If a hungry mountain lion comes after you, how should you respond? Most experts recommend that you stop and make yourself look as large as possible, aggressively defending your position. But Dustin Britton, a mechanic and ex-Marine from Windsor, Colo., didn’t need no stinkin’ experts; according to The Associated Press, he just picked up his […]
Departments
Posted inHeard Around the West
Striking finish
At 6 a.m. in the chilly dawn of the second Friday in July, about 140 people, wearing neon-colored petroleum-derived clothing and encumbered with packs and water bottles, start running. From the small southwestern Colorado town of Silverton, they head into the rugged San Juan Mountains, where they will attempt to complete a 100-mile loop across […]
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
Why one Coloradan cares about fish quotas
When the young woman in the apron and the thick rubber gloves handed me that bag of oysters, I knew they’d be good. We’d been hanging out on the beach right next to where those oysters were farmed, and they were so fresh, their rough shells were still covered with mussels and barnacles. A good […]
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
The bare bones of life
The Southwest reminds one writer of Mars
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
The meat of the matter
Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory FarmsNicolette Hahn Niman278 pages, hardcover: $23.99.HarperCollins, 2009. When lawyer Nicolette Hahn was first assigned to sue gigantic polluting hog farms, she didn’t care for the idea. It sounded like an “immersion in poop,” she writes in her first book, Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and […]
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
Forager, feed thyself
Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century ForagerLangdon Cook224 pages, hardcover, $26.95.Skipstone Press, 2009. When Langdon Cook met his future wife, his lack of culinary prowess nearly chased her away. “Cooking meant heating up a box of mac ‘n’ cheese or opening a can of chili,” he confesses in the prologue to Fat […]
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
The same old Sen. Reid?
The Nevada lawmaker has a long history of opposing attempts to reform an antiquated federal mining law
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
Revival or dam-nation?
The push for green power could spawn a rush for small hydropower projects in the Northwest
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
What we got here is a failure to collaborate
Updated Aug. 24, 2009 On July 10, President Obama announced his nomination of Jonathan Jarvis as the next director of the National Park Service. Jarvis has worked for the agency for 30 years and directed its Pacific West region since 2002. Many of his colleagues contend that he not only has scientific training, but is […]
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
Just say “yes”
I am glad that Carl Zichella recognizes a current trend within the environmental movement: inaction (HCN, 6/22 & 7/6/09). I have done my part volunteering and writing letters for the Sierra Club and other groups focused around conservation/sustainability/general green-ness, but I am tired of constantly opposing things and never seeing any changes. If all the […]
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
Deals on wheels
“Thinking Outside the Timber Box” left out the struggles of the Montana Mountain Bike Alliance, which represents the thousands of mountain bike riders in Montana (HCN, 7/20/09). There is a middle ground of recreation that lies between the “motorheads” and the wilderness-loving hikers. Bicyclists have gravitated to the beautiful locations in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge that were […]
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
More children, more carbon
In “Let’s Get Small,” Judith Lewis writes that “global greenhouse gas emissions have increased 70 percent since 1970, and our energy-squandering ways are to blame” (HCN, 6/22 & 7/6/09). Note that since 1970, world population has increased from around 3.8 to 6.7 billion people, while the United States has gone from 200 to over 300 […]
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
Fightin’ words
Water entrepreneur Aaron Million is quoted as saying that if there were any problems with his proposed Wyoming-to-Colorado pipeline project, “I’d be the first to put a fork in it” (HCN, 7/20/09). To which I’d like to add my own thoughts: “What? After cutting up the public’s water, you’d dine on it?” Mr. Million is […]
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
Collaboration, schmlaboration
Regarding Ray Ring’s story “Thinking Outside the Timber Box”: While I think the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership is a good step and a grand idea in broad terms, what Ring missed is that the Partnership group barely tried to include county commissioners and others (HCN, 7/20/09). If the point of a collaborative approach is to bring all […]
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
Nirvana on a backhoe
Habitat restorer Kim Erion’s heartfelt connection to her work
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
The Most Cooked-Up Catch
Saving fisheries — and taking the edge off the dangerous derby of the sea.
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Mixed greens
Ever since the scraggly mountain-roaming John Muir joined other Californians to found the Sierra Club in 1892, that state has led the country in protecting the environment. California began regulating pesticides back in the horse-and-buggy era. Beginning in the 1950s, it passed comprehensive laws for air and water quality, regulation of toxic substances, tougher emissions […]
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Welcome, new interns!
Three new interns have arrived for six months of “journalism boot camp” at our Paonia, Colo., office. (For more on the internship program, see hcn.org/about/internships.) Editorial intern Ariana Brocious is thrilled to be embarking on her first full-time journalism job. Last year, she reported on climate change in Argentina for the Arizona Daily Star. A […]
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Wild Turkey, gunfire and big pipelines
Aaron Million’s quest to pipe Wyoming water to urban Colorado
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
The stories we believe
Madewell BrownRick Collignon213 pages, hardcover: $23.95.Unbridled Books, 2009. Madewell Brown is the fourth novel in Rick Collignon’s “Guadalupe” series, which is set in an imaginary village in northern New Mexico. But it reads as a stand-alone, even while spiraling back to explore the fate of a character introduced in Perdido, the second in the series. […]