Last January, in the snowbound mountains that crease northern Idaho’s Boundary County, an unnamed trapper found what he thought was a live bobcat in his baited wire cage. He shot the creature on sight, hoping for a pelt that would fetch up to $2,000 on the fur market. But when he lifted the carcass from […]
Threatened lynx are bycatch in Idaho trapping resurgence
Posted inWotr
Former Interior secretary blasts gas industry pressure
Former Interior Department Secretary Bruce Babbitt visited the University of Colorado recently to talk about oil and gas drilling on federal public lands. Not surprisingly, he didn’t pull any punches. Babbitt criticized the agency he oversaw during the Clinton years, the Bureau of Land Management, for its handling of drilling on 250 million acres of […]
Posted inGoat
Can cacti help San Joaquin Valley farmers survive a drought?
When I finally got a hold of John Diener, the busy 62-year-old farmer was en route to his organic broccoli field in central California’s San Joaquin Valley. I could picture the scene: a truck bouncing over a dusty track, golden morning sunlight, rows of bright green plants meeting a blue sky. The vision was idyllic. […]
Posted inWotr
In the West, it’s all about beer
After sampling 50 different beers and spending a number of hours searching for garages converted to breweries, I was content. A friend and I had planned this getaway for weeks, and the night in Bend, Ore., was as central to the trip as was Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon. In fact, the visit […]
Posted inArticles
Will the Colorado River reach the Gulf of California once more?
Photographs of the historic water pulses.
Posted inGoat
Coast Guard blames Shell for beached Arctic drill rig
On New Year’s Eve, 2012, Royal Dutch Shell’s Kulluk drilling platform ran aground off a southern Alaskan island called Sitkalidak. Last week, the U.S. Coast Guard released a 152-page report dissecting the incident in minute detail and squarely pinning the blame on the oil company and its contractors. The company had used the Kulluk – […]
Posted inWotr
Save sagebrush, and good things happen
High in the Desatoya Mountains east of Fallon, Nev., and just east of Route 50 — famously dubbed “The Loneliest Road in America” by Life Magazine in 1986 — a curious congregation gathers in the predawn light. It is a congregation made up of two parts: one, of sage grouse, preparing to strut their stuff […]
Posted inJune 22, 1973: The crisis in energy: stampede corralled
My neighbor is an addict
No, he’s not addicted to drugs, good whiskey, or even bad women. He is addicted to the gasoline engine and the various vehicles and devices to which it has been adapted. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/5.13/download-entire-issue
Posted inArticles
The energy haves and have-nots
Will rooftop solar owners get off the grid — and leave other power users in the dark?
Posted inGoat
New Drought Risk Atlas gives real context to extreme weather
Maybe it’s the grey creeping into my hair, or the lines around my eyes. For whatever reason, whenever the weather gets a little bit weird — maybe it doesn’t snow in December or gets really sunny in January — people ask me if it’s “normal for these parts.” No, I’m not a climate scientist or […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Road Captain
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Last night I got a phone call with the bad news that I have received what my neighbors out here in the remote Silver Hills refer to as a “redneck promotion.” To be specific, […]
Posted inArticles
KDNK Radio speaks with Judith Lewis Mernit
California’s 38 million residents need energy, and since they don’t want it from coal plants, communities in the West are trying to seize an opportunity to export their renewable energy California’s way. In this episode of Sounds of the High Country, KDNK’s Eric Skalac spoke to Judith Lewis Mernit who wrote about California’s energy needs […]
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Why homes are lost to wildfire
This Forest Service expert says it’s as much a sociopolitical problem as it is physical.
Posted inGoat
How will British Columbia power its liquified natural gas industry?
Vladimir Putin’s Crimean escapades have politicians demanding the U.S. ramp up its natural gas export capacity, thereby breaking – or so the theory goes – Russia’s energy stranglehold on Europe. As HCN’s Jonathan Thompson and others have pointed out, though, President Obama can’t turn gas into a geopolitical weapon by snapping his fingers: Export facilities […]
Posted inGoat
Rare island-dwelling wolf closer to protection in Southeast Alaska
Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island is home to the Alexander Archipelago wolf, an extremely rare subspecies of gray wolf facing a plethora of threats. Environmental groups first petitioned to protect the animal under the Endangered Species Act nearly three years ago. The Fish and Wildlife Service finally announced this week that it will consider a […]
Posted inWotr
The next energy boom to hit southeast Utah is “unconventional oil”
The Uinta Basin in northeast Utah is changing fast. Its lower reaches are already pockmarked with some 8,000 oil and gas wells, but so far, the top of the high southern rim — the area known as the Book Cliffs — has avoided much of the industrialization found to the north. But that could change, […]
Posted inGoat
Will Colorado be the next Western state to make it harder to opt out of vaccines?
Lake City, Colo, feels like a good place to escape the rest of the world. To the south, State Highway 149 winds through the San Juan Mountains over 11,500-foot Slumgullion Pass. You’re more likely to encounter a herd of bighorn sheep licking salt off the road here than an actual traffic jam. To the north, […]
Posted inGoat
Dispatch from Mexico: a historic pulse of water to restore the delta
Just south of the Mexican border town of Los Algodones, last Thursday dawned with a whipping breeze. Maintenance workers hustled to sweep, shovel dust and repaint the yellow speed bumps in the road alongside Mexico’s main Colorado River dam, named for the patriot José María Morelos, who was executed by Spain in 1815 for his […]
Posted inArticles
The future of the Sacramento Delta hangs in the balance
But few Californians seem to grasp what is at stake.
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
How to travel the West on $5,000 per day
(NOTE this is part of the April 2014 special issue of the HCN magazine devoted to travel in the West.) Hermès Hiking BootsThe Paris company offers a “low boot in black oily calfskin” with a “palladium plated Albion buckle, orange lining … double leather sole and lugged rubber sole, water-resistant.” The Wall Street Journal praises […]