This Forest Service expert says it’s as much a sociopolitical problem as it is physical.
Why homes are lost to wildfire
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 […]
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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, […]
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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 […]
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Feds and state officials square off on Alaska hunting regulations
The morning of Friday, February 21 dawned bright and clear in the rolling boreal forest of the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, east of Fairbanks, Alaska. The temperature topped out at eight below zero. Earlier in the week, a family of 11 wolves known as the Lost Creek pack loped beyond the preserve’s boundaries as they […]
Posted inWotr
Illegal pot farms that damage land should make room for legal entrepreneurs
If you care about protecting clean water, endangered species and public health, then you might want to consider legalizing marijuana for recreational use. That’s because so much of the stuff is now being grown illegally on our public lands in places dubbed “trespass grows.” These secretive and often well-guarded farms do enormous environmental damage and […]
Posted inArticles
Hippos spark management debate
Nation’s most fearsome invasive species wreaks havoc on Western waterways.
Posted inArticles
Locals resist a Bakkenization of the Beartooths
South-central Montanans oppose new drilling, forewarned by fracking’s impacts in other states.
Posted inGoat
Fracking fuels the post-Recession economy and growth
Oh how a housing bust, a nasty economic downturn and a shale oil and gas boom can change things. Seven years ago this spring, the Census Bureau released a flurry of numbers about the economy and growth, which then spawned a bunch of articles about which parts of the country were growing fastest and why. […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Happy housewarming, Charlie Brown
A couple restores a Seattle home and honors the Austrian Jewish couple who once lived there.
Posted inGoat
Four women joyride the flood that will revive the Colorado River Delta
The guides warned us, of course. Or they sort of did. It was sometime after the river outfitter’s shuttle van had passed through the latticework of gates and fences that guards the steep, hairpinned road to the boat-launch at the base of the Hoover Dam, and possibly right before we realized that we had left […]
Posted inWotr
Paddling bill is bad news for Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks
How boaters are looking for special treatment.
Posted inWotr
A little paddling won’t hurt the Yellowstone experience
RELATED: Paddling bill is bad news for Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks If we’ve gained any strength as environmentalists, it’s because we’ve stuck to science and public processes. The other stuff is for the bad guys who want to exploit public land for profit. As a longtime activist on forest issues, I could give you […]
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Conservationists join animal rights groups to challenge Idaho ag gag law
Idaho’s sweeping new ag gag law, enacted in February, raises so many red flags that the Animal Legal Defense Fund has filed a lawsuit against it, only the second suit of its kind in the nation. But this time, in a new twist on ag gag litigation, the animal rights non-profit is joined by conservation […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Go West, clean megawatts
Nevada stakes its renewable energy future on California.
Posted inGoat
New national monuments threatened by House attack on Antiquities Act
When President Obama bestowed national monument status upon the Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands — a 1,600-acre stretch of rocky California coast that teems with abalone and sea lions — earlier this month, the reaction was predictable as a high tide at full moon. While conservation groups rejoiced at the presidential protection, House Republicans snarled at […]