South-central Montanans oppose new drilling, forewarned by fracking’s impacts in other states.
Locals resist a Bakkenization of the Beartooths
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 […]
Posted inGoat
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 […]
Posted inGoat
Drought gives one of the West’s thirstiest crops an ironic boost
“We farmers here in the United States might as well recognize that we are a minority group, and that the prevailing interest of the nation as a whole is no longer agricultural,” wrote Dust Bowl farmer Caroline Henderson in a letter to a friend later published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1936. She lived in […]
Posted inWotr
Does Juneau in Southeast Alaska really need this highway?
A proposed road is destructive, dangerous and bound to be ridiculously costly.
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
The toxic legacy of Exxon Valdez
We are just beginning to understand the true cost of one of America’s worst ecological disasters.
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Navajo Nation bets on coal
A tribe digs into a dying industry.
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
A plague of tumbleweeds
A handy pamphlet on how to dig out from a tumbleweed takeover of sci-fi proportions.
Posted inGoat
Hatcheries make for happy anglers, but at what cost to wild fish?
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 […]
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 […]
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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 […]
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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.