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 […]
The future of the Tongass Forest lies beyond logging, but the timber industry has a hard time letting go
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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, […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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.
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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 […]
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Why do you live in a flood zone?
How to empathize with people who experience devastating loss after fires and floods
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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 […]
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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.
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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 […]
Posted inWotr
Finding solace in the river
This is what I have learned: If you have a broken heart, go to the river. But even if you do, eventually you have to come back. As soon as I ease my borrowed kayak into the snowmelt-fed Grande Ronde River, there is no time to think about anything except making it through the next […]
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BP’s annual review paints a grim picture of global energy use
It’s a bit like Christmas time for energy geeks, and Halloween for environmentalists. Every summer, bp, née British Petroleum, releases its Statistical Review of World Energy, a big fat pile of data detailing the world’s energy production, consumption and trade. Energy geeks revel in it. Nowhere else can one find so much up-to-date information in […]
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Problem-solving in the West
A conversation with Lucy Moore, one of the Southwest’s premier environmental mediators
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Legislation aims to help natural resources agencies adapt to climate change
U.S. Geological Survey ecologist Dan Fagre is standing behind an interpretive sign that says “Going, going, gone,” as he describes how Glacier National Park’s glaciers have been wasting away over the past century. Each year, when he visits them, Fagre finds newly exposed rock that was once buried under ice. His research predicts that the […]
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How the BLM’s communication style can backfire
Land managers have a hard enough job without the repercussions of using words that leave the public confused and misled. The latest example comes out of southwestern Idaho, a modest parcel of public land called Big Willow near the town of Payette. There, off-road vehicle riders were running roughshod on both public land and adjoining […]
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Another highway will only worsen Utah’s air pollution issues
It’s no secret: The Wasatch Front in northern Utah, depending on the time of year, suffers from some of the worst air quality in the nation — and even the world. When the winter inversion sets in, those of us living between Ogden and Provo can barely see the mountains a few miles away, thanks […]
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EPA’s abandoned Wyoming fracking study one retreat of many
When the federal Environmental Protection Agency abruptly retreated on its multimillion-dollar investigation into water contamination in a central Wyoming natural gas field last month, it shocked environmentalists and energy industry supporters alike. In 2011, the agency had issued a blockbuster draft report saying that the controversial practice of fracking was to blame for the pollution […]
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Glen Canyon Dam’s evaporating hydropower
Ever since water levels in Lake Powell started dropping in 1999, the last time the reservoir was near full, I’d heard a lot about the infamous bathtub ring—the white band of minerals and salts that separates the current lake level from the high water mark. So I was looking forward to seeing it for myself […]