The self-important folks of Greenwood Village need an emergency dose of irony — and quick (HCN, 12/20/10)! Continuing that ignoble American tradition of forcing the indigenous off their land, they really can’t complain when Mr. Trickster tries to take back what is rightfully his. I must say, Mr. Coyote is far more patient and understanding […]
Departments
Posted inHeard Around the West
Cock-a-doodle-brouhaha
COLORADO Don’t even think of toting roosters along if you’re moving to Ridgway in western Colorado. The birds are unwanted, and not just because they tend to cock-a-doodle-doo at the crack of dawn. They’ve become the symbol of a town that’s no longer rural, relaxed and live and let-live. For proof, just ask resident Janet […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
A long journey home
California tribe wants to bring back salmon from New Zealand
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Teaching Whitney to cook
Environmental awareness can be learned in the kitchen
Posted inHeard Around the West
Tougher than most
WYOMING Surely she was exaggerating, but maybe not. Republican Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming’s lone congressional representative, insisted that she knew people in her state who would actually choose death over taxes — resolving to quit dialysis or other live-saving treatments — “in order to die so their estates won’t be taxed” if the Bush-era tax breaks […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Sportsmen protest New Mexico antelope hunting system
Program gets poor marks from local hunters
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Coyotes move into Colorado’s Front Range
Residents and coyotes clash in the suburbs.
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Activist brings diversity to green orgs
Marcelo Bonta helps color the environmental movement
Posted inHeard Around the West
States’ rights gone wrong
UTAH We hate to pick on the Beehive State, but sometimes Utah picks on itself. Take the $101 million in federal funds earmarked for the state to spend avoiding teacher layoffs — Utah’s share of a $10 billion package covering all 50 states. But was the Republican Legislature grateful for this windfall from Washington? Not […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
The BLM’s conservation experiment
Salazar directs agency to put conservation first – in some places
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
May your holidays be bright
We’ll see you again around mid-January — we’ll be taking a longer-than-usual publishing hiatus in December, to better align our printing schedule with the holidays, work on exciting stories for the new year, and overdose on eggnog and fudge. In the meantime, be sure to visit us on the Web at www.hcn.org for fresh blog […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Diving deeper into the Bay Delta
It would have been easy to frame this issue’s cover story from just one viewpoint — that of a dedicated environmentalist, say. It would have gone something like this: Profit-loving California farmers and voracious megacities are so greedy for water that they’re destroying what’s left of the once-sublime Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta ecosystem. Period. […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Anatomy of a medusahead invasion
Medusahead, an invasive annual grass, is poised to become a major rangeland menace. “It’s just starting its major advancement,” says Roger Sheley, an Agricultural Research Service ecologist in Oregon. Sheley believes most Western rangelands are vulnerable, especially those already plagued by invasives. “Medusahead represents another step in the decline of these systems.” Devilish and useless: […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
California’s Tangled Water Politics
The Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta, formed where the two rivers meet in California’s Central Valley before flowing into San Francisco Bay, is the largest estuary on the entire West Coast of the Americas. But much of the Delta is a remote, labyrinthine wateriness that, for most people, exists only in the mind, wrapped in […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Excavating John
The Book of JohnKate Niles225 pages, softcover: $22.85.O Books, 2010. John Gregory Wayne Thompson, the eponymous hero of Kate Niles’ second novel, The Book of John, moves between the southwest Colorado desert and the cold beaches of Washington’s Neah Bay, in the process retracing his personal life and loves. An archaeologist, John is 50 years […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Infinite problems, small solutions
The Fate of Nature: Rediscovering Our Ability to Rescue the EarthCharles Wohlforth417 pages, hardcover: $25.99.St. Martin’s Press, 2010. In The Fate of Nature, Alaskan reporter and author Charles Wohlforth argues that the planet’s salvation depends upon our willingness to overcome our innate selfishness. Beginning with the basic question — what makes us human, anyway? — […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
State trust lands serve public
What’s equivalent in area to Washington state, lies mostly west of the Mississippi, and raises well over a billion dollars for public education each year? State trust lands. These unique “public” lands were granted by the federal government to every state that joined the Union, starting with Ohio in 1803, in the belief that townships […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
A place to park — and live
I completely sympathize with and understand the problems faced by Jen Jackson (HCN, 11/22/10). Many Western tourist towns have become unaffordable for the ordinary people who are, ironically, indispensable, working in hotels, restaurants and recreational businesses. The towns should find some way to accommodate their trailers or RVs. But in “Heard Around the West,” you […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
Ocelots in Arizona?
Recent appearance of the tropical cats spurs update of federal recovery plan
Posted inHeard Around the West
Missing item
WYOMING Drivers along a section of Highway 22 near Jackson, Wyo., wondered why drug-sniffing dogs and squads of patrol officers, two or three abreast, were walking the road a few weeks ago. Then the story emerged: They were on the trail of a box of drugs. A dog handler from the sheriff’s department had placed […]