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 […]
When turtles and national security collide
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 […]
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 […]