Searchable BLM reports and satellite images for 20,000 grazing allotments.
A new map shows rangeland health West-wide
Posted inArticles
Colorado can boast it was the cradle of wilderness
Only God can make a tree, but only Congress can designate a wilderness, and the Wilderness Act, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, became the law it is today largely because a powerful Colorado congressman, Wayne Aspinall, blocked the legislation in his committee over and over again. His stubborn opposition, however, gave birth to […]
Posted inArticles
Not another “ghost river,” please
I’m biased in favor of flowing rivers, yet my favorite, the Rio Grande, has been anything but flowing lately. Over the past few years, it’s been drying up downstream of Albuquerque every irrigation season between mid-June and Halloween. It seems odd to say it, but the river hasn’t the right to its own water. Instead, […]
Posted inArticles
Analyst challenges predictions for Western oil booms
North Dakota and Texas fields could be at a fraction of current productivity by 2040, says a new report.
Posted inArticles
Water use is lower than it’s been in 45 years
U.S. population has grown by 105 million people since 1970, yet we somehow shrank our water footprint.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Will falling oil prices kill the shale revolution?
The current drilling boom is more sensitive to price fluctuations than its predecessors.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
USGS launches a billion-dollar initiative to map the West in 3D
LIDAR is about to become more widespread — helping agriculture, pilots and homeowners.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Timberland herbicide spraying sickens a community
Companies deposit thousands of pounds of herbicides each year on Oregon forests.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
The desert-friendly cow
A rancher and a researcher search for a better bovine — and think they’ve found one.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
The bounds of reasonable action
I found “Defuse the West” to be quite one-sided. To add balance, it would have been good to include events such as the BLM’s commando-type raid on several citizens in southeastern Utah on June 10, 2009. This event has received much media attention and has still not seen resolution. I would have liked to have […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Stirring up the dangerous fringe
I would like to thank High Country News for “Defuse the West” (10/27/14). I retired after serving for 30 years with both the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management and can attest to the ugliness that has crept into the public discourse regarding public lands and forests. I have been on the […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Speaking art to power
Review of ‘Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and And Art in the Changing West’ by Lucy R. Lippard
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Sage grouse found walking through Wyoming underpass
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Rocky Mountain sawmills rebound
But the industry says it needs more timber.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Review of “The Memory of Stone: Meditations on the Canyons of the West”
Photographs from Utah’s Monument Valley to the Petrified Forest.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
‘Poverty with a view,’ in the rearview
I spent my 20s in some of the most beautiful towns in the West.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Our national denial
So he had literary flair and put himself at real personal risk — all very admirable — but if Charles Bowden produced anything in any way helpful to understanding and dealing with the Mexican border crisis and migration, it is nowhere evident in the pieces by or about him that have appeared in HCN (“Charles Bowden’s Fury,” 10/13/14). None […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
New HCN board members, Part II
Welcome three new members, and farewell to naturalist Ann Zwinger.