Fueled by money from casino gambling, New Mexico’s Indian pueblos and reservations are throwing their political weight into the state’s water tug-of-war.
Also in this issue:Starting in Utah, Interior Secretary Gale Norton has slammed the door shut on new BLM wilderness proposals and inventories and wilderness study areas.
Nevada development was inevitable
Dear HCN, There is evidently some lingering confusion regarding the Clark County, Nev., public-lands bill which was signed into law at the end of the last Congress. Given the huge, explosive population growth in Las Vegas and Henderson, and the development which is a consequence of this growth, the non-wilderness provisions of the bill –…
The Latest Bounce
The Bureau of Land Management is doing its part for national energy security. In mid-April, the agency announced its new policy for approving oil and gas permits. Now, the BLM will simultaneously process multiple permits with similar characteristics, instead of evaluating and providing environmental analysis for each one (HCN, 4/14/03: Grass roots prevail in ANWR…
Roadkill 101
“Don’t touch that!” is what most kids hear when they investigate dead animals. But in Hayden, Colo., elementary school teachers are encouraging students – armed with maps and global positioning systems – to go in search of roadkill. Second- and fourth-grade students at Hayden Valley Elementary School have produced a map of roadkill patterns along…
Mary Colter discovered
Mary Colter, like other female artists of the Southwest, was inspired by the region’s vivid landscapes and indigenous cultures. But unlike Georgia O’Keeffe or Terry Tempest Williams, Colter remained largely unknown to the public and her peers during her lifetime. Following her death in 1958, she sank further into obscurity — until recently. Arnold Berke’s…
Hit the audio road in Nevada
“I wasn’t sure what I had found, but I knew it was Nevada,” says Jon Christensen, as he drives the so-called Extra-Terrestrial Highway in eastern Nevada. The road flanks Area 51, the top-secret military facility where scientists are rumored to be studying captured aliens. Originally a series on Nevada Public Radio, Nevada Variations is a…
Birdman’s biography soars
He’s known as the Birdman of Boise, and is perhaps the most underrated conservationist in the West. In Cool North Wind: Morley Nelson’s Life with Birds of Prey, Idaho writer Stephen Stuebner tells the story of a former Soil Conservation Service employee, “a flamboyant salt-of-the-earth character, a father of four, a husband, a widower, a…
Disengaging in a time of war
Dear HCN,In her writings, Terry Tempest Williams always challenges her readers to think and to act in new responsible ways or face some inevitably dire consequences. In the same voice, she confidently reassures and comforts those same afflicted readers. Her recent essay, “Engagement in a time of terror,” however, left me cold, at first (HCN,…
Beyond ‘predator-prey’
Dear HCN, I am responding to Greg Hanscom’s editorial referring to the lofty ideal that the mission for wildlife biologists is to work themselves out of a job (HCN, 3/31/03: Dear Friends). It seems to me that wildlife biologists are fair game for everyone. If we advocate some sort of active management that the environmental…
Indian Power
New Mexico tribes catapult into politics and join the state’s water tug-of-war
The pueblos’ roller-coaster rise to power
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Indian Power.” 1200-1500 Various tribes establish villages, which the Spanish will call “pueblos,” along the Rio Grande. Some evidence suggests they are descendants of the Anasazi, whose settled and sophisticated civilization in places like Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde collapsed around 1300. 1598 Conquistador…
Dear Friends
Scratch the metamorphosis bit The notes from readers continue to roll in regarding our plans to redesign High Country News. We’ll spare you the details, but it’s great to get some thoughts from the outside world, since we’ve been staring at our work for so long that we’re all a bit cross-eyed. We received this…
The Colorado River’s sleeping giant stirs
Navajo Nation wants its long-overdue cut of the river
New Mexico’s new governor must reckon with history
It’s tough to get in a fight in New Mexico without getting everyone’s grandparents involved. Here, history is somehow both deeper and closer to the surface than it is elsewhere in the West. Take the Aamodt water rights case, for example, which High Country News covered back in 1984. On one side of the fight…
Heard Around the West
Don’t mess with Monterey; it plays hardball. For the next 15 years, no cruise ship from Crystal Cruises will be allowed to enter the California city’s harbor. What’s more, if one city official had his way, the company would be banned “forever” – because one of the cruise line’s ships, the Crystal Harmony, dumped 36,000…
Wilderness takes a massive hit
The door closes on new BLM wilderness proposals
A desert’s stolen secrets
It caught my eye, like a ruby someone had dropped on the ground. I was already looking for something, a handhold maybe, a place to step as the two of us scrambled up this route of cliffs and ledges in the Utah desert. I squinted into the shadow of a leaning boulder and saw the…
Bison arrive in Grand Canyon uninvited
While Yellowstone National Park struggles to keep its bison herd within park boundaries, managers at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona are facing the opposite problem. Drought has recently driven a herd of bison into the park from the House Rock Valley, a region of steep, wooded canyonlands in the Kaibab National Forest just north…
Cold War toxin seeps into Western water
Rocket-fuel ingredient could pose widespread health threats
Perchlorate: It’s not just for rocket fuel anymore
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Cold War toxin seeps into Western water.” Ammonium perchlorate shows up in hundreds of military munitions, from signal smoke (orange, green, violet and beyond) to hand grenades and anti-tank rockets, and on military bases from California to…
Montana debates bison-hunting season
Critics say bison should simply be allowed to roam
Water principles of the West begin with blaming California
Like the rest of the West, Colorado is suffering from a multi-year drought. Drought, in case you’re curious, is one of those technical terms for what happens when you have enough water for 1 million residents, but not enough for 4 million, let alone the 10 million that the developers would like to see. What…