It’s been a hairy summer in New Mexico. In late June, a black bear attracted by birdfeeders tore into a tent at a campsite near Raton. The two women inside managed to escape and scare the bear off with their car alarm. Earlier that month, north of Cimarron, a 400-lb bear clawed its way into […]
Can feeding bears in the backcountry reduce bear-human conflict?
Posted inGoat
Drones touch down in the American West
Once reserved for American military use in places like Pakistan, unmanned aerial vehicles — better known as drones — are becoming increasingly common here at home, as our pro-drone editor Jonathan Thompson wrote about earlier this year. But even as public concern mounts over the Obama administration’s use of the stealthy aircraft, everyone from scientific […]
Posted inGoat
Fracking passions run hot — and science gets burned
With the possible exception of England’s Royal Baby, few topics are as hot right now as fracking. No matter what news or quasi-news source you turn to, there it is: Impossible to ignore, nearly as impossible to understand. It’s no surprise that people are passionate about the subject. As Judith Lewis Mernit writes forHCN, natural […]
Posted inGoat
House Republicans’ anti-EPA crusade goes on and on
House Republicans moved forward a controversial bill last week that would cut a third of the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget, which raised the ire of environmentalists and caused at least one congressman to walk out of a committee meeting, calling the bill “an embarrassment.” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky) explained that the bill […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
New route to end Utah’s wilderness stalemate
Can one of the West’s most anti-federal lands lawmakers broker a mega-wilderness deal in the Beehive state?
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Pilgrim at Shit Creek
A mother comes to terms with her son’s childhood in the urban environment.
Posted inGoat
A half percent of hope in this year’s drought reports
“Let’s play a game,” a friend suggested last weekend as we walked through stands of brown, brittle trees on Stewart’s Creek trail to San Luis Peak in southwestern Colorado. The game was called “find the living tree,” and like “I spy,” we’d scan the landscape for green leaves. We chuckled grimly. The truth she spoke […]
Posted inWotr
My life without a dog
A newspaperman wonders if he’s the only person around without a canine friend.
Posted inGoat
Renewable energy transmission projects create tension among greens
In mid June, I received two very different press releases from two environmental groups announcing the same event: The Bureau of Land Management’s release of the Final Environmental Impact Statement on the proposed SunZia high voltage transmission line that would stretch from central New Mexico to the fringes of Phoenix, Ariz. The document is the […]
Posted inWotr
I will fight fire no more
A wildland firefighter reflects on joys and sorrows of her fighting career, and on why she’s leaving the field.
Posted inGoat
New data shows government oversight of oil and gas spills is spotty at best
When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently walked back its massive investigation of water contamination from natural gas drilling in Pavillion, Wyoming, John Hanger, a Democratic candidate for governor in Pennsylvania and the former secretary of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, wrote on his blog: “The EPA has just put a ‘kick me’ sign on […]
Posted inWotr
Durango life requires a hefty commute
Could this Colorado town benefit from high-density development?
Posted inGoat
EPA chief confirmed. Are three key judicial nominees next?
Gina McCarthy must have been exhausted last week when she completed her 136-day slog down the path of most resistance – also known as the U.S. Congress – to the helm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It was the most drawn-out battle over a nominee for EPA’s top job ever. But it had little […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
You can’t have your gas and burn it, too
Many Americans are not enthusiastic about drilling in rural areas like the Rocky Mountain Front (“The Rocky Mountain Front blues,” HCN, 6/24/13). Unfortunately, we are also not happy with the cost of energy and our dependence on politically unstable areas such as the Middle East. We want solar power and wind generators, but those also […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
The politics of the possible
In the late 1980s, Western wilderness activists began changing their tactics: Stymied by increasingly anti-environmental elected officials opposed to any new wilderness, they decided to bypass local politicians and “nationalize” the issue. In Utah, led by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, they pushed “America’s Redrock Wilderness Act,” a bill that would protect a whopping 9.4 […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
The end is nigh
I was shocked by the statement of Scott Edwards that, “Drinking water is not a human right … if it costs somebody else money to provide it to you” (“Water Rights,” HCN, 6/24/13). Even the Declaration of Independence states that we are endowed by our “Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
The death of the working class
The most unfortunate legacy of the development over the last 50-plus years of “paradise resorts” for the wealthy like Aspen, Vail, Telluride and Jackson is primarily that the middle-class and working-class folks who perform the day-to-day work that keeps those resorts running have been shut out of affordable housing by the wealthy and by conservationists […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Report from the summer HCN board meeting
High Country News‘ board of directors met in our hometown of Paonia, Colo. at the end of May, to assess the nonprofit’s health, discuss our prospects, and savor the Western Slope’s beauty. The news was good: HCN continues to expand its reach — our website, hcn.org, saw one-third more visitors in the first quarter of […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Obama’s love letter to natural gas
The political and practical potential of gas in the climate fight
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Next stop: Nanny State
It’s a proper function of the law to protect the public from improper actions by others, such as wanton destruction of public lands through thoughtless use of ATVs (“Western kids have fun — and die — motoring off-road,” HCN, 6/24/13). It is not a proper function of the law to protect people from their own […]