Whatever you’ve read or seen on television, a new “Sagebrush Rebellion” of public-land ranchers against the federal government has not erupted in rural Nevada. What’s happened there can best be described as the last act of a long-running dispute between a delusional rancher and a hapless federal agency, the Bureau of Land Management. Unfortunately, the […]
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My chickens lay their own Easter eggs
My first baby chicks arrived 10 years ago, just after midnight on Easter Sunday. The post office, of course, was closed, but I got the call to come get them, as happens when live animals are shipped. I’ve been rocking a flock ever since. Those who raise backyard chickens will inevitably go through an obsessive […]
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The lessons of Ludlow, 100 years later
If April 20 is an informal holiday for celebrants of cannabis, members of labor unions observe the day more somberly. That’s especially true this year. One hundred years ago, striking coal miners and their families were killed in what’s now remembered as the Ludlow Massacre. It was the landmark catastrophe in the broader, nearly year-long […]
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Former Interior secretary blasts gas industry pressure
Former Interior Department Secretary Bruce Babbitt visited the University of Colorado recently to talk about oil and gas drilling on federal public lands. Not surprisingly, he didn’t pull any punches. Babbitt criticized the agency he oversaw during the Clinton years, the Bureau of Land Management, for its handling of drilling on 250 million acres of […]
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In the West, it’s all about beer
After sampling 50 different beers and spending a number of hours searching for garages converted to breweries, I was content. A friend and I had planned this getaway for weeks, and the night in Bend, Ore., was as central to the trip as was Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon. In fact, the visit […]
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Save sagebrush, and good things happen
High in the Desatoya Mountains east of Fallon, Nev., and just east of Route 50 — famously dubbed “The Loneliest Road in America” by Life Magazine in 1986 — a curious congregation gathers in the predawn light. It is a congregation made up of two parts: one, of sage grouse, preparing to strut their stuff […]
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The next energy boom to hit southeast Utah is “unconventional oil”
The Uinta Basin in northeast Utah is changing fast. Its lower reaches are already pockmarked with some 8,000 oil and gas wells, but so far, the top of the high southern rim — the area known as the Book Cliffs — has avoided much of the industrialization found to the north. But that could change, […]
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Illegal pot farms that damage land should make room for legal entrepreneurs
If you care about protecting clean water, endangered species and public health, then you might want to consider legalizing marijuana for recreational use. That’s because so much of the stuff is now being grown illegally on our public lands in places dubbed “trespass grows.” These secretive and often well-guarded farms do enormous environmental damage and […]
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Paddling bill is bad news for Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks
How boaters are looking for special treatment.
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A little paddling won’t hurt the Yellowstone experience
RELATED: Paddling bill is bad news for Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks If we’ve gained any strength as environmentalists, it’s because we’ve stuck to science and public processes. The other stuff is for the bad guys who want to exploit public land for profit. As a longtime activist on forest issues, I could give you […]
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Does Juneau in Southeast Alaska really need this highway?
A proposed road is destructive, dangerous and bound to be ridiculously costly.
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Don’t call the desert empty
In the spareness of a desert hike, you become a Beckett character, faced with big space and big time” — Laurie Stone. I write for a living, or what amounts to it, and because I’m a dreamer and a fool and one of the luckiest people I know, I also edit a literary magazine dedicated […]
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The tortoise is collateral damage in the Mojave Desert
Large solar arrays can harm threatened species.
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When poisoning is the solution
A victory for an endangered fish, though some environmentalists fought hard to prevent it.
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Let’s not bring Las Vegas to Grand Canyon
Critique of a developer’s plan to haul tourists on a tramway to the Colorado River.
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Utah can boast of a living work of art
Visiting a remote work of art at the Great Salt Lake –– Robert Smithson’s brilliant Spiral Jetty.
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Deadly avalanches and the lure of the mountains
Mountains are our barometer and our playground, and, on occasion, our tomb.
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Jobs in the oil patch – a realistic look
Many gas patch jobs aren’t high paying once you know the facts.