The numbers are in from Mexico, and they ain’t pretty. Every fall, monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles from the Great Plains to their winter grounds in central Mexico, where they’re scrupulously counted by the World Wildlife Fund. In 1996, the overwintering monarchs blanketed 45 acres of forest. This year, they cover only about 1.6 […]
Policies and pollinators: How the feds deepen the precipitous decline of monarchs
Posted inWotr
Recapture Canyon and an illegal ATV trail
A Utah county attempts to gain right of way on an illegal ATV trail built on public land.
Posted inGoat
Troubleweeds: Russian thistle buries roads and homes in southeastern Colorado
J.D. Wright pauses to check in with his wife of 51 years. “Do you remember, Mama, when that wind was?” After a few minutes perusing her cellphone photos, she reports back: Tumbleweeds first buried the house on November 17. The gusts screamed up and there they were, piled so deep over the doors and windows […]
Posted inWotr
I admit it: I’m an environmental hypocrite
Yup, I hang my clothes to dry – right after I burn fossil fuels to get them clean.
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
Wilderness therapy redefines itself
But the irresponsible caregivers and tragedies of the past prove hard to shake.
Posted inGoat
With Gila River deadline looming, New Mexico debates its water options
In the Colorado River drainage basin, where states and cities routinely wrestle over limited water, and where a 14-year drought may portend long-term scarcity, new water sources are rare and precious. Thanks to a decade-old settlement, New Mexico has access to just such a resource. But, after years of debate, and with just months before […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
The Hanford Whistleblowers
For decades, insiders have reported problems in the cleanup of our worst nuclear mess — but is anyone listening?
Posted inOctober 26, 1973: Black clouds gather
Superb wilderness considered
The Forest Service will hold hearings on management proposals for the primitive areas that border Idaho’s Salmon River, a chunk of land that could become one of the largest wilderness areas in the lower 48 states. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/5.21/download-entire-issue
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
An ode to snow
Laura Pritchett on the joy of snow.
Posted inGoat
A wildfire forum takes radical approach to protecting wildland-urban interface
Wildfire in the West is getting more severe all the time – burning longer, hotter and more frequently, destroying more homes, stretching federal funds to the limit, endangering more firefighters. Rising temperatures are driving the trend, and there’s no indication things will change course. Faced with these dire circumstances, 20 of the West’s most influential […]
Posted inGoat
Service problems and pilot shortages plague rural air service
Long-time residents of Cheyenne, Wyo., might remember the days when Frontier Airlines flew cushy commercial jets out of the city’s small regional airport. That was back in the 1970s and earlier, when the Federal Aviation Administration required airlines to prove they were servicing rural communities in order to keep their certifications. When the FAA deregulated […]
Posted inGoat
Slew of public lands and sportsmen’s bills debated on Capitol Hill this week
It’s been an exciting year for public lands geeks. After nearly five years in which Congress failed to designate a single acre of wilderness (the first Congress since 1966 to earn that dubious distinction), the House this week is taking action on a slew of wilderness, public lands and recreation bills. But while it’s tempting […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Two Angelenos debate the city’s sustainability efforts
The conversation between Jon Christensen and Emily Green begins at minute 41:29.
Posted inWotr
Mountain bikes and wilderness don’t mix
To loosen wildland restrictions now starts us down a slippery slope.
Posted inGoat
Enviros and industry agree: Keystone XL means more oil. Why does the State Department disagree?
It’s hard to know where to begin unpacking the U.S. State Department’s Final Environmental Impact Statement on the controversial Keystone XL, the transcontinental pipeline that has been proposed to transport heavy crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. On one hand, the document admits that from “wells to […]
Posted inGoat
Closed roads remind Silverton and the West of our dependence on transportation
Since Jan. 12, rocks have been raining down on Highway 550 on the north side of Red Mountain Pass in southwestern Colorado. Cold nights and warm days created a freeze/thaw cycle that pried loose a huge chunk of the rocky mountainside, which then broke into thousands of boulders. In order to stabilize the rocks to […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: The Great Basin Sea Monster
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Last Saturday around noon I was still feeling desperate for more alone time when my daughters Hannah (age 10) and Caroline (age 7) asked if I was finally ready to play with them. I […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
The great Flathead fish fiasco
State and tribes disagree over how to tackle an exotic species’ takeover of a Montana lake.
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
What do a biker bar and nuclear waste have in common?
This editor’s note accompanies the HCN magazine cover story headlined: “The Hanford whistleblowers.” — I made one of my first forays into investigative journalism back in 1982, when I was working for the Arizona Daily Star. A police raid on a Tucson biker bar had degenerated into disaster: When the cops burst in to arrest […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
This is a man’s world
Ballistics: A NovelD.W. Wilson400 pages, hardcover: $26.Bloomsbury, 2013. Nestled in British Columbia’s remote Kootenay Valley, the town of Invermere is a place where “sons take after their dads and teenagers in lift-kit trucks catch air off train tracks … burn shipping flats at the gravel pits and slurp homebrew that swims with wood ether.” Here, […]