Utah “Remember,” says photographer Greg Woodall, “when enviros and liberals were the ones who were ‘anti-this and anti-that’?” Courtesy Greg Woodall. UTAH What’s in a name? If the name is Dixie State College, based in St. George, Utah, it’s nothing to sneeze at. Recently, as the college began moving closer to becoming a university, locals […]
Tonopah, Nev. and its “Fighting Muckers”
Posted inGoat
Staring down the fiscal cliff
For evidence of the effects of political deadlock in Washington, look no further than a Jan. 25 memo from National Park Service director Jonathan Jarvis instructing park directors to prepare for deep spending cuts. The memo, leaked to the media by the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, tells park directors not to hire any […]
Posted inGoat
Mexican wolf recovery #fail
At the end of 2007, we published a story by investigative reporter John Dougherty called “Last Chance for the Lobo,” about the “bloody mess” that had become the Mexican wolf reintroduction in New Mexico and Arizona. There were so few wolves left when the recovery effort started that many born in captivity were inbred. Ranchers […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
How to clean up abandoned mines — without landing in court
Peter Butler’s late October tour of abandoned hardrock mines began high on Red Mountain Pass near Silverton, Colo., off a highway so narrow that, in places, its shoulder crumbles off cliffs. Butler, a water wonk with springy silver curls, is the co-coordinator of the Animas River Stakeholders Group, a local watershed group, which has been […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Jonathan Thompson on gun control
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 Jonathan Thompson about his story “Which way will the West go on guns?”
Posted inGoat
Views of Chu
We’ve posted before about the mass exodus of cabinet secretaries Obama is facing (typical for a second-term president). One of the more notable vacancies is that of Energy Secretary – Steven Chu has announced he’s stepping down. When he took office in 2009, HCN senior editor Ray Ring gave his thoughts on Chu and other […]
Posted inWotr
Killing wolves is part of the bargain
On Dec. 6, a Wyoming hunter killed one of Yellowstone’s most famous wolves, 832F, outside the park’s boundaries. It was a legal kill, yet within 48 hours, news organizations across the country ran stories mourning the wolf’s death and treating it like, well, the loss of a family friend. Wolf advocate Marc Cooke of Montana’s […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Chicken pastorale
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert, published the first Monday of each month. American folk musician and hillbilly existentialist Greg Brown offers some mid-song patter referring to Pablo Neruda’s wonderful poem “On Weariness” (“Cierto Cansancio”), in which Neruda memorably wrote […]
Posted inGoat
Growing our gas
How cool would it be if we could turn wood trimmings, straw, or other common plant products into gasoline? It’s possible — the technology to produce cellulosic ethanol has been proven, but scaling it up commercially hasn’t happened yet, in large part because we haven’t figured out how to create large quantities of the stuff […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Whose land is this?
On Memorial Day 2004, a friend and I drove into the South Unit of South Dakota’s Badlands National Park, located within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on a former gunnery range. We stopped at the visitor center, a dilapidated trailer at one end of a crumbling parking lot, but it was closed. No matter, we […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Which way will the West go on guns?
Amid all the talk, legislative proposals and presidential decrees inspired by the recent shootings in Connecticut and Colorado, perhaps the most significant was the announcement in early January that former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was starting a gun-control lobbying organization. Americans for Responsible Solutions seeks to raise $20 million by the next election cycle […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Welcome, new interns!
Two new editorial interns just arrived at our Paonia, Colo., office for six months of intensive training in reporting, writing and (sometimes seemingly endless) rewriting. Sarah Jane Keller may be new to Paonia, but she’s no stranger to the territory. After growing up in rural Maryland, she made a leap to the West nine years […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Water is (still) for fightin’: A review of Durango
DurangoGary Hart246 pages, softcover: $15.95.Fulcrum, 2012. Former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart’s seventh novel, Durango, is timely, as many Westerners agonize over drought and the energy industry’s use and abuse of water. Hart’s novel, however, takes us to another front in the water wars, the decades-long dispute over damming southern Colorado’s Animas and La Plata rivers […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Tree tales
I read Brendon Bosworth’s article on Fallen Leaf Lake with great interest (“The forest at the bottom of the lake,” HCN, 12/24/12). With my dive partner, John Foster, a retired California state archaeologist, I sampled sunken trees from nearby Tahoe and Donner Lake, mainly in the 1980s. In South Lake Tahoe, 16 rooted snags in ancient underwater […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
The buck stops everywhere
My response to Sarah Gilman’s opinion piece “If not here, where?” is: Nowhere. Although oil and gas exploration and recovery has advanced technologically, the basic concept of burning carbon for heat, light and more recently transportation is archaic. And now it’s evident that the resulting climate instability threatens the survival of human civilization. The series […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Love wins
On the first day marriage licenses could be issued to same-sex couples in Washington state, Laurie and I headed to our rural county courthouse.
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Independent — or subsidized — journalism?
“An Industry Funded Education” in the Jan. 12, 2013, issue should have been called, “An Industry Funded Article.” We’re informed that the Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University — bankrolled by a “self-proclaimed ‘environmentalist who hates the environmental movement’ ” — gets big funding from the extractive industry but faithfully maintains scientific objectivity. So […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Boring?!
After reading “Outward (re)Bound” (HCN, 1/21/13), I couldn’t overcome a chilly feeling in response to a student’s description of his three-day solo trip in the Rocky Mountains as “so boring.” I was saddened by this student’s inability to find entertainment in one of the most spectacular mountain ranges in Colorado, and wondered if his response […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
A world of plague and hope: A review of The Bird Saviors
The Bird SaviorsWilliam J. Cobb320 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Unbridled Books, 2012. In William J. Cobb’s lyrical novel The Bird Saviors, a mysterious virus strikes the residents of Pueblo, Colo. Some blame wild birds for spreading the disease, which leaves victims incapacitated for weeks or eventually kills them. Employees of the Department of Nuisance Animal Control, including […]