebrate a half-century of wedded bliss. In pictures from 50 years ago, the bride usually looks like a teenager with a bad haircut, while the groom strikes a serious air and looks almost gaunt. Fifty years later, each has usually completely filled out, and […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
BLM stays course in Wyoming gas patch despite mule deer decline
Mule deer wintering near Pinedale, Wyo., rely on the sagebrush habitat of the Mesa, a 300-square-mile plateau between the Green and New Fork rivers. Part of the Pinedale Anticline natural gas field, where nearly 2,000 wells have been drilled to tap the nation’s third-largest reserve, it once hosted 5,000 to 6,000 wintering deer. As winter […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Rural Oregon timber county seeks economic revival through renewables
Lakeview, Ore., sounds like a sleepy place. When four of five local lumber mills closed in the late ’80s and early ’90s, wiping out more than 800 jobs, it shrank by a fourth, to 2,750 people. Stranded in southern Oregon’s desert, the town lacks traffic lights and fast-food outlets. Western-style storefronts line its narrow main […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Oregon sculptor turns beach trash into meaningful art
South of Bandon, Ore., along Highway 101, there perches a 12-foot-tall bird with wings made of flip-flop soles and a belly of plastic lids. Its fishing-float feet are held in place by knotted plastic fishing line. The bird, which resembles the love child of an albatross, an eagle and a seagull, is just one of […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Danged ornery critters
MONTANA It’s a Tea Party world in Montana’s Legislature these days, and Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, sometimes can’t believe his ears as newly elected representatives talk blithely of creating armed citizen militias and “nullifying” a slew of federal laws, reports The Associated Press. Schweitzer calls many of the proposals from the new Republican majority […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Pacific chorus frogs make urban comeback
As dusk fell one spring evening in 2003, a small group of volunteers crawled along a creek bank, searching among tall grasses, under piles of decaying garbage and in stagnant puddles for gelatinous clutches of eggs. The Port of San Francisco was about to build a new bridge over Islais Creek Channel on the city’s […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Why bother cooking what nature failed to finish?
Tar sands are no longer a what-if. This water-intensive form of mining may be coming to Utah soon, and what it could turn into is a big deal indeed. Unlike gas wells, extracting oil from sand is neither quiet nor unobtrusive. Despite the industry’s admirable efforts to minimize water use and reduce water pollution, the […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
The dark corners of the heart: A review of Volt
Volt: StoriesAlan Heathcock208 pages, softcover: $15.Graywolf Press, 2011. A good story has the power to divert us from our struggles as well as to help us understand them. This is one reason people turn to fiction, and it explains why Alan Heathcock’s debut short-story collection, Volt, is an ideal book for our times. Characters face […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Spring fever, skipped issue
In mid-March, as the snow melts and the crocus pop up here in Paonia, Colo., the HCN crew will be taking one of our four annual publishing breaks. Look for the next issue to hit your mailbox around April 18. In the meantime, be sure to visit hcn.org for news, blog posts, and other Web-only […]