“Here in the U.S., I’m happy to say, the king is dead,” said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg this week. “Coal is a dead man walking.” While the statistics seem to back up Bloomberg’s statements — coal production is in decline, and natural gas is taking up an ever growing slice of the electricity […]
Coal’s gasping on the Colorado Plateau
Posted inGoat
How much would you pay for clean water?
Would you be willing to pay up to $10 per month to have your drinking water free of a suspected carcinogen? That’s the question that city councilors in Woods Cross, Utah, are asking residents to answer. In the late 1980s, residents of this Salt Lake City suburb learned that a chemical called tetrachloroethylene (or PCE) […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2013: Farming on the Fringe
Economy, distrust complicate allocation of tribal settlement money
When the Obama administration announced in April that it would pay 41 tribes some $1 billion to settle a lawsuit over federal mismanagement of trust funds, many saw it as a sort of stimulus package for Indian Country — a chance to invest in long-term development and infrastructure, such as schools, clinics and roads. “The […]
Posted inRange
Man’s (and livestock’s) best friend
It’s always fascinated me that domestic dogs are widely embraced as “man’s best friends,” while wild dogs like coyotes and wolves often elicit deep-seated animosity. So I was particularly taken by this video of livestock guard dogs by the Montana-based conservation group, People & Carnivores. The good folks at People & Carnivores work to resolve […]
Posted inGoat
Signs of a strong environmental agenda?
Greens weren’t exactly thrilled with Obama’s environmental performance in his first term, especially with regard to climate change. One of the brightest spots in his administration was Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson. Under her watch, the EPA moved toward regulating greenhouse gases, developed key emissions rules for power plants, made a valiant attempt at […]
Posted inWotr
The education of Dr. Jane Lubchenco
When renowned zoologist Jane Lubchenco was sworn in as President Obama’s director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2009, she declared: “Science will be respected at NOAA; science will not be muzzled.” Lubchenco’s doctrine signaled a new day. Today, four years later, she would be the first to admit that her edict was […]
Posted inArticles
Feds enabled oil drillers, others to cheat Fort Berthold tribes
Editor’s note: This ProPublica story follows up on our 2012 story “The Other Bakken Boom” with additional information on lawsuits alleging that the U.S. government allowed the Fort Berthold tribes to be cheated by energy companies. Native Americans on an oil-rich North Dakota reservation have been cheated out of more than $1 billion by schemes […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2013: Farming on the Fringe
Farmers agree to tax those who deplete groundwater
Amid drought and climate change in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, farmers vote for a new approach to rein in their overpumping of groundwater.
Posted inRange
The future of wolverines
By Kylie Paul, Defenders of Wildlife After more than a decade of legal hand-wringing, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) finally proposed on Feb. 1 to protect wolverines in the lower 48 states as a threatened species. But invoking the Endangered Species Act alone is not going to save wolverines from looming threats on […]
Posted inRange
A new vision for public lands
In 2012, the seemingly endless argument over what level of government ought to be the manager over part of the federal land estate flared up again, led by individuals in Utah and Arizona. In Arizona, in March, the state legislature passed a bill that called for federal land agencies to give up title to roughly […]
Posted inGoat
The endangered species to-do list
One summer, I spent so much time fishing the stocked pond behind my parent’s house that middle-school boys called me “bass-master.” Most of my 14th birthday presents were lures. I grew up near the headwaters of the Potomac River in western Maryland, and my dad used to hike into those streams to tempt wily brook […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2013: Farming on the Fringe
My Dakota: A photo essay and conversation
We recommend you select the gallery option to view these images. In 2005, photographer Rebecca Norris Webb decided it was time to head West with her camera. She’d lived in New York City for 15 years, and spent six years working in the cramped interiors of zoos and aquariums for The Glass Between Us, her […]
Posted inWotr
Water is life for the Navajo Nation
Growing up on Black Mesa in northeast Arizona on the Navajo Nation, we often lived like nomads, following our sheep. As a child, I wasn’t aware that other people in America stayed put, living in one place. Whenever I returned home from boarding school during a break, I’d often find my family living somewhere new […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Gun gluttony
WASHINGTON “Seattle’s nice,” says photographer Regina Johnson, “but it isn’t Paradise.” Courtesy Regina Johnson. UTAH AND WYOMING Could Second Amendment defenders have gone too far, even in this gun-loving region? If two calmly reasoned editorials in Utah and Wyoming’s major daily newspapers are right, you’d have to say, yep, looks like it. Editorializing last month, […]
Posted inGoat
Delayed gratification
Back in July 2011, a Montana judge prohibited Imperial Oil, a subsidiary of ExxonMobile, from trucking 200 “megaloads” of tar sands mining equipment over the company’s preferred rural highway route. Even though Montana and Idaho state officials had backed the plan, and Imperial had secured the necessary permits, local governments and conservation groups had taken […]
Posted inGoat
The sad tale of Shiprock South
Residents of northwestern New Mexico may by now be numbed by the almost surreal, ongoing saga of the busted housing development in Shiprock. But to those unfamiliar with the tale, it’s downright heartbreaking. “Navajo housing project could waste millions,” reads the headline in the Farmington Daily Times, and “be forever incomplete.” The story opens: SHIPROCK […]
Posted inWotr
The more we drill, the more vulnerable we become
Although some small town residents see oil and gas drilling as destructive to their rural way of life, others welcome the most recent oil and gas boom for its promised benefits for the local economy. Here in Moab, Utah, for example, civic leaders like to say that extraction in the Canyonlands region will provide future […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2013: Farming on the Fringe
The BLM fights for the Southwest’s last free-flowing river
SIERRA VISTA, ARIZONA “For sale: Prime Office/Retail,” proclaims the sign on a mesquite flat on the outskirts of this affluent city of 47,000 people, about an hour south of Tucson near the Huachuca Mountains. It’s announcing a 2,000-acre project known as Tribute, proposed by California developer Castle and Cooke and approved by city leaders six […]
Posted inGoat
Want to put Western weather on the map?
Some of the earliest weather forecasts began with people scattered across the country who regularly telegraphed observations back to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. as part of a mid-1800s program to solve “the problem of American storms.” Though scientific tools have advanced far beyond the telegraph, the challenge of forecasting small-scale, fast-acting weather events, […]