Dressed in long pants, long-sleeve shirts and closed-toed shoes, a team of researchers from Colorado Parks and Wildlife gathered in a sagebrush-grass meadow near Gunnison, Colo. this summer, each with a GPS in hand. Lining up 10 meters apart along the border of a virtual grid, they walked straight lines over a Gunnison’s prairie dog […]
States test a new prairie dog plague vaccine
Posted inJanuary 11, 1980: New kind of 'public interest' group pushes growth
Farmers to try do-it-yourself sediment clean-up
In Idaho, the Environmental Protection Agency is giving farmers a shot at regulating themselves and voluntarily applying techniques to manage soil erosion. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/12.1/download-entire-issue
Posted inApril 4, 1980: Debate roils over Utah's troubled waters
Fish hawks herald man’s fate
Good news about the osprey — which was almost wiped out as a species in some parts of the U.S. before the pesticide DDT was banned in 1972 — is good news about man and the environment. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/12.7/download-entire-issue
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
Alaska’s unexpected catch in catch-share
Fishing reform drives inequality in coastal communities.
Posted inGoat
What Arctic climate has to do with this Interior West cold snap
The recent cold snap has destroyed low temperature records in the West. In parts of Montana it hasn’t been this frigid since the ‘70s, grape growers in California have been anxious about their vines freezing, homeless shelters have been filling up, and in Oregon it’s been so cold that even a geothermal bathing pool had […]
Posted inGoat
Second Yarnell investigation reaches damning – and tragic – conclusions
As we reported in October, the first investigation of Arizona’s Yarnell Hill Fire, in which 19 hotshots were killed this summer, drew extremely cautious conclusions. No “direct causes” of the accident were identified, no one was blamed. Policies and protocols, the report said, were not violated. It was almost strangely timid, leaving some to wonder: […]
Posted inWotr
Note to concessionaires: You don’t own the land
A reminder for private companies that public land use permits don’t make them owners.
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
Public land, locked up
In the Rocky Mountain West, more than 4 million acres of federal public land are rendered off-limits because there’s no way for the public to access them.
Posted inGoat
Feeding elk – and spreading chronic wasting disease
Imagine taking a horse-drawn sleigh ride among an elk herd numbering in the thousands. At the National Elk Refuge, such an adventure is available to winter visitors from mid-December through early April. (These) rides are the most popular winter activity, allowing riders a unique wildlife viewing experience and an incredible opportunity for photography That’s how […]
Posted inWotr
Climate anxiety is a real affliction
Understanding what “normal” weather is, in the context of history.
Posted inRange
Senate, House nearing a budget?
This is the week to watch Congress. If all goes well, Senate budget chairman Patty Murray will make a deal with the House budget chairman Paul Ryan that outlines federal spending for the rest of fiscal year 2014 and 2015. What kind of deal? As The Washington Posts Wonkblog puts it: “The budget deal Patty Murray and […]
Posted inGoat
Could the Tennessee Valley Authority put Colorado coal mines out of business?
The coal train was one of the first things I noticed when I moved to Paonia, Colo., the hometown of High Country News. When it chugged through town, whistle blasting, my bedroom windows rattled like teeth in the cold. If I was on the phone, I would tell the person on the other line to […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
KDNK Radio speaks with Allen Best
Last year, when Amendment 64 legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado, it also legalized hemp. And since then, for the first time in decades, farmers around the state are considering growing the industrial fiber. On this episode of Sounds of the High Country, KDNK Radio’s collaboration with High Country News, Eric Skalac talks to reporter Allen […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
Wild ideas, reconsidered
Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in AmericaJon Mooallem328 pages, hardcover; $27.95.Penguin Press, 2013. San Francisco-based author Jon Mooallem asks some hard questions in Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America. Perhaps the hardest one, for […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
Unmechanized wilderness
In his essay about racing his BMW on the track in eastern Colorado, Daniel Brigham reinforces the old myth that the wilderness is only for men, only for those with “a certain amount of grit,” and, worst, only for those with access to an expensive, powerful machine (“Mechanized wilderness,” HCN, 11/11/13). The sensations he describes […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
What’s happening in other Western forests?
AspenAfter hundreds of thousands of acres of aspen in the West perished during the 2000s, William Anderegg, a Princeton University forest and climate researcher, set out to test tree physiologist Nate McDowell’s hypothesis that drought killed trees in one of two ways: thirst or starvation. Anderegg found that aspen primarily died of thirst, but it […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
Snapshots of a forest two years after a megafire
Southwestern forests have become burdened by wildfires that burn much hotter than those that preceded nearly a century of fire suppression. These so-called “high-severity” fires have been stoked not only by plentiful fuels, but by dried-out vegetation and hot, dry weather. The 2011 Las Conchas Fire, which burned through 156,000 acres in New Mexico’s Jemez […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
The Latest: Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site looks more distant than ever
BackstoryAfter decades of indecision about where to store nuclear waste, in 2002 President George W. Bush approved building a permanent repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. In 2009, under political pressure, President Obama halted construction plans. Still, the U.S. Department of Energy continued collecting fees from nuclear power plants for […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
The Latest: Interior approves a 990-mile-long transmission line
BackstoryThe proposed Gateway West transmission line through southern Wyoming and Idaho could deliver up to 3,000 megawatts of power, including wind. But such projects require complex permitting and lengthy review processes, even as upgrading the grid becomes increasingly urgent. In 2011, the Obama administration created a “rapid response team” to help expedite clean-energy infrastructure, including […]