Ashley KorenblatMoab mountain-bike outfitter and public-lands consultant “Folks in the rural West see kids in Grand Junction driving trucks for Halliburton making $80,000 a year. They see these jobs as good jobs, but they aren’t going to last. (Utah Republican Rep. Jason) Chaffetz has said, ‘We wouldn’t want to do anything now that would prevent […]
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Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Are you strong? Remembering Randy Udall
I think we will find a solution to climate change, but we will need each other to make it happen. Over the years, the environmental community has become fractured on the issue — arguing over the best approach, becoming frustrated and critical. And all this is healthy, but only if seen as part of a […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Alaska tribes attempt to block the controversial Pebble Mine
Some of the last surviving salmon-based cultures turn to EPA for protection.
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
A half-empty future
I agree with the author’s pessimism (“The Rocky Mountain Front blues,” HCN, 6/24/13). Improvements in energy efficiency alone aren’t enough. What can help is to leave the oil, gas and coal in the ground and to permanently protect the associated lands from development. However, I wonder if any form of “permanent protection” will be able […]
Posted inGoat
Buffalo Soldier history could get a boost in national parks
Two bills awaiting review in the Senate could mean that the National Park Service will recount the history of African-American soldiers in a more complete way. “The Buffalo Soldiers were true pioneers who braved the Western frontier as well as the scourge of racism as they fought for and served our country,” California Congresswoman Jackie […]
Posted inArticles
An interview with John Maclean
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, Nelson Harvey talks with John Maclean, author of Fire on the Mountain, a book about the 1994 South Canyon Fire in Colorado, which took 14 lives. Maclean believes the […]
Posted inGoat
The future of the Tongass Forest lies beyond logging, but the timber industry has a hard time letting go
A friend of mine had her heart broken by Southeast Alaska. After studying forestry, she was dispatched to the tiny town of Hoonah in the midst of the Tongass National Forest. The Tongass is huge, a 17-million-acre labyrinth of steep fjords, dripping rainforests and salmon-filled rivers. It’s one of the most rugged and beautiful places […]
Posted inArticles
Veteran photographer shines light on US immigration
Death and deportation at the US-Mexico border, and lives after crossings.
Posted inGoat
Number crunching utility rates in the Arizona solar war
Last week, after months of rhetoric and hype, the first shots were fired in what has been billed as Arizona’s solar war, when Arizona Public Service, the state’s biggest utility, proposed a new rate structure that is far less favorable than the current one for homeowners with rooftop or backyard solar. Arizona’s Corporation Commission, the […]
Posted inWotr
Let us be worthy of their sacrifice
A modest metal building huddles behind a chain-link fence in the industrial quarter of Prescott, Ariz., with only a small sign to identify it: Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew. Hundreds of Prescott residents drive by it every day, and until June 30, it was the home base of 19 members of our community. But that Sunday, […]
Posted inGoat
Who’s trashing the most popular park in Bozeman?
Mary Vant Hull, 85 years old and still kicking — or make that, kicking butt with her frank conversation — is showing me the degradation of Bozeman’s most popular park, on a bluff overlooking the whole city, when a sudden storm comes out of nowhere and blasts us. It’s July 16, but the temperature plummets […]
Posted inGoat
A massive water supply plan will benefit fish habitat in Washington state
Last week the Yakama Nation celebrated an event that hasn’t happened in over 100 years. Sockeye salmon hatched in eastern Washington’s Cle Elum Lake returned there to spawn. It was an important moment in the tribe’s restoration program, which began in 2009, to bring back a salmon run that was 200,000 fish strong before irrigation […]
Posted inArticles
Ted Turner: A Good Guy After All?
The author of a new biography of one of the West’s largest landholders speaks with HCN about conservation, capitalism and Cousteau.
Posted inGoat
American roadtrip with a twist: two women travel the nation to see climate adaptation in action
There are all sorts of reasons to hit the highway this time of year. You might be trying to escape recent extremes of desert heat, bound for cooler high country and the freezing plunge of alpine lakes, or bone-chilling swells along the Pacific Coast. Or perhaps you’re the sort whose perfect lark includes the world’s […]
Posted inWotr
Why do you live in a flood zone?
How to empathize with people who experience devastating loss after fires and floods
Posted inGoat
Wildfire and sedimentation could help Gila trout make a comeback
After the nearly 300,000-acre Whitewater-Baldy fire tore through the Gila Wilderness last summer, biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service geared up for a trek into the freshly burnt mountains. The team traveled to remote tributaries of the Gila River to collect any Gila trout, one of New Mexico’s […]
Posted inArticles
Stand down from Western wildfires
A prominent wildfire expert, reacting to the deaths of 19 Arizona firefighters, says it’s time for a major change in policy.
Posted inGoat
Craft beer brewers test the waters of environmental activism
Policy analyst Karen Hobbs of the Natural Resource Defense Council has been on a mission to repeal Bush-era changes to the Clean Water Act for years. But she was looking for a popular ally to help get the word out. Then she discovered beer. Although the original 1972 Clean Water Act left little ambiguity about […]