National Landscape Conservation System map
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Craig Childs on hidden, trail-free BLM gems
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, KDNK’s Nelson Harvey talks with HCN contributing editor and Western adventurer Craig Childs. Thumbnail photo licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Flickr user Conservation Lands Foundation.
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Kids in the backcountry: The earlier, the better
Note: This essay is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. The three of them race out in front of us — dots of colorful energy bushwhacking across the tundra, elevation over 10,000 feet, deep in the northern Wyoming’s Washakie Wilderness. Ruby, 11, Sawyer, 13, and Eli, 14. They […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
It’s time to get real
The San Luis Valley is a wonderful place that needs to be preserved (“Farming on the Fringe,” HCN, 2/18/13). The water issues will only get worse as the climate goes into this hotter drier spell — one that could last thousands of years. I’m glad the local people are working on a solution to their […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
HCN takes a break
Note: This Dear Friends is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. In mid-March, as the last of the scanty winter snow melts here in Paonia, Colo., the HCN crew will be taking one of our four annual publishing breaks. Look for the next issue to hit your mailbox, […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Field notes from a solo paddle in Alaska’s Inside Passage
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. Mid-day on the last Fourth of July, I sat in my kayak and watched a parade like nothing I’d ever seen: Icebergs shaped like elaborate floats bobbed past me, one resembling an eagle, another a house, still others […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Beijing’s toxic brew, explained
The really big difference between air quality in Salt Lake City and Beijing — indeed, any city of size that lies north of the Yangtze River — stems from particulates and other emissions in the exhaust from many widely dispersed furnaces whose associated boilers feed into district heating systems, which are the primary means for […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Lost and Found Montana: Cartersville
Photographer Jeremy Lurgio unexpectedly finds that life carries on in Cartersville, a small Montana town whose name was struck from official state highway maps in 2000. Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West.
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
A (futile) line in the oil sands
As a lifelong conservationist and the former head of the Izaak Walton League of America, I think environmental opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline is wrong (“Taking it to the streets,” HCN, 2/18/13). Climate change is a vital issue that must be addressed, but drawing a line in the oil sands will not help. Canada’s […]
Posted inGoat
Uranium ban rethink?
When I read that mining companies are pressuring the Navajo Nation to let them mine uranium on Diné land I thought: What gall. After all, the Navajos banned uranium mining on the reservation back in 2005, and for good reason. From World War II until the mid-1980s, the federally-subsidized uranium industry pulled some 4 million […]
Posted inGoat
Forests test-drive collaboration
It was a big deal when the Forest Service introduced its new planning rule in 2012. The rule dictates how the nation’s 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands write their individual plans, which in turn regulate nearly every aspect of how these public lands are managed: where logging and grazing occur, what’s set aside […]
Posted inWotr
Local food, even in winter
Most of what I’ve read lately about food in America makes me lose my appetite. Outbreaks of deadly pathogens that sicken or even kill people. Chemical spray and dead zones. Exploited workers. “Hollywood Food” that looks great but lacks taste and nutrition. It’s enough to make me want to sell my vegetable farm. That is […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Football players and other thugs
MONTANA After former Democratic Congressman Pat Williams attacked a certain sacred cow at the University of Montana, reaction was swift. Here’s what he told The New York Times: “We’ve had sex assaults, vandalism, beatings by football players. The university has recruited thugs for its football team, and this thuggery has got to stop.” Williams, now […]
Posted inGoat
Are tree-sitters felons?
Recently, civil disobedience has been making a comeback. From 2011’s scruffy Occupy movement to the Sierra Club’s coat-and-tie White House protest of the Keystone XL pipeline last month, risking arrest to make a statement hasn’t been this high profile in a long time. In Oregon, environmentalists have a long history of getting arrested and putting […]
Posted inWotr
For climate’s sake, finish your veggies
The Oxford Dictionaries Online last year added the word “locavore,” defined as someone who eats mostly locally produced food. The word’s acceptance reflects the success of a movement that seeks to make a dent in global climate change by encouraging people to purchase food close to home. It’s just one part of an ongoing health […]
Posted inGoat
‘We are the decider.’
Several years ago, two off-road enthusiasts threw their backs into building and improving a trail through Utah’s Recapture Canyon near Blanding. They used picks and shovels, added culverts and retaining walls. They likely had the support of many local off-roaders, eager for new places to four-wheel. What they did not have was permission to build […]
Posted inWotr
No more gold giveaways on our public lands
Since 1872, mining interests have made billions of dollars by removing and selling valuable minerals from our public lands without having to pay a cent to the American taxpayer. This is one of the biggest budget loopholes of the modern economy, and it needs to change — especially now — as Congress tries to address […]
Posted inGoat
Fire suppression flip-flop
Last May, the Forest Service made news by announcing it was going to suppress all fires burning on its lands. The memo, issued by James Hubbard, Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry, instructed fire-line officers to get approval from their supervisors before doing anything but full suppression—effectively discouraging the practice of letting some fires […]
Posted inRange
Grand Canyon State Park?
We have been immersed in another round of what some like to call “public lands theater,” the seemingly endless war over who best to manage or, perhaps even own, the federal land estate of the United States. Last year the Arizona legislature tried to demand almost all the federal lands within its boundaries, even the […]
Posted inGoat
Energy imbalance WTF?!
A few weeks ago, certain sectors of the environmental/renewable energy community got all fired up. We had reached a “major turning point” said one blogger. Another called the mid-February news a “milestone.” So what was all the fuss about? Did we manage to pull some charismatic megafauna away from the brink of extinction? Or perhaps […]