Your article “Severe Drought forces a moment of truth on the Klamath,” (HCN, 08/19/13) fails to mention that many Basin irrigators brought this situation upon themselves through egregious water use. Around 2000, I was the northwest director for the American Land Conservancy. We had painstakingly put together a package of willing seller buyouts on the […]
Greed overtakes common sense on the Klamath
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Exceptional accounts of the ordinary
Middle Men Jim Gavin240 pages, hardcover: $23. Simon & Schuster, 2013. The stories in Jim Gavin’s debut collection, Middle Men, are darkly comedic accounts of defeat. A second-rate teenage basketball player, a Meals-on-Wheels driver, and a toilet salesman, among others, aspire to reach beyond mediocrity in love and work and play. But failure, that great […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Conservation fund turns 50
Friends and foes agree: The 50-year-old Land and Water Conservation Fund needs a facelift. Created to bankroll conservation projects with royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling, the Fund has long been plagued by political wrangling. Congress is authorized to put in $900 million a year, but often appropriates far less. In 2015, the Fund’s […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
A world of hunger and desire
A Guide to Being BornRamona Ausubel195 pages, hardcover, $26.95.Riverhead, 2013. When an innovative style is a writer’s main goal, emotional subtleties tend to fall by the wayside. Ramona Ausubel, raised in New Mexico and now based in California, crafts literary fiction that manages to keep out the chill. The stories in A Guide to Being […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
A President in Yellowstone
A President in Yellowstone: The F. Jay Haynes Photographic Album of Chester Arthur’s 1883 Expedition, Frank H. Goodyear III, 192 pages, hardcover: $36.95. University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. No sitting president had traveled so far west before President Chester A. Arthur joined an expedition to Yellowstone National Park in 1883. Frank Jay Haynes, a young […]
Posted inGoat
Volunteers track migrations of declining monarch populations
The days are getting shorter as autumn approaches, and volunteers around the country are getting their bug nets in order, preparing for the brief season when monarch butterflies will be migrating through their communities. Arguably the most recognized butterfly species in the world, monarchs captivate our imaginations with their big, colorful wings and long migrations […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Brewers sparrows on the move
This time-lapse video shows how Brewer’s sparrows spread north from their winter habitat in the Southwest and Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert Grasslands to their summer range in the American West. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology produced the maps with computer models that used recorded sightings and habitat data to predict where the birds were likeliest to […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Diné activist protests wastewater-to-snow scheme
Fighting for the environment is just part of this Navajo’s cultural identity.
Posted inWotr
Don’t be afraid to use the term ‘sacred’
Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front deserves protection from drilling.
Posted inGoat
Why aren’t experimental floods helping native fish below Glen Canyon Dam?
Before Glen Canyon Dam tamed it in 1963, the Colorado River flowed red with mud, and the seasons ruled its temperature and flow. Today, the river is a vastly different ecosystem. Now, it’s the color of a tropical ocean because the dam holds back sediment, withering the beaches that river travelers love for camping. And […]
Posted inWotr
How can a court say a bear is ‘not natural’?
Questioning a recent court decision after a black bear killed a young boy in Utah.
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
The right-wing heiress who changed course in the desert
Looking back on Bazy Tankersley: publisher, rancher and conservationist.
Posted inGoat
Energy update: renewables, coal and gas by the numbers
About a year ago, many of us in energy news land were busy scribbling out coal’s eulogy. Natural gas and renewable energy were slowly taking over the electricity fuel mix, putting coal — our favorite cheap electricity generator for generations — against the rope. It was only a matter of time before natural gas, its […]
Posted inWotr
Colorado’s ‘Berlin Wall for wildlife’ should get an animal crossing
Supporters hope to try out a revolutionary design on I-70.
Posted inGoat
As Rim Fire scorches Yosemite, Forest Service cuts restoration funding
It started small enough, on Aug. 17 – a 200-acre blaze burning towards a place called Jawbone Ridge from a north-facing slope in the rugged Clavey River canyon, west of California’s Yosemite National Park. The area was isolated, and no structures were immediately threatened. By the 19th, local news sites were reporting 2,500 acres burned […]
Posted inGoat
Watch the who’s who of Montana’s dinosaur wars
The most recent issue of High Country News features a story about one-of-a-kind fossils that were unearthed in Montana and have stirred controversy in the scientific community. Reporter Montana Hodges tells the spellbinding narrative of the fossil hunters, commercial dealers, museum curators and professors of paleontology involved in the scuffle over the pair of skeletons […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Dinosaur Wars
Startling, one-of-a-kind fossils are unearthed in Montana – and shunned by scientists.
Posted inGoat
Woman breaks an all-time fastest Pacific Crest Trail record
On August 9, The Seattle Timespublished a story titled “‘I couldn’t give up:’ Grueling hike for man on a mission,” about vegan hiker Josh Garrett, a 30-year-old fitness coach from Santa Monica, Calif., who broke the speed record for hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Josh hiked with sponsorship (and PR help) from Whole Foods CEO […]
Posted inGoat
Interdisciplinary science programs are important but often get less support
As spring rolled into campus each year, students at my northern Indiana college would soak up the warmth on blankets outside, surrounded by textbooks and notes. The books on my blanket covered subjects from public policy and economics to chemistry and land management; I never could choose between biology and anthropology. Luckily for me, a […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
A California Hotshot photographs his life fighting wildfires
Get a rare peek into what it’s like at the fireline.