This spring, millions of Americans will snap together rods, tie flies and spinners to monofilament, and, from a boat or streambank, cast to a rising fish. In many places, their quarry will be the born-and-raised products of hatcheries, facilities in which fish are artificially bred for the benefit of anglers. Nevada will stock a million […]
Hatcheries make for happy anglers, but at what cost to wild fish?
Posted inWotr
Don’t call the desert empty
In the spareness of a desert hike, you become a Beckett character, faced with big space and big time” — Laurie Stone. I write for a living, or what amounts to it, and because I’m a dreamer and a fool and one of the luckiest people I know, I also edit a literary magazine dedicated […]
Posted inGoat
Drone improves emergency response in Wyoming floods
Brandon Yule, a volunteer firefighter in Worland, Wyo., was called to the scene of the Big Horn River flood at 7 a.m. An ice jam under a bridge had apparently caused the river to rise overnight, and water was starting to flood nearby homes. But by 9 a.m., Yule and the team still couldn’t get […]
Posted inGoat
Permian Basin: America’s newest fracking boom where there’s not much water
In the early 1980s, it wasn’t so uncommon for a visitor to Midland, Texas, to saunter off his private jet and into a Rolls Royce dealership. Eight Midland oil barons made it onto Forbes’ list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, “an amazing statistic considering that the city’s population was only 70,000,” notes Texas Monthly writer […]
Posted inGoat
Don’t teach climate change. It’ll hurt the economy.
In the summer of 1925, John Scopes, a 24-year-old high school science teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, became one of most infamous defendants in U.S. legal history. In March of that year, Tennessee passed a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. A month or so later, the American Civil Liberties Union placed a newspaper ad offering […]
Posted inWotr
The tortoise is collateral damage in the Mojave Desert
Large solar arrays can harm threatened species.
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
California’s energy policies have ripple effects across the West
As the Golden State shifts from coal to clean, economies in other states feel it too.
Posted inGoat
Updates on stories past: Salt Lake smog, wild horses, floods and more
It may still be winter in the mountains, but down here in Colorado’s North Fork Valley, late-season flurries are coming up against signs of spring. Farmers are burning ditches, the west-facing steps of Revolution Brewing are packed with after-work sun-seekers, and High Country News is in the middle of our quarterly print edition break, which […]
Posted inGoat
EPA may finally look at coal ash regulation, much needed in Montana
When rancher Clint McRae first saw the swirling green and white ponds of arsenic, boron, mercury and lead-containing sludge 10 miles from his property, it was in a photography show at the Montana statehouse. He first thought they were abstract art, but quickly realized some were aerial photos of the ash slurry left over from […]
Posted inGoat
Google Street Viewers can now raft the Grand Canyon
Back in the early 1980s, the French philosopher Michel de Certeau went to the 110th floor of the then-brand-new World Trade Center and looked down at Manhattan. It was a revelation to him: “To be lifted to the summit of the World Trade Center is to be lifted out of the city’s grasp. When one […]
Posted inGoat
Oregon moves to help disappearing honeybees
Here in western Colorado, a few honeybees have emerged recently, buzzing tentatively among the first spring crocuses. Soon the peach, apricot and cherry trees will burst into pink and white bloom and bees will begin working in earnest, to pollinate the stone fruit that’s a mainstay of our area’s agricultural economy. Then local farmers will […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Win-win win
It’s probably proper for me to mention that I have worked for the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, and have been a Sierra Club member in the Southwest or Northwest for much of my adult life. In the context of the Feb. 17 HCN issue featuring collaborative […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Wild subversion
I enjoyed your coverage of wilderness therapy (“Wilderness therapy redefines itself,” HCN, 2/3/14). Krista Langlois’ sympathetic yet honest reporting presents the practice of wilderness therapy in an accurate and generous light. I do wish, however, that Langlois was more critical of our culture’s underlying assumptions – to which wilderness therapy is a necessary corrective. For […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
The long arm of California energy policy
Distinctive landmarks define Four Corners country: Lone Cone, jutting into the pale blue sky beyond the bean fields; the awesome spires of Shiprock; the looming figure of Sleeping Ute Mountain; and, rising up from a mesa above the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico, the steam-belching concrete and steel of the Four Corners Power […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
The Latest: Colorado first state to regulate methane emissions
BackstoryFrom diesel exhaust to leaking pipelines and other infrastructure, oil and natural gas development releases methane, a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than CO2, sulfur and nitrogen compounds and toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) like benzene. The latter two help form lung-damaging ozone. As drilling booms, Western gaspatch pollution sometimes rivals that of major […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
The Latest: Another Hanford whistleblower fired
BackstoryThe Hanford Site, a vast nuclear complex along Washington’s Columbia River that once produced plutonium for warheads, has come under fire from dozens of whistleblowers in its 71-year history. In recent decades, scientists and other involved experts have criticized the $40 billion cleanup effort, citing mismanagement and other problems, including releases of airborne cancer-causing radionuclides and […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
The farm bill and the precipitous decline of monarch butterflies
The fate of pollinators like monarchs is intertwined with federal policy.
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Ordinary people
Return to OakpineRon Carlson272 pages, hardcover: $18.90.Viking Press, 2013. Welcome to Oakpine, a fictional small town on Wyoming’s eastern plains where four high school pals reunite in 1999, after 30 years spent leading very separate lives. In his latest novel, Return to Oakpine, the award-winning author Ron Carlson tells a moving but quiet tale about […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
It’s spring break time again!
In mid-March, as snow melts and crocuses bloom in our hometown of Paonia, Colo., HCN staff takes one of our four annual publishing breaks. Look for the next issue, a special issue on unusual travel experiences around the West, to hit your mailbox around April 14. And in the meantime, visit hcn.org for fresh news […]
