Did this really happen? Did a young organic farmer discover that the multinational agricultural firm Syngenta had secretly planted genetically modified sugar beets (banned in the company’s native Switzerland) near his small fields, and in other leased plots around southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley? Did he then plough under his own crop because of the risk […]
Fighting GMO’s: a passionate bunch of people move mountains
Posted inGoat
New Mexico is getting lucky so far this fire season
Southern Californians are currently experiencing a phenomenon they call June Gloom, when the humid, hazy air that usually hangs out just above the ocean blows inland and lingers, trapped by a warm layer above it. Oh, what the good people of New Mexico would have given in recent years for that brand of gloom. Instead, […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Snowmobiling for science in Idaho
Scientists and snowmobilers team up for smarter wolverine management.
Posted inGoat
Reasons for massive starfish dieoff still unknown
Here’s some shocking news: Since last fall, when I first wrote about Pacific sea stars falling victim to a mysterious disease, turning into goo and dying, the aptly-named “starfish wasting syndrome” has not – as scientists hoped – subsided on its own. It’s gotten much, much worse. How much worse, you ask? Well, from the […]
Posted inWotr
Cannabis could go Champagne in western Colorado
In the garden of my cousin, Sepp, in Germany’s Black Forest, there is a big tree that produces lots of yellow plums every year. Sepp, a retired forest worker, keeps the grass cut very short around his Mirabellenbaum, so he doesn’t miss a single fallen fruit. Every evening in the fall, he gathers the plums […]
Posted inArticles
Border patrol runs roughshod on public lands
In its quest to secure the U.S./Mexico border, the U.S. Border Patrol is running roughshod over huge swaths of desert wilderness with complete immunity from U.S. environmental laws. That’s what Ray Ring, a senior editor at High Country News, discovered on a recent reporting trip to the border for his feature story “Border Out of […]
Posted inGoat
Sons of Wichita: understanding the enigmatic Koch brothers
The Koch brothers have become a household names in the past decade. Three out of four brothers are major players in energy development in the West and across the country. Two are powerbrokers for the conservative right and have been at the forefront of bringing libertarianism into the political mainstream. In the energy and political […]
Posted inWotr
Let bears eat those messy moths
Last year, I wrote a column for the Casper Citizen touting the annual migration of lowly miller moths (the army cutworm, Euxoa auxiliaris) through central Wyoming as something to be celebrated. I said it was a lot like other great migrations made over hundreds of miles by creatures such as African wildebeests or monarch butterflies. […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
The Latest: After a long battle, agreement for the Klamath
BackstoryTo protect endangered fish during 2001’s drought, federal officials shut off irrigation water in Oregon and California’s Klamath Basin, costing agriculture millions. The next year, farmers got their water – along with a massive salmon die-off that infuriated Klamath tribes. Tribal members and farmers remained at odds until 2004, when federal rulings prompted dam-owner PacifiCorp […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Border out of control
National security runs roughshod over the Arizona wild.
Posted inGoat
EPA carbon regulations will not destroy the electrical grid
Just days after the Obama administration announced it would implement rules to cut carbon emissions from existing power plants, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Ak., bemoaned the collateral damage the so-called war on coal would have on the electrical grid. “I am greatly concerned EPA’s rules – particularly in combination with one another – will result in […]
Posted inGoat
Is immigration reform an environmental issue?
The question of whether humanity can expand indefinitely without running roughshod over the very environment it depends on once stood at the center of the American environmental movement. Public concern reached a fever pitch after the Sierra Club published Paul Ehrlich’s bestselling The Population Bomb in 1968. Within that debate quietly lurked questions about how […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
How mining transforms the West’s ranching communities
Photographs of people and places in flux.
Posted inGoat
The West’s crucial 2014 U.S. Senate races
The big question of the 2014 midterm elections — other than, “Eric Cantor lost?!” — is which party will emerge with control of the U.S. Senate. A number of Western states will host Senate races this year – Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Alaska – but only three will be hotly contested, […]
Posted inGoat
Dispatch from Yosemite: Honoring national parks’ black heritage
In the fading light of a late spring evening, gospel singer Sista Monica Parker sat humming on a bench at the Yellow Pines Campground in Yosemite National Park. There she waited patiently for others to gather. Quiet at first, her melodic voice gained strength as she swayed to the rhythm of a hymn perhaps not […]
Posted inWotr
He’s the linchpin of a remote western Colorado town
Take the Western boots off Don Colcord, add more trees to the main street of Nucla, Colorado, and you’d have the movie set for “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with Colcord, a pharmacist, playing Jimmy Stewart’s role as the principled banker of a small New England town. But Colcord lives in arid western Colorado, in a town […]
Posted inGoat
25 years after raid, reflections on Rocky Flats
Outside the Arvada Center not far north of Denver, Colorado, this past weekend stood a larger-than-life-sized sculpture of a horse in a respirator and hazmat suit. Activists, scientists, academics, ranchers and local citizens young and old – but mostly older – walked past the horse, an artist’s interpretation of the toxic legacy of the long-closed […]
Posted inGoat
Infographic: Hey, Wildlife Services — what did you kill?
Earlier this month, Wildlife Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture division responsible for animal control, released data indicating that it killed over four million creatures in 2013 — a million more than it did the previous year. The agency, whose stated mission is to provide “leadership and expertise to resolve wildlife conflicts,” undertakes plenty of […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Brine shrimp by the billions in the Great Salt Lake
Why is this shrimp fishery nearly conflict-free?
Posted inGoat
Wildland firefighting takes funding from other vital programs
A new federal report this week shows how dollars meant for forest restoration and wildfire preparedness often get diverted to fighting wildfires. It’s been that way for years, and as fires get bigger and more expensive to fight, the problem only gets worse. As we reported last summer: “Just a few days before (the Rim […]