The numbers behind the energy rhetoric
Departments
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
What lies beneath?
The Farmer’s DaughterJim Harrison308 pages, hardcover: $24.Grove Press, 2010. It’s a favorite trope in Western literature and film: The soft-boiled city slicker who’s “hardened up” by the rural West, taught the value of a good day’s labor and stripped of frivolous notions of comfort and security. The land tempers you, according to popular mythology, instilling […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Civics lesson
In your April 26 edition of “Heard Around the West,” author Betsy Marston clearly enjoys poking fun at the Utah parents who want to ensure that certain schools in their counties are using the proper terminology to describe our system of government. She obviously thinks that republic is simply short for Republican, and what could […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
It’s cultural, not rational
It’s hard to see rural opposition to public-land protection as anything more than a front on the great American culture war (HCN, 4/26/10). To hear, again, the opposition of San Juan County, Utah, commissioners to new national monuments or to wilderness designations confounds economic rationality. National parks and monuments are big drivers of economic activity […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Let’s make a (national) deal
When I read the subhead of Jonathan Thompson’s article “Wilderness by Committee,” I inwardly groaned (HCN, 4/26/10). Thompson wrote: “Federal land protection is all about dealmaking.” Here in Montana, we are being confronted with this kind of “dealmaking” in the form of Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, the fruit of three separate […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
HCN wins awards
We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve received the prestigious 2010 Utne Independent Press Award for Environmental Coverage. “High Country News covers this vast (Western) landscape like an experienced backcountry guide, pointing out the threats along with the wonders,” wrote the Utne judges. “Whether its writers are watchdogging resource-intensive industries like ranching, mining, drilling, and logging […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Saving wildlands, ignoring urban lands?
I feel that the “Flare up” article misses the real story and scapegoats environmental groups (HCN, 4/26/10). Libby has asbestos problems? Those awful environmental groups! Sinclair refinery spilling too much pollution? Where are the environmentalists!? Environmental groups aren’t superheroes, fixing refineries, organizing labor and healing the sick. Instead, you should ask the real questions: Who […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
NBIMBY
COLORADO AND UTAHMesa State College on Colorado’s Western Slope displayed a bit of insensitivity to its Grand Junction neighbors recently, announcing that it was planning to create a “body farm” in one of the city’s fastest-growing residential areas. A body farm is a place where criminal justice students study the slow process of decay in […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Last rites in salmon country?
As California’s water war grinds on, salmon fishermen gear up for a risky season
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Clean air, hazy politics
Colorado air quality law pits coal against gas, rural against urban greens
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Accidental Wilderness
Hanford, White Sands and other ‘wastelands’ are good for bombs—and biodiversity.
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
For wilderness, look to a wasteland
Select DOD and DOE sites in the West
Posted inHeard Around the West
Doggone it
THE WORLDEveryone loves dogs, right? Don’t be so sure. In its spring issue, Earth Island Journal reviewed the book Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, by New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale. The Vales found that the carbon impact of a dog is double that of an SUV, that a […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Little doses of danger
Parenthood scares a fearless outdoorswoman
Posted inHeard Around the West
Don’t have a cow
CALIFORNIAThe folks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium named their new exhibit about climate change “Hot Pink Flamingos: Stories of Hope in a Changing Sea.” With the help of humor, a hopeful tone and charismatic animals such as penguins and jellyfish, exhibit planners hoped to get visitors talking about the contentious topic of how too much […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
A California Bestiary: Beauty of the beasts
A California BestiaryRebecca Solnit and Mona Caron64 pages, hardcover: $12.95.Heyday Books, 2010. In the tradition of illuminated medieval manuscripts, A California Bestiary presents 12 literary and visual portraits of fauna native to that state, from the extinct (California grizzly), to the emblematic (California condor), the ubiquitous (California ground squirrel), and the preciously obscure (mission blue […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Ghosts of Wyoming: A haunted past and present
Ghosts of WyomingAlyson Hagy170 pages, softcover: $15.Graywolf Press, 2010. Reading Alyson Hagy’s new collection of short stories, Ghosts of Wyoming, is a bit like poring over a stranger’s photo album, some pictures grayed and dusty, the images gone faint, others recent and still vivid. Each deft vignette contains its own bounded narrative, but taken together, […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Fair trade?
As a native-born Nevadan living in Humboldt County, Nev., I have seen firsthand both sides of the mining issue (HCN, 4/26/10). Twenty years from now, we will be asking what we have to show for all the mountains of tailing piles, open pits with poisoned water, miles of roads cut into the landscape for test […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
No more horseplay
I’d like to see HCN correct the grave misinformation in “Eligible Mustangs” and treat the subject with the accuracy and respect it deserves (HCN, 4/12/10). First and foremost, the Bureau of Land Management sets the “Appropriate Management Level” for wild horses on our ranges and decides when to call horses “excess.” However, this is based […]