National security runs roughshod over the Arizona desert, a radioactive leak in New Mexico makes the future of nuclear waste disposal even more elusive, wolverines, brine shrimp, and more.
When a parent dies, do we let the house fall?
Every generation must decide what to do with the lives that preceded theirs.
Snowmobiling for science in Idaho
Scientists and snowmobilers team up for smarter wolverine management.
Border out of control
National security runs roughshod over the Arizona wild.
How mining transforms the West’s ranching communities
Photographs of people and places in flux.
Brine shrimp by the billions in the Great Salt Lake
Why is this shrimp fishery nearly conflict-free?
Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann by Joe Ashbrook Nickell
Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann Joe Ashbrook Nickell, 140 pages, hardcover: $45. Missoula Art Museum In Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann, author Joe Ashbrook Nickell provides a glimpse into the psyche of a 95-year-old artist still grappling with his place in the world. Tension is palpable in the oeuvre of this…
The first college degree in drones, a baby born in Walmart parking lot and more
IDAHOIn the TV studio, the faces of the journalists questioning the four Republican would-be candidates for Idaho governor sometimes registered dismay, other times wonder. They simply could not believe what they were hearing, when Walt Bayes declared his “main loyalty” was to God and against vile affections and wickedness, when motorcyclist Harley Brown boasted that…
Consider the sparrow
The Urban BestiaryLyanda Lynn Haupt337 pages, hardcover: $27.Little Brown, 2013. Most communities across the West, urban and rural, are home to the animals in Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s new book, The Urban Bestiary, a collection of joyful meditations on the fauna that scamper over our lawns and roost on our power poles. While eastern gray squirrels,…
The leak heard ‘round the nuclear industry
A radioactive leak in New Mexico will make solutions to our waste problem even more elusive.
Crazed ‘patriotism’
Concerning the Sagebrush Rebellion timeline, (“The BLM vs. Cliven Bundy, HCN, 5/12/14), et tu, High Country News? “After a tense standoff between armed militiamen and federal agents …” Somehow these bullying military-armed lawbreakers have convinced the media, including HCN, to associate them with the Second Amendment and the “well-regulated militia” delineated there. These confused and…
Thumbs up and still breathing
Ahead of the Flaming Front: A Life on FireJerry D. Mathes II221 pages, softcover: $17.95.Caxton Press, 2013. Jerry D. Mathes’ second nonfiction book, Ahead of the Flaming Front, portrays the day-to-day life of a wildland firefighter. With a poet’s sense of language, Mathes describes his experiences as a rookie, gaining knowledge as he rises through…
Federal generosity
With the U.S. District Court of Nevada giving Cliven Bundy 45 days to remove his cattle from federal grazing land, land the Bundy family had occupied for nearly six decades, it came to mind that Gen. O.O. Howard didn’t give the Nez Perce such a generous amount of time back in 1877. They had just 30…
Inexhaustible supply
Regarding “Two-Wheel Revolution” (HCN, 4/28/14), I was amused by your comparison of Gallup to Santa Fe as to the prevalence of “small loan companies.” The problems in Gallup are symptoms of problems in Santa Fe: elite concentrations of wealth and unsustainable consumption. As Voltaire wrote hundreds of years ago: “The wealth of the rich is…
Official lawlessness on the border
(This is the editor’s note accompanying an HCN magazine cover story, Border out of Control: Fear and anxiety over national security run roughshod on the Arizona wild.) In 1987, my brother, Brook, landed his first international reporting job in Mexico City. He took a crash course in Spanish and, following his editors’ advice, drove from…
Oil and gas wells hold a place of honor in a Colorado subdivision
Oil and gas infrastructure is common near homes in Weld County, Colorado, which has more than 20,000 active wells. But wells, pumpjacks and tanks seem to hold a place of honor in the Frederick subdivision of Wyndham Hill, in spots where you might expect parks and playgrounds. This article appeared in the print edition of…
Parks deserve robust budgets
Thank you for your article on the national parks and cultural diversity (“Parks For All?” HCN, 5/12/14). However, it contained a critical error about the government shutdown and the Utah national parks. You wrote, “During last fall’s federal shutdown, states like Utah took over some national parks, fueling calls from some locals for permanent control.”…
Paying for conservation
Hunters and anglers have largely been footing the bill for wildlife and conservation (“Hunting for conservation dollars,” HCN, 5/12/14), yet we’re continually under attack by environmental and animal rights groups who have so far refused to assist in funding wildlife management (minus the rare exception of Defenders of Wildlife, which compensates ranchers for livestock killed…
Remembering Cecil Garland
Forty-nine years ago, a Lincoln, Montana, hardware-store owner spread maps of the nearby national forest on his kitchen table. A self-educated migrant from North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains, he liked to hunt elk in a backcountry area where the Forest Service wanted to build roads, logging areas and campsites. He drew a line around the…
Suckers for gold
Suction dredging for gold is basically a recreational activity. Required equipment: gasoline-powered dredge, sluice box, wetsuit and scuba gear. With a 4-inch-diameter hose, you vacuum up what’s on the bottom of rivers – stuff like gravel, woody debris, plants, mussels, snails, insect larvae, crayfish, frogs, salamanders, fish eggs, fish fry and, occasionally, gold. I have…
The Latest: Obama designated his largest national monument yet
BackstorySince 2009, Congress has grid-locked around three dozen bills that would protect new acres of public land. Even locally grown, something-for-everyone wilderness bills, like Montana’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, are rotting in a legislature plagued by dysfunction and public-lands phobia (“Wilderness bills languish in legislative limbo,” HCN, 3/5/12). Public-land advocates are turning to President…
The Latest: Kill invasive lake trout to save native bull trout?
State and tribes disagree.