In 2010, Ed Hendrycks, a research assistant at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, was poring through his museum’s collection of caprellids with José Guerra-Garcia, a researcher visiting from Sevilla, when the Spanish scientist noticed an unusual specimen. One of the caprellids – tiny crustaceans whose slender, translucent bodies have earned them the nickname […]
New California shrimp: A reminder of the West’s undiscovered biodiversity
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Rain watch
What to expect from the likely El Niño summer across the West.
Posted inWotr
Rocky Flats and the power of forgetting
On nuclear legacy and the power of nature to adapt.
Posted inGoat
As black lung spreads, a fight over miner protection
The federal government and the nation’s largest coal industry association are in a legal battle over how to best protect miners from the gradual comeback of black lung. In April, the Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration issued its final rule to reduce miners’ exposure to coal dust, calling it a “historic step […]
Posted inArticles
Massive Colorado mudslide nearly clobbered gas wells
How much should energy developers plan for natural disaster?
Posted inWotr
Suckers for gold: recreational dredgers can wreck stream beds
Suction dredging for gold is basically a recreational activity. Required equipment: gasoline-powered dredge, sluice box, wetsuit and scuba gear. With a 4-inch-diameter hose you vacuum up what’s on the bottom of rivers — stuff like gravel, woody debris, plants, mussels, snails, insect larvae, crayfish, frogs, salamanders, fish eggs, fish fry and, occasionally, gold. I have […]
Posted inWotr
Idaho has declared a war on wolves
Nearly 20 years ago, I served on the team that carefully captured and released the first wolves in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. Though this reintroduction effort was heralded internationally as a significant American achievement in the recovery of endangered species, we’re in a far different place today, and especially in Idaho. The state has […]
Posted inGoat
In North Dakota, signs of changing attitudes towards oil and gas development
In February 2013, Scott Skokos was sitting in the North Dakota state capitol at a meeting of the Industrial Commission, the three-member body that approves every oil and gas permit in the state. Normally, says Skokos, a field organizer for the Dakota Resource Council, the commission green lights all the requests before them — public […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Alaska’s wildlife war
The federal government pushes back as the state ramps up predator control.
Posted inGoat
Latest agricultural census shows a small-farm revolution
They’re growing houses in the fields between the townsAnd the Starlight drive-in movie’s closing downThe road is gone to the way it was beforeAnd the spaces won’t be spaces anymore Thus sang John Gorka in his heartbreaking 1991 ballad, Houses in the Field, about families selling their farms to developers, who “paid better than the […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
What the president can do for conservation
When a racist rancher in Nevada and his armed supporters can command headlines by claiming to own and control publicly owned lands, perhaps it’s time to remind Westerners about the history of the nation’s public-land heritage. Recall that it is we, the American people, who own the public lands that make up so much of […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Welcome, Brian Calvert!
HCN is delighted to welcome new associate editor Brian Calvert. Brian, a fourth-generation Wyoming native, grew up in Pinedale and graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in 1994 with a BA in English liberal arts and minors in writing and media studies. He has worked as a foreign correspondent, writer, audio journalist, and, most […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
The path of the imagination
Conversations with Barry Lopez: Walking the Path of Imagination William E. Tydeman208 pages, softcover: $19.95.University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. For 40 years now, Barry Lopez has been at the center of the national and international conversation about social justice, and the fate of humanity and the Earth. In Conversations with Barry Lopez, the National Book […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Respect your rescuers
Thankfully, “How to get search-and-rescued,” Shaina Maytum’s travel horror story (HCN, 4/14/14), was short. Fixated on what the volunteer rescuers were wearing (Postal Service uniform, jeans, Keds), she neglected to admit what’s important: She’s lucky to be alive. Any sense of personal responsibility was missing, along with any gratitude for the search-and-rescue folks who drop […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Peak water
Bigger reservoirs and deeper wells won’t end California’s water crisis
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Paying for risk-takers
When I was a kid in the 1950s, my dad expressed disdain for people so poor they’d build on riverbanks prone to flooding (“The stages of disaster,” HCN, 4/28/14). High ground was the motto for his dream home, perched on the stable bluffs of the Minnesota River. In 1978, I arrived in Tucson, Arizona, a […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Ordinary heroes
It was refreshing to read the article “Mind Over Mountain” (HCN, 4/14/14). As one who lives with a spinal cord injury, at first I thought, “Oh no, not another hero story.” There are heroes, and Jon Arnow may be one, but there are thousands who live with similar injuries and who “care about the West” […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Baby birds get wood-chipped and draft horses for heavy dude ranchers.
THE WESTHuge draft horses, those “diesels of the horse world,” as the Idaho Statesman dubs them, are showing up at dude ranches these days, on tap for rugged trail rides because more and more would-be adventurers have supersized themselves. At Chico Hot Springs in Montana, for example, Heidi Saile of Rockin’ HK Outfitters said her […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Drought watch
Drought is dehydrating much of the West, with several states in their third or fourth consecutive year. Southern Oregon, California, southern Utah and western Nevada already have extremely low streamflows and will likely get drier in coming months. Nevada and New Mexico reservoirs were at less than a quarter of their normal levels for early […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Conflict for the sake of conflict
(This is an editor’s note accompanying an HCN magazine cover story, The Great Gun-rights Divide.) When federal land managers confronted by armed protesters abandoned their latest inept attempt to remove Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s illegally grazing cows in April, the rest of the world wondered, not for the first time, “What is up with the […]