And how lawmakers can improve their record next year.
How Native Americans have shaped the year’s biggest environmental debates
Posted inArticles
What I learned from 30 years with the Forest Service
After working for the Forest Service for 30 years, I finally had to write a book about it — especially about some of the painful lessons I learned. Here are just a few of them. It will come as no surprise that it wasn’t easy being a woman in what was, and remains, a man’s […]
Posted inArticles
Enough is enough at the Glen Canyon Recreation Area
Glen Canyon National Recreation Area is a mess. Amazingly, it’s not so much from the reservoir that drowned it 50 years ago; it’s because of what the park’s visitors are doing to it today. I say this because I’ve spent most of my career photographing wilderness areas in Grand Canyon, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument and […]
Posted inArticles
Killings by cops are much more common in Western states
Arrest-related death rates are highest in New Mexico, with Nevada and Oregon close behind.
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Vigiling with Dad
He tells me to park close to the vigil site, but far enough down the block to allow for a view from the street. It is noon, a spectacular fall day. The sun is edging onto the bench where dad likes to sit. We unload signs – “War Is Not The Answer,” “An Eye for […]
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For public lands, massive protections in defense bill
But not all conservation groups think the gains are worth the losses.
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Drilling the Arctic comes with a 75 percent chance of a large oil spill
Key findings from a new environmental analysis.
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Conflicting forecasts for natural gas
A new study suggests that estimates for U.S. supplies may be vastly overstated.
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Cities look to farms for help in Colorado River drought
West’s biggest water agencies finalize a major agreement to boost Lake Mead levels.
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Is Las Vegas betting the Colorado River will go dry?
Las Vegas is a city that plays the odds, and if you want to know which odds to play, you need to follow the smart money. Unfortunately, that money seems to be moving toward building yet more dams that will drain yet more water out of an already oversubscribed Colorado River. Unlike most cities in […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2014: The Great Salmon Compromise
When neighbors spray herbicides next to your organic crop
Living together with local resentments in Northern California.
Posted inDecember 8, 2014: The Great Salmon Compromise
Tribal revival
As a kid, I relished stories of America’s pre-settlement wildlife abundance: Vast clouds of passenger pigeons darkening the skies for days at a time, buffalo storming across the Great Plains like massive living tornadoes, and, of course, mighty runs of salmon, so densely packed that you could walk across the writhing, red creeks without soaking […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2014: The Great Salmon Compromise
The Latest: Illegal marijuana grows busted in Colorado
The Forest Service seized more than 100,000 plants on public lands.
Posted inDecember 8, 2014: The Great Salmon Compromise
The Latest: A new tactic to quell Owen’s Valley dust
Los Angeles tries to save water and mitigate effects of sucking the valley dry.
Posted inDecember 8, 2014: The Great Salmon Compromise
The great salmon compromise
The Columbia Basin Fish Accords have funded $1 billion worth of habitat restoration projects, but can they replace free-flowing rivers?
Posted inDecember 8, 2014: The Great Salmon Compromise
Contemporary photographs of 19th century art
Review of “Karl Bodmer’s America Revisited” by Robert Lindholm.
Posted inDecember 8, 2014: The Great Salmon Compromise
Range report
What the BLM can (and can’t) tell us about the state of rangeland health.
Posted inDecember 8, 2014: The Great Salmon Compromise
New Mexico interregnum
Review of “Backlands: A Novel of the American West” by Michael McGarrity.
Posted inDecember 8, 2014: The Great Salmon Compromise
Los Angelenos earn money off lawns, an ‘extreme walker’ and more
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Posted inDecember 8, 2014: The Great Salmon Compromise
Industrial poisoning
Rebecca Clarren’s excellent report on the exposure of Oregonians to herbicides sprayed by timber companies brings to mind a similar struggle by the state’s citizens in the late 1970s (“Fallout,” HCN, 11/10/14). Back then, a small group of women from Alsea, Oregon, who had suffered miscarriages after exposure to herbicides sprayed by the U.S. Forest […]