Here in western Colorado, we usually have great food year-round. Local farmers grow squash, peppers, tomatoes and corn, and their orchards produce cherries, apples and peaches. Cattle and sheep fatten in pastures. In the last few years, though, weird weather has affected agriculture more and more often. Hard frosts murder fruit blossoms in May, grape […]
Hunger pangs
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
How to publish a newspaper in the midst of wildfire
Rural weekly newspapers remain vital to their communities, and as a publisher-editor, it’s my job to keep readers informed about and connected around the things that are important to them. So how do you respond when nearly every means of doing that job is wiped out in one superheated burst of flame? In mid-July, what […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
How much water goes into your food?
Growing everyday food items requires a surprising amount of water.
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
George Harrison’s tree is killed by beetles, and more
UTAHIf you’re an education blogger in Utah, don’t try to tell your online students that English words that sound the same sometimes mean different things – i.e., “for,” “four” and “fore.” The technical term for this confusing aspect of the language is “homophone” – but when Tim Torkildson tried explaining this to his mostly foreign […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Dirty Snake
Thank you for the tremendous article on the lax rules and pollution of the Snake River in southern Idaho (“Idaho’s Sewer System,” HCN, 8/4/14). I live near the infamous Simplot fertilizer plant in eastern Idaho and have personally witnessed algal blooms in American Falls Reservoir caused by phosphate leaching from the plant and the agricultural […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Climate canary
Greenhouse gases are changing the way we talk about coal.
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Box of poison
I support the protection of sage grouse and other wild birds in order to prevent their extinction. But the recent article “Are we smart enough to solve our raven problem” (HCN, 8/4/14) not only highlights the need for more dialogue on whether poisoning will truly mitigate the issue, but also the need for serious discussion […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
An award, and a whole lot of visitors
“The Tree Coroners,” by HCN contributing editor Cally Carswell, just received one of the Society of Environmental Journalists’ 2013-2014 Awards for Reporting on the Environment. The Dec. 9, 2013, feature story took second place in the category “Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding In-depth Reporting, Small Market.” Congrats, Cally! VisitorsSo many readers pass through Paonia, Colorado, […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Alaska’s Uncertain Food Future
Climate change in the Far North puts traditional food sources at risk.
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
A Taxonomy of Landscape
A Taxonomy of LandscapeVictoria Sambunaris, essay by Natasha Egan, short story by Barry Lopez. 126 pages with 36 page booklet, hardcover: $60. Radius Books, 2014. To create A Taxonomy of Landscape, Victoria Sambunaris traveled America’s interstates and backroads alone for months with a 5-by-7-inch wooden field camera, driven, she says, by “an unrelenting curiosity to […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
A new wildfire protection approach in Colorado
Homeowners take on the costs of fire mitigation — with lots of help.
Posted inGoat
Poll shows strong Latino support for conservation
Max Trujillo caught the conservation bug during childhood summers spent with his father hunting, hiking and camping in the wilderness of northern New Mexico. In the years that followed, Trujillo noticed that many Hispanic families were out enjoying the woods, but they weren’t involved in the mainstream environmental movement. “As a community, we’re grossly underrepresented, […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
What the West will feel like in 2100
Scenarios for how our cities will change with the climate.
Posted inGoat
Western state highways among the most dangerous in the nation
New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada especially hazardous for pedestrians.
Posted inGoat
Fish and Wildlife declines to list wolverines as endangered
Not enough evidence of climate harm to list wolverines, says Fish and Wildlife Climate change is a real force disrupting wildlife populations. But for the 300 or so wolverines living in the lower 48, there’s still not enough evidence of present or future danger to protect them under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish […]
Posted inWotr
Who are the true Idaho conservatives?
Idaho Gov. Butch Otter has worked hard for six years to turn the state’s Highway 12 into a corridor for sending massive, 200-foot-long mega-loads of heavy equipment to Alberta, Canada, for tar sands extraction. But it’s not working out. First, state court verdicts in Idaho and Montana, plus botched operations by mega-loads haulers, held things […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
The roads scholar
An ecologist helps wildlife safely cross highways.
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Jared Polis abandons anti-fracking initiatives
A Democratic family feud takes a surprising turn in Colorado.
Posted inGoat
Recreational deaths soar this summer
Grand Canyon and Colorado rivers have record year for deaths.
Posted inWotr
Nebraska loves its cattle a little too much
On the surface, it sounded like good news: In 2013, Nebraska supplanted Texas as the No. 1 cattle-feeding state in the country. The numbers were impressive: Nebraska had 2.46 million cattle on feed, surpassing the 2.44 million in Texas, the longtime king of cattle. They had folks in the governor’s mansion and at Farm Bureau […]