Can the right breed keep both domestic animals and native carnivores alive?
Searching for the best dog to save livestock — and wildlife
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Oath Keepers show up for a public lands dispute in Oregon
Plus a Cliven Bundy supporter is charged and BLM emails about the Nevada standoff were released.
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How to galvanize a classroom
Recently I devoured a short book of nonfiction with a very odd title: The Committee for the Reburial of Liver-Eating Johnston: Memoirs of a Dyslexic Teacher, by Tri Robinson. It’s a memoir, and it revolves around a teacher, his highly motivated seventh-graders, and the remains of a long-dead “Mountain Man.” That man is John “Liver-Eating” […]
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Feds opt not to list Mono Basin sage grouse
Conservation efforts persuaded officials that the Nevada-California population will fare well.
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Ghost subdivisions haunt the New West
On a gusty and overcast, chilly afternoon, the writer Samuel Western and I decide to tour a housing development in Wyoming called the B.B. Brooks Ranch. It’s a 41,000-acre subdivision with hundreds of available lots – most of them 40 acres in size – in a lattice of largely ungraded dirt roads. Platted lots are […]
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Interior considers hike in oil and gas royalty rates
Industry opposes reforms at a time when low oil prices deter drilling.
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Ranch Diaries: Building community in the middle of nowhere
Cattle branding brings together far-flung neighbors in the midst of the “Big Quiet.”
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On a methane mystery tour in the Four Corners region
Scientists, planes and instruments descend on San Juan Basin to find roots of the massive greenhouse gas hotspot.
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Idaho’s Panther Creek comes back from the dead
Two decades after restoration began, life returns to a stream sterilized by mining.
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Political sparring over the Land and Water Conservation Fund
A Wyoming canyon is the focal point of the dispute over the program’s future.
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Washington’s Swinomish sue to halt Bakken oil trains
Many communities fight transport of crude oil through their towns; some find legal footing to succeed.
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Famous Los Angeles puma holes up in residents’ crawlspace
The mountain lion brings attention to the role of urban wilds.
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Utah’s ‘Grand Bargain’ for public lands enters phase three
Bishop pushes what may be the West’s biggest reshuffle of the land checkerboard.
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A street-smart chicken for your backyard
There are many ways backyard hens can die. If you raise them long enough, you’ll see your share. But buff Orpington chickens tend to be survivors. My first clue to their talent for living came when a Siberian husky sneaked into my backyard. A more efficient chicken-killing machine does not exist. The wolfish canine […]
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Dispatch from Cliven Bundy’s latest gathering
Who showed up at the one-year anniversary of the BLM standoff? Most of them weren’t ranchers.
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Forest Service is still in search of a mission
Perhaps Ken Burns had the right idea when he named his public-television series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. Even though I worked for the Forest Service for 34 years, I’m inclined to agree with him about the importance of our nation’s parks. But the national forests are surely our second-best idea, a priceless asset […]
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EPA loophole allows streams of wastewater in Wyoming
Environmentalists challenge permits that result in dumping of toxic chemicals on tribal land.
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Scientists document mega Oregon-Nevada pronghorn migration
Three hikers will track ecological conditions on the route this June.
Posted inApril 10, 2015: Strangers in a Strange Land
The West in 72 hours
Asian tourists look for space, spectacles and a decent bowl of noodles.
Posted inApril 10, 2015: Strangers in a Strange Land
Strangers in a familiar land
A few years ago, my family and I lived for a while in Germany. Soon after we returned, we went for a hike in the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area in northwestern New Mexico. Bisti is surely one of the weirder and more obscure wilderness areas out there, a collection of otherworldly rock formations and badlands, surrounded […]