The question of whether mustangs in the West are feral versus wild is a controversial one; it’s got a knack for appearing in the comment section of many a mustang story. Mustang advocates are adamant the wild horse is a bona fide North American wildlife species – on par with deer, elk, bison and pronghorn. […]
Feral vs. wild horses
Posted inWotr
Roadkill: It’s what’s for dinner
Last week, the governor of Montana signed a bill making it legal to salvage and eat wild animals that had been hit and killed by cars – in short, allowing humans to scavenge edible roadkill. The law applies to deer, elk, antelope and moose, and aligns the state with other states such as Alaska, Illinois, […]
Posted inGoat
The legacy of Documerica
Here at High Country News, we’ve been reading and writinga lot about how the federal funding cuts from sequestration will hit home in the West. But as usual, it takes a personal experience to make things real. For me, it came while sitting on a pit toilet at a Bureau of Land Management trailhead outside […]
Posted inArticles
Researchers go to Utah to experience another planet: Mars
In March, photographer and science enthusiast Jim Urquhart ventured into the Utah desert to join a team of researchers at the Mars Desert Research Station. He came back with a collection of surreal images both extra-terrestrial and intriguing.
Posted inRange
How can we sustainably fund our national parks?
Given the iconic status of our national parks—the spirited geysers of Yellowstone, striking gravitas of the Statue of Liberty and Kodachrome hollows of the Grand Canyon—it’s hard to imagine a time when their establishment and protection were a hard sell. But a century ago, that’s where park champions found themselves; hawking to Congress and the […]
Posted inGoat
‘Port Gamble Predicament’ inches toward resolution
Last winter, I reported on the tangle of cultural and conservation challenges surrounding western Washington’s Port Gamble Bay, documenting how the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe is in the final stages of a 160-year-long faceoff with Pope Resources. Pope is the corporate stepchild of a logging company that built a mill town called Port Gamble in […]
Posted inWotr
A truth-teller gets punished in Montana
There’s an old college cheer: “Lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight!” For former Montana Democratic Congressman Pat Williams, it seemed that no matter which way he leaned, he found himself smack in the middle of a controversy, one that had been building on the University of […]
Posted inArticles
Federal Helium Reserve faces uncertainty amid global shortage
While browsing the Bureau of Land Management’s website, I found an odd piece of trivia. True or False: Inhaling helium causes your vocal cords to constrict, raising the pitch of your voice. I was surprised. What was the agency in charge of overseeing the dry husks of the West’s open spaces doing with a colorless, […]
Posted inArticles
Taking the park to the people
There will be no Fiesta Day this year at Saguaro National Park, a mountainous, cactus- and shrub-studded landscape surrounding Tucson. No mariachi band at the visitor’s center, no spread of tacos and enchiladas, no candy-filled pinatas for the kids to knock down. But the cancellation of the five-year running event, conceived by park officials as […]
Posted inGoat
Is coal making a comeback?
Last September, Citigroup quietly released a report declaring that cheap natural gas was engaged in a “symbiotic relationship” with intermittent renewable forms of energy — i.e. solar and wind — and that together the two would displace enough coal to take a big bite out of carbon emissions. Over the past month, the report has […]
Posted inWotr
Helping the newest immigrants find their niche
Immigration reform is back in the news, and that’s a good thing for the estimated 11 million undocumented workers who help make our economy go. But where I live, in western Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley, the issue isn’t just documentation; it’s also helping these 18,000 or so new residents become our neighbors and friends. Not […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Trading fish for sewage
One-percenter travel Western “luxury hotels” are offering innovative high-end outdoor recreation experiences to attract wealthy customers, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colo., advertises an “ultimate adventure package” that includes “a three night stay in a Deluxe King room, a snowshoe tour (with lunch) and a twilight dog sledding excursion through […]
Posted inGoat
Science for the long now
High in eastern Nevada’s Snake Mountain Range, just below treeline, live gnarled bristlecone pines as old as 4,900 years. Core samples taken from the trees have helped researchers understand how the region has changed over millennia. That’s part of the reason why the Long Now Foundation, a San Francisco-based group whose mission is to “creatively […]
Posted inWotr
The white media kill Indians again and again
Recently, in a photo essay entitled, “Here’s what life is like on the notorious Wind River Indian Reservation,” the online Business Insider gave a tour of the sprawling central Wyoming home of the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes. The essay delivered what it promised: a portrait of a place riddled with violence and addiction. A […]
Posted inGoat
Does oil and gas drilling cause earthquakes?
Just before 11 p.m. on November 5, 2011, the biggest earthquake in Oklahoma’s history hit the small town of Prague. It buckled a highway, exploded windows, collapsed homes and left terrified residents clutching their beds as they waited for the shaking to stop. Ripples from the 5.7 magnitude quake were felt as far as 800 […]
Posted inWotr
Eco-terrorism and me
It was not really surprising but, well, disappointing to hear that I’d been called an “eco-terrorist” by one of my neighbors. The news was second-hand, of course, which somehow made it worse. Whoever pronounced the judgment, whether she or he, hadn’t bothered to tell me about it, but let it slip, off-hand, as if it […]
Posted inGoat
On setting aside new national monuments
As of last week, our country has five new national monuments; two of them are in the West. The Eastern sites, controlled by the National Park Service, are cultural – new monuments in Ohio and Maryland commemorate Charles Young, the first African-American colonel in the Army, and Harriet Tubman, the most famous conductor on the […]
Posted inRange
Montana’s Rep. Steve Daines warms up to conservation
When the newly minted Congressman Steve Daines stepped into the press conference he wore cowboy boots, standard issue for Republican Congressmen from Big Sky Country. What set him apart were the words that came out of his mouth. Daines, a Bozeman businessman elected in November, held the conference to announce his support for the North […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Feral child
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert, published the first Monday of each month. Almost ten years ago, after my wife Eryn’s difficult and dangerous 22-hour labor, our first daughter, Hannah Virginia, made her reluctant entrance and began an unbroken run […]