The SonPhilipp Meyer592 pages, softcover: $16.99.Ecco, 2014. “The land was hard on its sons, harder yet on the sons of other lands,” writes Philipp Meyer in The Son, a masterful, gripping portrait of America’s Western expansion told through the lives of one Texas family. The Son braids together the stories of three members of the […]
Brutal frontier
Posted inMarch 3, 2014: Fallon’s deadly legacy
A 100-pound pet tortoise wanders away, and cats are still killing birds.
Mishaps and mayhem from around the West.
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: IH8 DMV
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. I’ve always been impressed by vanity license plates—at least when they’re genuinely clever or funny—and have long thought that a little back bumper wit on my part might help my fellow Silver Hillbillies endure […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Pacific Crest Trail: A Journey in Photographs by Chris Alexander
We recommend using the gallery view to enjoy these photographs. Pacific Crest Trail: A Journey in Photographs Chris Alexander, 120 pages, hardcover: $49.95. wanderingthewild.com, 2013. At 2,660 miles long and with over 400,000 total feet of elevation change, the Pacific Crest Trail, which stretches from Mexico to Canada, is not for the weak-legged. Chris Alexander’s […]
Posted inGoat
California’s drought is not about “fish versus farmers”
If there was a moment when the California drought fully entered the national media spotlight, it came earlier this month when President Obama swooped into California’s parched Central Valley and announced $200 million in federal emergency aid. The president’s visit came days after the announcement of a bill from California Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein and […]
Posted inWotr
Deadly avalanches and the lure of the mountains
Mountains are our barometer and our playground, and, on occasion, our tomb.
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
The Sacramento-San Joaquin deltas of 1772 and today
Remembering explorers past of this California water source.
Posted inGoat
Fire suppression and illegal marijuana cultivation threaten rare Pacific fishers
The Pacific fisher, a small, carnivorous forest-dwelling mammal, is a candidate for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act this year, and big wildfire could be to blame – or rather, the lack of it. Ecologist Chad Hanson’s recent research on the fisher population of the southern Sierra Nevada shows that the animals – aptly […]
Posted inArticles
KDNK Radio speaks with HCN reporter April Reese
Out in the Gila National Forest, ranchers and environmentalists are working together to protect endangered wolves… while also protecting ranchers’ livelihoods. In the current issue of the High Country News, writer April Reese investigates the surprising new strategy for endangered wildlife protection being tried in New Mexico. Her story is titled “Can a grazing buyout […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Crisis biology: Can bacteria save bats and frogs from deadly diseases?
As populations plummet, biologists race for a solution.
Posted inGoat
Living with less water: Lessons for Californians – and the rest of us – from a New Mexico village
Let me start right off by saying that I failed. Miserably. Last summer I moved to western Colorado after spending most of my 29 years in exceptionally rainy places, and amid discussions of water rights and fights and rivers drying up and unraveling, I decided it would be a good idea to limit my own […]
Posted inGoat
Climate-based wolverine listing delayed by scientific disputes
With thick fur and snowshoe-like feet, wolverines are well-adapted to live in snow caves and run straight up mountains. Their high elevation lifestyles have helped them stay out of harm’s way in recent decades, and stage a slow comeback from the rampant carnivore persecution of the early 1900s. Though elusive and tenacious, they won’t be […]
Posted inGoat
Colorado first in the nation to regulate oil and gas industry’s methane emissions
The home of the West’s most pitched battles over oil and gas development is once more in the news for major energy policy reforms. On February 23, Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission voted in significantly stricter statewide rules governing air pollution from oil and gas development, including the nation’s first state-level controls on the industry’s […]
Posted inWotr
Jobs in the oil patch – a realistic look
Many gas patch jobs aren’t high paying once you know the facts.
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Ranchers, enviros and officials seek a middle path on public-land grazing
Moving beyond stalemate to meaningful reform in Utah.
Posted inGoat
The terrifying yet awesome beauty of the gas patch
Contrails feather out across the hard-blue February sky, and the unforgiving light of mid-morning accentuates the bright reds, oranges, and synthetic blues of the fake flowers at the foot of scattered headstones, mostly engraved with Hispanic names. A Virgen de Guadalupe statue, hands clasped together, miniature rosary and cross hanging from her neck, stares down […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Can a grazing buyout program ease life for wolves and ranchers?
A fledgling effort in New Mexico’s ‘Yellowstone of the South.’
Posted inGoat
Rate of undocumented immigrants winning deportation cases is on the rise, many still detained
It’s an interesting moment for immigration reform in the United States. The very phrase has come to symbolize the failure of the Obama Administration to push much meaningful change through Congress, since the Senate bill to create a 13-year path to citizenship for undocumented migrants floundered amongst GOP opposition last year. Perhaps it was the […]
Posted inWotr
A wild river usually claims right of way
And this one is close to sweeping away a historic chalet.
Posted inArticles
Two North Dakota kids explain the Bakken boom
A film about their experience near the town of White Earth.