Burning coal belches about twice as much carbon dioxide as burning natural gas, but the question of whether natural gas is a bridge to renewable energy or just a bridge to nowhere hinges on how much greenhouse gas escapes before it is used. Methane, the main component of natural gas, is 21 times more potent […]
Methane emissions are still a thorn in the side of natural gas production
Posted inArticles
Identifying ‘killer trees’ in Sequoia National Park
In the middle of August, I visit a backcountry campground in California’s Sequoia National Park to survey trees. Two teenage boys nap while their fathers roam the nearby woods, looking for firewood. I introduce myself as a forestry technician and mention that a dying white fir is leaning over one of their tents. Dropping my […]
Posted inArticles
The Latest: battles in the West’s bitter wild horse wars
BackstoryThe 37,000 wild horses roaming the West’s public lands strain ecosystems, ranches and taxpayers alike. Despite fertility drugs designed to lessen their numbers, today, more mustangs live in captivity than in the wild, costing the Bureau of Land Management about $76 million annually. Slaughter and hunting may be the clearest solutions, but public outrage makes […]
Posted inGoat
Can the oil and gas industry fix its public image in Colorado?
Last week, I drove over the mountains from High Country News HQ in Paonia, Colo., to Denver to attend the Rocky Mountain Energy Summit, an annual confab for the oil and gas industry – complete with a balloon drop wherein suited attendees throw elbows as they jockey for prizes — hosted by its powerful state […]
Posted inWotr
An Idaho land trade that should go nowhere
When I started monitoring federal land exchanges in 1996, some of the biggest projects involved so-called “checkerboard” lands. Created by the railroad land grants during the 19th century, they made for a confusing array of public land mixed with private land. Often, the exchanges that the Forest Service proposed to consolidate checkerboard ownership seemed logical […]
Posted inGoat
Wildlife agencies face the limits of sportsmen-funded conservation
June’s edition of Wyoming Wildlife magazine describes how mule deer have been declining in parts of the West for decades. For the Wyoming Range herd, poor habitat conditions, drought, harsh winters, and energy development may all be to blame. But pinpointing exactly what’s harming one of Wyoming’s largest herds requires capturing them by shooting a […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Can we save Mojave desert tortoises by moving them out of harm’s way?
Feds aim to save threatened tortoises by relocating them away from development
Posted inGoat
Bear hair study in Banff proves animal highway crossings work
For three years, researchers from Montana State University spent their summers collecting bear hair. The samples, collected on both sides of the 50 mile stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway that cuts through Banff National Park, prove what the researchers had suspected: wildlife underpasses and bridges were helping enough bears move back and forth across the […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
The Bakken oilfields: ‘No place for a woman’
One woman’s effort to survive the Great Recession in booming North Dakota.
Posted inGoat
Paonia’s Great Chicken Dump raises the question: what to do with all those old birds?
The news infiltrated the High Country News mothership like a cute animal video (which editors Sarah Gilman and Betsy Marston are particularly fond of) and spread through the North Fork Valley faster than a stomach flu. Soon, from the barstools of Revolution Brewing to the ratty couches of the HCN intern house, the Great Chicken […]
Posted inWotr
Pioneer league baseball is a slice of heaven
One of the best things about summer is watching these teams strive for major league.
Posted inGoat
Climate change is already pummeling energy infrastructure
A massive cold front settled over the American Southwest in the early days of February 2011. The mercury in Albuquerque hit seven below zero; snow birds in Tucson shivered in sub 20-degree temps; and Nogales, on the border with Mexico, reached a frigid 11 degrees. While such temperatures may seem balmy to northerners, they wreaked […]
Posted inGoat
‘Camping 101 on steroids’ gets minority kids into the outdoors
On a recent Sunday morning, a dozen young boys splashed gleefully in an alpine stream in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Wearing rubber boots and wielding fine-meshed nets, they reached into the icy water, rolled rocks aside, and scooped up the flotsam released into the current. Then they dumped the contents into plastic trays held […]
Posted inGoat
The untouchable sheriff of Maricopa County celebrates a questionable legacy
It costs less than a dollar a day to feed an inmate of Maricopa County’s Tent City. Meals are served without flourishes like salt and pepper, which saves taxpayers a few bucks and reminds inmates that jail is not supposed to be fun, much less pleasing to the palate. So the cake and ice cream […]
Posted inWotr
Wolves still need our protection
As a society, how far are we willing to go and what are we willing to sacrifice to preserve the wild?
Posted inGoat
Yellowstone tower reignites debate over cell phones in the backcountry
I’m probably too young to be a good curmudgeon, but I nonetheless subscribe to Ed Abbey’s view of wilderness: it doesn’t need to be safe and accessible for everybody. Put ramps and roads and signs and cell phones into our cities, but please, leave them out of the backcountry. Sure they make it safer, but […]
Posted inGoat
Undocumented immigrants are not just in it for the jobs, and here’s why
When the Gang of Eight authoring the Senate immigration reform bill, which would be the first major overhaul since the 1980s, recently announced a new provision to create a “human wall” at the U.S.-Mexico border, tensions rose to a new high in the nation’s capital. The move would double the number of border patrol agents […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
What’s wrong with this picture?
Firefighting consumes nearly half of the U.S. Forest Service’s budget (“Stand down from Western wildfires,” HCN, 7/22/13). Arguably, the bulk of this spending is necessitated by the presence of private structures in the wildland-urban interface. That these structures — which include many second homes — are often located in harm’s way is a deliberate lifestyle […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
The Latest: Mining claims halted in some areas
BackstoryBy mid-2011, more than 650 mining claims had been staked on the sites of proposed solar and wind projects on public land in the West — deliberate attempts, some say, to delay or halt renewable energy development (“BLM shields renewable projects from mining speculation,” HCN, 5/30/11). Mining claims trump surface rights, and if salable minerals […]