If the House has its way with the nearly expired farm bill, $40 billion would be cut from the federal food stamps program over the next ten years. These cuts could mean that the 9 million Westerners who rely on the program will find it harder than ever to put meals on the table. Every […]
Proposed farm bill cuts food aid programs
Posted inGoat
Touring Hopi via a 10K running race at dawn
I run. And I weep. My tears may come from the fact that it’s 6 a.m., or perhaps from the burning in legs and lungs as I try to hold the pace of the leaders. But I’m pretty sure my sobs come from a deep joy inspired by the way the rising sun lights up […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Marginalia: an essay
On a trek across the Arctic, a writer’s map becomes a record of the journey.
Posted inGoat
Check those attics: An archivist’s plea for your old newspapers
Halloween night in the windy railroad town of Livingston, Mont.: a Burlington Northern train, consisting of just three locomotives, hisses from the yard and begins the long, slow climb toward Bozeman. Nobody is onboard but a hobo. The engines crest the pass, pick up speed on the downgrade, hit 80 mph and jump the tracks. […]
Posted inMay 26, 1986: The fate of the grizzly
At Capitol Reef, the Mormons made the desert fruitful
The largest orchard in any national park is surrounded by some of the driest desert in southern Utah. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/18.10/download-entire-issue
Posted inGoat
Dispatch from a Colorado coal confab, where new emissions regs were top of mind
As U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Chief Gina McCarthy finishes a three-state tour to plug her new power plant emissions standards, coal industry representatives met in Delta County in western Colorado for an annual trade conference. Thursday morning started with the usual reports on which Komatsu haul trucks, draglines and Hitachi excavators are en vogue. An […]
Posted inArticles
Dear readers, take our four-minute survey!
HCN.org is getting a facelift. Don’t miss the action.
Posted inGoat
Stickers, salmon and stocks: Pebble Mine by the numbers
Spend even a short while in Alaska, and you’ll begin to see them. They adorn water bottles and truck caps, laptops and storefronts, boats and banjos. Eventually, you notice them cropping up outside the state too, and soon, even in the shimmering heat of the Utah desert, you can’t escape the white circular stickers slashed […]
Posted inWotr
My 15 years with that flaming guy
The truth is Burning Man is middle-aged, but still more fun than you can dream of.
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
A California essayist on American optimism and how landscape shapes our imaginations
An interview with Richard Rodriguez.
Posted inRange
Green slime – coming soon to a lake near you?
The enemy is out there. It is green. It is slimy. Toxic algae outbreaks are a growing problem on our nation’s lakes, and maybe one you love. I’m lucky to live in a county with more than 150 lakes, including the biggest, cleanest freshwater lake in the western United States. Yet even here, we see […]
Posted inGoat
Idaho Wild and Scenic Rivers and the Nez Perce Tribe trump tar sands megaloads—for now
It’s a tough time for megaloads in Idaho. A federal judge recently ruled that the Forest Service has the authority to stop the humungous hauls of Canadian tar sands-bound mining equipment from traveling through the Lochsa and Clearwater River corridor – and that they should use it. In response, the Forest Service just closed the […]
Posted inRange
Policy blueprint for a renewable energy future
This post was originally published on the Natural Resources Defense Council Staff Blog, Switchboard. There is a deep irony at work in the intersection of energy and the environment. The biggest threat to our planet is climate change, caused in large part by our profligate use of energy. And one of the biggest solutions is […]
Posted inGoat
Oregon study confirms that cutting conifers can help sage grouse
I must have looked like an idiot to the folks watching me from the big diesel pickup. It was a scorching day in July of 2012, and I had been ushered out in front of the rig to toddle down a dusty, high-desert two track behind a line of greater sage grouse hens like a […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Reconciling family narrative with textbook history in Montana’s Bighorn Valley
An essay by Joe Wilkins.
Posted inGoat
Killer bees could help solve honeybee colony collapse
First, to get the blood pumping, a few shots of hysteria: A recent Los Angeles Times headline sums it up: “Killer bee season underway with a vengeance.” Whoa, and not just because of the cliché. So far this year, the list of killer-bee victims in the U.S. begins with a confirmed fatality, 62-year-old Larry Goodwin, […]
Posted inWotr
Nebraska’s 22 mountain lions in the crosshairs
The larger question looms: Who “owns” wildlife in the state?
Posted inGoat
Debunking the drill-your-way-to-low-gas-prices myth
Something funny happened over the last few weeks. First, the price of oil started climbing. Then, the announcement came that U.S. fields were producing more oil than they had since 1989. Wait? Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what’s supposed to happen under the energy independence myth? The myth goes something like this: The more […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Colorado Poet Laureate David Mason’s four-year road trip
Bringing poetry to an entire state, one county at a time.
Posted inGoat
Floods have hit more than just Colorado, but will they fix the Southwest drought?
Remember early July in the Southwest? New Mexico and Arizona were in the grip of record drought exacerbated by record high temperatures. Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly declared a state of emergency for drought on July 2. Feral horses across the Rez were dying of thirst. Crops withered. Lake Powell, which got only a meagre […]