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 […]
Watch the who’s who of Montana’s dinosaur wars
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 […]
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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.
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Colorado agencies move water to help a rare bird adapt to climate change
There’s a hiking and biking trail near Gunnison, Colo. called “Sea of Sage.” The name conjures an accurate picture of how the area’s ecosystem looks to most people. But healthy sagebrush habitat is really more diverse than that – even the Gunnison sage grouse, a rare relative of the greater sage grouse, can’t survive on […]
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New tech to trace fracking fluid could mean more accountability
As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency comes under fire for abandoning studies that linked contaminated water to hydraulic fracturing, and oil and gas companies consider how to fix their public image around the issue, states are trying to figure out how much transparency to demand from the industry. Meanwhile, researchers are racing to find the […]
Posted inWotr
It is not okay for cats to kill all the neighborhood birds.
I’m living next to a killer named Frankie. He’s black-and-white and sweet as cats go; he’s also a menace that nobody talks much about, though feral and free-roaming housecats like Frankie have become a tragic problem all over the world. Every year in America, cats, many of them well-fed pets, kill about 12.3 billion mammals […]
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Deregulation talk shakes up Arizona energy scene
The Arizona energy fight that everyone’s been yapping about lately is the effort by the state’s largest investor-owned utility, Arizona Public Service, to tweak state regulations regarding how the utility compensates homeowners for energy they produce from rooftop solar panels. That show – over the decidedly un-sexy-sounding issue of net metering – has a wacky […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Severe drought forces a moment of truth for the Klamath
Irrigation shutoffs in the river’s upper basin may finally help move a historic water deal on the Oregon-California border.
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First settlement reached in Utah’s contentious road claims
If you’ve spent much time wandering around the rural West, especially in southern Utah, you may have come across an extensive network of highways. You might not have recognized them as such, though — these “highways,” in many cases, are nothing more than cow paths, faint two-tracks, and sandy washes. But an antique Western law […]
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Chilean kayaker kids take notes on Western dams to save their hometown river
Cochrane, Chile, has never been an international hotbed for kayakers. A road first reached the remote Patagonian community 20 years ago, and Internet arrived in the last five. The town, with about 2,000 residents, is surrounded by wide-open ranchland and wilderness, and is a 10-hour, bumpy dirt-road drive from the nearest city. So when local […]
Posted inWotr
National parks see suicide upticks each summer
Many of us are attracted to nature, expansive views and wild settings, so it’s not surprising that this year millions will come West to visit our spectacular national parks. Almost all will go back home to talk of the wonders of the mountains and the brilliant stars at night. But a tragic few will never […]
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Sexy wildflower photos remind us to take in life’s details
Tim Crawford – an all-around maverick and High Country News subscriber in Bozeman, Mont. – has been doing photography for conservation groups, magazines, books and other purposes for more than 50 years. Now he’s debuting a series of close-ups of “Wild & Feral Flowers,” including this Mexican hat (also called the prairie coneflower) and musk […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Writing down the bones
This issue features a story that was more than two years in the writing — and at least 60 million in the making. In 2011, Montana Hodges was studying fossil management on public lands as part of her master’s thesis in journalism at the University of Montana. “Originally,” she says, “I was going to do […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Tools ‘R’ Us
Dirt Work: An Education in the WoodsChristine Byl256 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Beacon Press, 2013. Tired of school, broke and eager for a change, Christine Byl took to the woods with a National Park Service trail crew. Through 16 summers of manual labor in Alaska and Montana — maintaining, repairing, designing and building bridges, ditches and trails […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
The Latest: Fish & Wildlife to shoot thousands of barred owls
BackstoryAfter the northern spotted owl hit the endangered species list in 1990, recovery plans focused on curtailing logging in its old-growth habitat. But when the population failed to bounce back, biologists began to consider removing barred owls, a similar Eastern species that’s been invading the spotted owl’s Pacific Northwestern territory. A 2008 recovery plan, later […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
The environmental lawsuit sue-and-settle spin cycle
Are settlements between environmentalists and the federal agencies they sue sweetheart deals?
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Seek nature and ye shall find
The northwest branch of the Chicago River was my watercourse as a boy (“Pilgrim at Shit Creek,” HCN, 7/22/13). It was also polluted, but it was all we had. We rafted it, wading mostly. Since then I’ve gone back in a canoe and found all manner of wildlife — from foxes, deer and coyotes to […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
River tubing mishaps and more
MONTANA What could be more delightful than floating down a lazy river on a summer afternoon in an inner tube? Andy Hill and his wife, Amy, were both avid boaters, but had never tried tubing the Clark Fork River until late this July. All was calm and copacetic as they drifted through East Missoula, when […]