Thousands of years ago, the Ice Age Floods reshaped the landscape of eastern Washington, along with our knowledge of geology.
Catron County confluence
Water unites ranchers and environmentalists in a conservative corner of New Mexico
After the Floods
Unraveling the mystery behind the Northwest’s channeled scablands
Water overdrafts
To address groundwater situations such as that explored in your recent article, “Death By a Thousand Wells,” Congress must increase funding for the U.S. Geological Survey so it can conduct a comprehensive, nationwide groundwater mapping study (HCN, 10/26/09). As a nation, we are highly reliant on our groundwater. It accounts for 40 percent of our…
Well-grounded fears
While Cally Carswell’s piece might better have been titled “Death by more than a hundred thousand wells,” the issue is not the present number of wells but the potential for the future growth of this phenomenon (HCN, 10/26/09). The exempt or domestic well is increasingly being recognized as the fly in the ointment of prior…
Roadless — for the seventh generation
“Roadless-less” attempts to portray a scandal that never existed in the roadless rule promulgation process (HCN, 11/9/09). The article depicts the series of judicial rulings upholding the roadless rule as merely party-line votes — a view that discredits the federal judiciary and wrongly suggests that the rule’s persistent vitality in the courts says nothing about…
The hunt is on
Despite protests, wolf hunts go forward in Idaho and Montana
The wild home of hope
Rock Water Wild: An Alaskan LifeNancy Lord248 pages,hardcover: $24.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Alaska writer laureate Nancy Lord’s infatuation with that state dates back to a fourth-grade school project. Like so many transplants, she moved to the Far North to reinvent herself. Alaska’s remoteness, its low population density, natural wealth and often-harsh living conditions recall…
A scientist’s view of change
Of Rock and Rivers: Seeking a Sense of Place in the American WestEllen Wohl267 pages, hardcover, $24.95.University of California Press, 2009. Ellen Wohl shudders when she sees houses built on gently sloping benches at the mouths of mountain clefts. She knows that such sites, with their incredible views, were created by past landslides, and hence…
Changing of the guard
We’d like to recognize the dedication and vision of two long-time board members who recently decided to step down. Both hail from Boulder, Colo. Felix Magowan, who joined in 2001, brought substantial publishing and financial expertise to High Country News; he was the founder of Inside Communications, which published Velo News and other outdoor titles…
For the birds
In response to your article “Audubon Feathers Fly in Arizona,” I want to make it clear that at no time has Desert Rivers Audubon taken a formal position on the land-swap issues described in the article (HCN, 10/12/09). We share many of the same concerns regarding the issues as the other Audubon groups in Arizona.…
For the love of forests
In response to Ray Ring’s article about the roadless rule, as for the money put into the effort to establish the rule, is this not the pot calling the kettle black (HCN, 11/9/09)? Is there some reason why environmentalists and the left should be too pure to use philanthropic funding and lobbying? Sadly, to my…
Give language a chance
In mid-November, about 50 experts on the world’s endangered languages gathered at the University of Utah. They were tasked with beginning an ambitious effort to catalog these languages and produce an online, updatable database where they can be stored. The goal is to keep the languages alive. If that doesn’t work, they hope to at…
The Eastern Frontier
New York City is Western too
A cleaner coal?
Energy companies hope to turn coal into gas — by burning it underground
How wild is a managed wolf?
Another wolf made the news last month: SW266M received capital punishment in Wyoming for the crime of eating woolly domestic mammals. His “name” means he was the 266th male wolf captured and tagged in southwestern Montana. His record yielded the further information that he was born in May 2007 on the east side of the…
Frack 2, Scene 1
In 2006, in the midst of the Rocky Mountain energy boom, Grand Junction and Palisade, Colo., lost a long battle to keep natural gas drilling off the forested mesa that supplies the two communities’ drinking water. Now, the drilling boom has moved out East, and the political landscape of the oil and gas fight appears…
The Lost Art of Listening
Can the Northern Arapaho save their language?
Avalanche education for all
Janet Kellam tackles an “urban” snow problem