Sen. Michael Bennet assembles a diverse group for a float – and talkfest – on the Green River.
When it comes to our natural resources, we’re all in the same boat
Posted inGoat
Canyonlands National Park adds backcountry poop restrictions
Starting Sept. 22, the phrase “Pack it in, pack it out” will have a new meaning to visitors at Canyonlands National Park in southern Utah. When nature calls, backcountry campers will no longer be able to simply dig a hole to leave their organic deposit. The park’s remote southeastern Needles District is joining a growing […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Front Range drilldown
In the fight over oil and gas regulation, local control gains ground.
Posted inGoat
Lynn Scarlett, top Bush official, joins The Nature Conservancy
It’s no surprise that federal officials often end up employed by various think-tanks, nonprofits and trade groups once their stints on Capitol Hill are over. For example, here’s where some George W. Bush administration folks have gone: Dale Hall, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director, is now CEO of Ducks Unlimited. Dave Tenny, who headed […]
Posted inWotr
Ski mountains move to stop climate change
Winter recreation is just one potential casualty of a changing climate.
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Idaho Power is waging war on renewable energy. Is it winning?
One of the West’s great old-school monopolies and its multi-pronged attack on wind and solar.
Posted inGoat
New oil and gas leases throw another wrench in Utah’s big wilderness deal
The San Rafael Swell, the Book Cliffs, Desolation Canyon and the areas around Canyonlands National Park are some of Utah’s most iconic places; yet they lack federal protections. They’ve been land management battlegrounds for decades, pitting wilderness advocates and muscle-powered recreationalists against resource extraction and motor–powered recreationalists. But as reporter Greg Hanscom described recently in […]
Posted inGoat
Legislators sparring over Land and Water Conservation Fund — again
In the early 1960s, President Kennedy, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and a few other politicians got together and hatched an idea: use money from offshore oil and gas drilling to fund conservation projects and acquire land for all Americans. The result was the Land and Water Conservation Fund, established in 1965. “It’s helped shape the […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: The Washoe Zephyr
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Those of us who live out in the western Great Basin Desert, up in the foothills on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Range, are all too familiar with a wind that is […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
When turtles and national security collide
Your article about desert tortoises was well researched and written (“Mojave Squeeze,” HCN, 8/5/13). I’m concerned about the U.S. Army’s unsuccessful efforts with tortoise translocation at Fort Irwin as part of its land expansion authorized by Congress in 2001. Similar land-acquisition efforts are underway by the U.S. Marine Corps in Twentynine Palms, Calif., where the military […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
What’s the nerdiest roadtrip you can think of?
ARIZONAComing back to Las Vegas from the Grand Canyon Skywalk on Arizona’s Hualapai Reservation, 32 Chinese tourists and their guide got more adventure than they planned for. Their driver, Joseph Razon, suddenly — and unintentionally — morphed into the captain of a floating barge when his bus was engulfed in a flash flood estimated at […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
The Latest: Mt. Taylor uranium mines still haunt Navajo communities
BackstoryThe controversy surrounding Mount Taylor — a volcano in northwest New Mexico sacred to several tribes — began in 2008, when the tribes sought to protect it from further uranium mining (“Dueling Claims,” HCN, 12/7/09). After contamination from the mines sickened workers, they fought to have 400,000 acres of federal, state and private lands designated […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
The Latest: Megaloads to Alberta incite protests
BackstorySouth Korean-made mining equipment destined for Alberta’s tar sands is too massive to squeeze under interstate overpasses. So energy companies propose to float it up the Columbia and Snake Rivers to Lewiston, Idaho, and then haul it up narrow Highway 12, which winds along federally protected rivers and over the Continental Divide into Montana. That […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
The Green Tea Party?
“Clean energy does not need to be a partisan issue. In fact, it’s really bad if it is,” said Amanda Ormand, a renewable energy consultant and expert on solar energy issues. “Making energy political is not in our best interest.” Ormand told me this in a bustling coffee shop in Tempe, Ariz., this past spring. […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
The endangered species industrial complex
I started my tortoise career in 1990 at the Nevada Test Site for the Yucca Mountain Project and remember a concerted effort to look for a proper translocation site for tortoise (“Mojave Squeeze,” HCN, 7/5/13). Dr. Kristin Berry accompanied my husband and me on our survey transect in 2001 for the Fort Irwin expansion area. […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
The elephant in the water world: agriculture
As a polar oceanographer long involved in climate research and a resident of the Yakima River Basin, I have followed closely the development of the Integrated Plan described in Sarah Jane Keller’s article (“Climate-forced water planning,” HCN, 8/5/13). There are a few points in her description that need clarification. First, a major portion of the $5 […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Summer Visitors
Here in HCN‘s hometown of Paonia, Colo., the peaches and sweet corn are ripening, and we’ve been welcoming lots of visitors from around the West. Longtime subscribers Phyllis Hasheider and Jim McKee of Longmont, Colo., stopped by on their way home after a drive on the San Juan Skyway, a scenic route that passes through […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Moving on up in the oil patch
Are the West’s energy fields the last bastion of the American Dream?
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
A war for a dollar
An energy war is sizzling in Arizona, with utilities pitted against the solar industry, environmentalists and even some free-market Republicans. The fight basically boils down to dollars: How much can an Arizonan with a solar system save on his electricity bill, and what will those savings cost other ratepayers? The savings are currently sizable, thanks […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Greed overtakes common sense on the Klamath
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 […]