The first snow was fluttering down when High Country News‘ staff and board members arrived in Hailey, Idaho, for a late September meeting. But the white flakes couldn’t quite cover the black tracks left by a summer fire that rampaged down ravines to the edge of town. Signs – many in front of insurance offices […]
Fall ‘friendraiser’ and board meeting
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
Big water, big dreams
The Emerald Mile: the Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand CanyonKevin Fedarko432 pages, hardcover: $30.Scribner, 2013. When did we get so petty? At a time when we’re faced with huge issues – a changing climate, a healthcare crisis, a democracy threatened by money in politics, the legacy […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
A review of At Home in the West: The Lure of Public Land
At Home in the West: The Lure of Public LandWilliam S. Sutton, with Toby Jurovics and Susan B. Moldenhauer, 200 pages, hardcover: $50. George F. Thompson Publishing, 2013. In the essay that kicks off his beautiful black-and-white photography book, At Home in the West: The Lure of Public Land, William S. Sutton says he began […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
A delta reborn in drought
K-K-KKSSSSCH. It was the noise we all dreaded aboard the Rusty Pickle, one of three rafts floating down the muddy San Juan River in southeast Utah. The gravelly grind – felt in the teeth as much as heard by the ears – became a regular feature as our boats beached on sandbar after sandbar, forcing […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
The Latest: Woodland caribou are in danger of disappearing from the U.S.
Environmental groups file suit over caribou habitat.
Posted inGoat
“Idiot-proof” citizen science results in 16 new diatom species
Loren Bahls is not your typical retiree. After stepping down as head of water quality management for the state of Montana in 1996 – then retiring again from private consulting in 2009 – Bahls finally found time to pursue his real passion: Tiny, glass-walled microbes called diatoms that practically cover the surface of the Earth. […]
Posted inGoat
Immigration reform bills still give feds rein to trample border ecology
The environmental onslaught caused by the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border fence may have started with a mouse. When the federal government first built a section of border fence south of San Diego in 1990, it left nearby grasses – habitat to an imperiled mouse – to grow long to comply with the Endangered Species […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
New Mexico’s groundwater protections may take a hit
The state has long been a leader in this area – is that about to change?
Posted inWotr
Not all endangered species live in the forest
Struggling individuals in the rural West deserve as much support as, say, grizzlies.
Posted inGoat
California’s energy storage requirement may revolutionize the grid
The spring of 2011 was wetter than usual in the Pacific Northwest. A huge snow year was followed by rain, and during the peak runoff water was ripping through the hydroelectric turbines on Bonneville Power Administration’s dams. Spring is also the windy season, and hundreds of new turbines in the region were also pumping juice […]
Posted inWotr
Fresh look at the wolf-grizzly relationship
An essay on the Yellowstone study that shows these predators’ fascinating survival dance.
Posted inGoat
Forest Service rules catch up with the growth of year-round activities at ski resorts
After spending a day of mountain biking on the Colorado Trail this summer, I stopped near my car to watch the tourist season circus at Copper Mountain’s base area. The crowd milled around a bungee-and-trampoline contraption, a mini golf course and a concert stage that blared mediocre funk music. Signs along the trail pointed “mountain […]
Posted inGoat
After South Dakota’s deadly whiteout, a look at blizzards past
It began as unseasonably warm weather – 80-degree temperatures edging into the last couple of weeks before western South Dakota ranchers were to round up their summer-fat cattle, bring some to market and move the rest to closer-to-home pastures with gullies and trees for shelter against the brutal winter months ahead. The cows perhaps didn’t […]
Posted inWotr
The bullet shortage: a self-fulfilling prophecy
It started with a fear of government intervention and ends with hoarding.
Posted inGoat
Nitrogen pollution at critical levels in dozens of national parks
We’ve had national parks on the brain a lot lately as we slogged through 16 days of federal shutdown. It’s been an economic burden to gateway communities and a frustration to tourists. But a depressingly dysfunctional government isn’t the only thing plaguing our parks. A new study shows that airborne nitrogen pollution is fundamentally changing the […]
Posted inGoat
The shutdown is over but its impacts linger
The shutdown is over. Federal employees are going back to work, with back pay. Journalists and data geeks can access information on census.gov and usgs.gov. Tourists are once again able to see national parks. And the National Zoo’s Panda Cam – praise be! – has returned to the air. Maybe we can just chalk all […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
A new Apache homeland in New Mexico?
An Okie Apache fights his kin to build a casino and bring his people home.
Posted inGoat
Oil spill, eagles and fracking: the news you missed during the shutdown
The staff of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was welcomed to work yesterday by a “coffee cake bite”-bearing Joe Biden, and a grinning administrator so thrilled to have her employees back on the job she jumped up and down as they entered the building. There wasn’t, I expect, a lot of jumping and grinning happening […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
Dispatch from Twiggley Island: an essay
Neighbors band together to survive after the Colorado floods.
Posted inGoat
Pipelines aren’t the only way to ship oil – rail’s on the rise
What do melting sea ice, fiery train wrecks and the Bakken oil boom have in common? No, they’re not part of the latest Hollywood blockbuster – although if I came across a trailer showing George Clooney as a roughneck leaping from a flaming train onto an ice floe with an angry polar bear, you better […]