WYOMING There’s nothing like a bunch of bad yaks to get the Cowboy State’s Legislature riled up. Woolly wanderers, these particular yaks have never been content to graze the grass growing solely on the “Yak Daddy Ranch” owned by John and Laura DeMetteis. The big guys routinely seek out other pastures and crash through fences […]
Departments
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
How my thoughts on wolves have changed
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA The wolves that periodically venture into the valley behind my home are blood-thirsty killers. That’s what I admire about them. They evolved to near perfection in their ecological niche, and they are lucky. They are not forced to contemplate whether their lifestyle serves nature well. People, well: People are different. Our greatest evolutionary […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A cheap vacation that got out of hand
THE WEST John Daggett, one of the West’s iconic characters, died recently at age 82, though his amazing feat of body-surfing the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon 56 years ago will no doubt live forever. Back in April 1955, Daggett and his friend, Bill Beer, both 20-something Southern Californians, got the crazy idea of […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Alaska ho!
Here at High Country News, we’re even more charged up than usual: This issue has our first cover story exploring the rough terrain of Alaska’s environmental politics. The only other cover story we’ve devoted to Alaska analyzed Bering Sea crab fishing, in July 2009. You might wonder why a 41-year-old news operation focused on the […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Collateral damage
When the Killing’s DoneT.C. Boyle384 pages, hardcover: $ 26.95.Viking, 2011. One of the West’s most prolific and trenchant novelists returns to a theme he previously explored in Tooth and Claw and A Friend of the Earth: our interactions with nature and their repercussions. T.C. Boyle’s characters often root for the environment. The tension and narrative […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Unpacking health hazards in fracking’s chemical cocktail
Meet the Master Well Formula — the chemical cocktail that Encana Corp. will use to hydraulically fracture every natural gas well it drills in Wyoming’s Jonah Field. Drillers mix 11,800 gallons of this solution with over a million gallons of water and a heavy dose of sand, inject it underground to release gas deposits, and […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Cy-board meeting
In late January, the High Country News board of directors met via Web and phone. With a headset and a smile, Board President Florence Williams marched more than a dozen board and staff members through an agenda that included finances, editorial direction, marketing capacity and what skills the board would like to add to its […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Craig Medred on predator-prey science
Both proponents and opponents of predator control claim to have science on their side. But as Alaskan journalist Craig Medred tells us in this episode of High Country Views, the actual science — and all of its complexities — is often lost in the debate. You can catch High Country Views approximately every other week. […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Palin, politics, and Alaska predator control
On the day we fly to Game Management Unit 16, the sun is shining and the air is crisp and the mountains glint from their summits. Out the side window of the Alaska Wildlife Trooper Supercub, 20,320-foot Mount McKinley, also known as Denali, gleams through a ribbon of cumulous. Up front, past Sgt. Mark Agnew’s […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Audio librarian Jeff Rice captures the sounds of the West
Jeff Rice discusses how he collects sound and plays some of the sounds from the Western Soundscape Archive
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Poisonous language on both sides of the fence
The shooting slaughter in Tucson Jan. 8 and the subsequent national debate about the tone and effect of our political rhetoric came home to roost in San Juan County recently. The media reported that several “Wanted: Dead or Alive” posters, threatening members of the environmental group Great Old Broads for Wilderness had been discovered by […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Craig Childs walks with desert ghosts on the Navajo Nation
The dogs are getting closer, barking through junipers about a half-mile away. We douse our small can stove, scoop the rest of breakfast into our mouths, and within two minutes are gone. The day before, we were dropped off on a dirt two-track where we hopped a gate and smuggled ourselves into the wilderness atop […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Plenty of wood in the pile
Recently, as I was starting home on foot, a neighbor who lives up the road from me stopped at the row of mailboxes along the highway. He knows that if I want a ride, I’ll ask. So instead, he says, “How’s your wood pile?” “Getting low. Yours?” He has a big truck, a big chainsaw, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
“Hey, that’s my hay”
NEVADA “Forget the needle; it’s the haystack that Nevada sheriff’s deputies are looking for,” reports The Associated Press. Thieves driving a long-bed pickup have been swiping hay at night, targeting a ranch about 15 miles southeast of Elko, Nev. In the third and latest incident, some 2,000 pounds of hay disappeared from the ranch where […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Rural California schoolkids learn from fire-damaged forest
Sidney Deschenes is still haunted by the Moonlight Fire of 2007: The clouds of choking smoke that blew down from flaming mountains onto the valley that’s been her home since kindergarten. The rain of embers that ignited spot fires near homes at the edge of the forest and forced her family to evacuate three times. […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Evolution not revolution
I appreciate your highlighting the Bureau of Land Management’s efforts to invigorate its National Landscape Conservation System (HCN, 12/20/10). After 10 years, there have certainly been mixed results, as you pointed out in your reference to the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument and its fluid mineral leasing program. But I think it’s important to […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Putting the ‘cow’ back in ‘cow-town’
Thank you so much for the excellent article on poultry slaughterhouses and the local food movement (HCN, 1/24/11). In Denver, Colo., we are trying to remove the disincentives to backyard agriculture that the city and county adopted several decades ago when they successfully transformed Denver from a cow town into a culture-rich city. Now that […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Political animals
In a recent op-ed, Denver Bryan, a self-described “hunter, conservationist, and also a supporter of wolves taking their rightful place in the West,” fell in step with the backlash politics of Western wildlife policy. (See Denver Bryan’s Writers on the Range opinion piece in fullhttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/yes-to-wolves-but-not-so-many.) He began by declaring that legitimate conservation groups are trying […]