Planning summer outings here in Montana used to be simple: Enlist participants, round up gear, drive to the river or trailhead, and go. But as I plan this year’s adventures, I’m warning the possible participants: Smoke may force cancellation. Last August was dicey. With wildfires roaring in 11 Western states, all our outings were at the mercy of wind […]
A neologism for the summer’s inevitable wildfires: smoke season
Posted inWotr
My town wasted scarce water for a celebration
I’m still thinking about last February’s “Dew Downtown,” Flagstaff’s third annual ski and snowboard festival, which transformed a steep downtown road into a winter playground of snow-covered runs and what looked like death-defying jumps. In the crowd, scattered among the thousands of families and younger beer drinkers who used words like “shred” and “stoked,” were […]
Posted inGoat
Pebble Mine: Alaska sides with mining corporation, tribes back EPA
Victories in clean air and energy politics may be among the Obama Administration’s lasting legacies, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t been getting much love from rural communities lately. Here in western Colorado coal-mining country, a hand-painted sign reflects the opinion of many local miners: “Frack the EPA and the war on energy!” In […]
Posted inArticles
New BLM plan weighs sage grouse and oil in Wyoming
Governor Mead hopes the plan will keep the bird off the endangered species list.
Posted inGoat
Interior commits to bison restoration – but offers few specifics
Bison have pretty much been “odd ungulate out” when it comes to restoration efforts. Deer and elk are found throughout the West, and bighorn sheep and mountain goats are relatively widespread as well. But there are just a handful of free-roaming, genetically pure herds of bison in North America – today most of the gigantic, […]
Posted inArticles
What’s killing the Yukon’s salmon?
An ecological mystery in Alaska has scientists and fishermen baffled and alarmed.
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: “Lawn Guilt”
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Henry David Thoreau’s neighbors generally thought of him as a lazy, confrontational, sanctimonious pain in the ass. They might be interested to know that he turned out to be right about nearly everything, from […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Reflecting on groundwater from the Owens Valley Watershed
Growing up in the high desert, I learned water doesn’t just fall from the sky.
Posted inWotr
What makes America unique is its public lands
As Independence Day approaches, let’s take a moment to celebrate our nation’s natural wonders. In this country we have the freedom to explore approximately 618 million acres of publicly owned federal lands, from the tundra of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the cliffs of the newly-created Sleeping Bear Dunes Wilderness on Lake Michigan and […]
Posted inArticles
Jonathan Thompson on payday lending
It may not come as a surprise that many Native Americans living on mostly poor, remote reservations in the American West have come to rely heavily on payday loan companies offering cash at high interest rates when money is tight. Yet as Jonathan Thompson reveals in the current issue of High Country News, some tribes […]
Posted inGoat
Nuclear Los Alamos, America’s best place to live?
We all love contemplating what makes a place worth living in. For some, it’s jobs and schools. For others, it’s recreation or the environment, or a reasonable cost of living. But whatever your criteria, one thing’s certain: In the transient, often rootless culture of the American West, the search for the Big Rock Candy Mountain is […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Divers explore national parks’ underwater treasures
The last frontier of the national parks lies underwater.
Posted inGoat
The transformative power of… efficiency
As streamlined shorebirds rose and dove amid sailboats in San Diego’s Mission Bay one recent afternoon, scores of energy wonks gathered in the over-cooled ballrooms of the Hyatt Regency. They’d come to deliberate on the impending disruption to the conventional electrical industry, brought on by tightening carbon restrictions and ever more people making electricity on […]
Posted inWotr
This July 4th, take a gander at the phone book
Like most Americans, I’m a mutt, and proud of it.
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
River of no return
Seattle’s Duwamish has been straightened, dredged and heavily polluted. Can a Superfund cleanup bring it back to life?
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
‘A pimp in the family’
Tribes get into the payday lending game.
Posted inGoat
Want a walkable community? Start with the main drag
At first glance, I suppose nothing appears to be amiss with the scene in this photograph. It’s Main Ave., the primary business and tourist district of Durango, Colorado. But it could be any number of mid-sized Western towns. The town has done an admirable job retaining its historic integrity and aesthetics of the architecture and […]
Posted inGoat
Why is this guy kayaking the San Joaquin River?
John Sutter is kayaking the San Joaquin River. He’s gone from this: To this: Along the way, Sutter — a journalist who’d never kayaked a river before — has capsized, lost his GoPro camera, been washed through overhanging trees and had his food eaten by raccoons. He’s talked to farmers, migrant workers, biologists, environmentalists and […]
Posted inWotr
About those gay loggers for Jesus and July 4th
A town’s July 4th celebration says a lot about a community, and this holiday in Bozeman, Montana, promises to be relatively laid-back, with locals typically heading for nearby Livingston or Ennis to catch their parades, then back home for stirring music and fireworks at the fairgrounds. Just five years ago, however, Bozeman woke up to controversy when […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Salmon go down the tubes – literally
Washington biologists test pressurized tubes to transport salmon over dams.