Clifton Merritt, the western regional director of the Wilderness Society, is an atypical environmental leader — not flashy or full of fire and brimstone, but good at motivating people positively. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/7.16/download-entire-issue
Clif Merritt: he leads from behind
Posted inWotr
The sounds of silence, Eastern style
I once read about a lock-tender who spent his life accompanied by the sound of rushing water going over the lock’s dam. Then, the dam was taken down, ending a lifetime of constant background noise, which, although perhaps a pleasant-enough sound, was still, well, constant. His greatest surprise was finally being able to hear the birds. I […]
Posted inGoat
Navajo Nation’s purchase of a New Mexico coalmine is a mixed bag
The Navajo Nation got coal for Christmas this year – literally. On December 30, a Navajo tribal corporation finally completed its drawn-out purchase of the Navajo Mine, the sole supplier of coal to New Mexico’s Four Corners Power Plant. Depending on whom you ask, this is either a historic milestone for tribal energy independence, […]
Posted inMay 21, 1976: Navajo Nation faces development
Don Redfearn, elk refuge manager
Don Redfearn manages the wintering ground for the largest elk herd in North America — the National Elk Refuge outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/8.11/download-entire-issue
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
Tribes struggle to house their ‘invisibly homeless’ veterans
Red tape makes it difficult for veterans in Indian Country to access a key federal assistance program.
Posted inGoat
As the economy recovers, many Westerners are left behind
Las Vegas is filled with symbols of how drastically the economic landscape of the West has changed over the past decade. Drive out into the city’s fringes, and you’ll see vast swaths of land for which developers — visions of master-planned tract home communities dancing in their heads — paid the Bureau of Land Management […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Out on Misfits Flat
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. The quintessential Nevada film is John Huston’s 1961 picture The Misfits, starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. The movie had its origins in playwright Arthur Miller’s trip to Nevada in 1956. While […]
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
The fignificent fig man
Lloyd Kreitzer’s journey as New Mexico’s premier fig grower.
Posted inDecember 16, 1977: Yellowcake spilled; clean up slow, disorganized
Family gaining independence with sun, wind, wood
The Ricks family in Rexburg, Idaho experiments with new technology and makes much of it themselves, including an all-electric car. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/9.24/download-entire-issue
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
Coalbed methane bust leaves thousands of orphaned gas wells in Wyoming
And the state is starting to come to terms with an orphaned gas well problem.
Posted inGoat
The price of a loud world: How road noise harms birds
Last fall, a team of researchers from Idaho’s Boise State University hiked into the mountains outside of town with backpacks full of batteries and speakers. The unusual cargo was not for a backcountry dance party, but rather for a unique experiment to determine the impact of road noise on migratory birds. The scientists hung speakers […]
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
Eucalyptus: Beauty or Beast?
Restoration pits these exotics against California natives. But for some, they’re a natural.
Posted inWotr
Words to live by as the year winds down
Adages, quotes and sayings to inspire in 2014.
Posted inGoat
Top 10 reasons not to move to Bozeman
In my role as a journalistic curmudgeon, today I’d like to tell you some of the drawbacks of living in a trendy Western town that often makes the Top 10 lists drawn up by the likes of Outside magazine, Entrepreneur magazine, and Livability.com. I’m talking about Bozeman, Montana – and how the conventional wisdom is […]
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
Art and the atomic age
Radioactive disposal sites and other residuals of the bomb era.
Posted inWotr
Will the nation accept horse slaughter?
Opinion on the recent opening of two slaughterhouses: why horsemeat isn’t such a radical idea.
Posted inGoat
A data junkie’s look back at the West in 2013
’Tis the season of cheer and light and of gorging ourselves and then getting in life-threatening sledding accidents. And, of course, it’s also the season of looking back on the year that has been and futilely trying to learn from all the stupid mistakes we made. Yes, it’s Year-in-Review time. My colleague, Sarah Gilman, wrapped […]
Posted inArticles
Bison roundup at Rocky Mountain Arsenal refuge
At least 20 animals were removed from the herd to let habitat recover.
Posted inGoat
The Wilderness Act at 50: In 2014, what makes a place wild?
In December 1960, the iconic Western author Wallace Stegner wrote a letter to a University of California, Berkeley researcher in support of what would become the Wilderness Act. Wilderness is important, he wrote, because it “was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is […]
Posted inGoat
California Energy Commission says no to desert solar plant that could kill birds
It came as a shock last spring, at least to me, when BrightSource Energy decided to suspend its Hidden Hills Solar project near Pahrump, Nev. For starters, I had a story going to press whose conclusions were somewhat tied to the looming specter of Hidden Hills, a large concentrating solar “power tower” project which would […]