It’s the second day of Drake Clifton’s three-day Outward Bound solo, and he’s starving. He rattles his small food bag in front of the camera: crackers, nuts, a nub of cheese. Matted blond hair pokes out of his black beanie. “It’s seriously killing me,” he says, pouring crumbs into his mouth. He’s camped in a […]
How Outward Bound lost, and found, itself
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
An interview with Joshua Zaffos
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 Joshua Zaffos about his story “Oil and gas companies pour money into research universities.” Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user Striking Photography by Bo […]
Posted inGoat
Lost in translation
I’ve covered a lot of public meetings as a reporter, but I’ve never been to one quite like the one at Paonia, Colo.’s town hall on Jan. 15. More than 200 residents packed the stuffy council chambers, sitting on the floor and spilling out into the hall. They were there to hear the Bureau of […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
A field program teaches undergrads to think differently about public lands
I am in school, watching a grown man cry. He works at a clinic in the Klamath Basin on the Oregon-California border. He tells me and 22 other visiting college students what happened to local farmers one season, when the federal government shut off their irrigation water to protect endangered fish during a drought. He […]
Posted inGoat
Public pollution data make for a less-filthy West
At the end of last year, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a long-stalled Clean Air Act standard to limit air pollution from cement kilns, which spew massive quantities of toxic mercury into the air — though the agency is drawing the ire of environmental groups for delaying implementation until 2015. One reason the public and […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Round River pushes kids out of their comfort zones and into the field
In 1992, four fresh-faced students joined conservationist Jim Tolisano in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains in search of grizzly bears. Grizzlies are thought to be extinct in the state, but sighting rumors circulated, and Round River Conservation Studies’ founders Dennis Sizemore and Doug Peacock — who inspired the character Hayduke in Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench […]
Posted inWotr
The beauty of the wood pile
The six-and-a-half pound maul making its way around my head travels through the October sunshine: dull gray, blunt, serious as an elk in rut. It windmills beneath the yellow larch needles and outstretched arms of evergreens, their fall odors incensing an already heady mix of dried grass, wood smoke, and sun-warmed bark. A wedge of […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Sign-hating Californians
CALIFORNIA “Out here, people don’t like signs.” So said Sheriff’s Deputy Rob McDaniels to the Point Reyes Light in December, after apprehending “Sensitive Sean” for stealing more than 20 no-parking signs. This small community on the Northern California coast –– let’s just call it “Anonymous,” since the locals have asked us not to reveal its […]
Posted inGoat
Pipeline safety after the Yellowstone spill
The night of July 1, 2011 “was a usual night, not too busy and not overly slow” at ExxonMobil’s pipeline control facility in Houston, Texas. A controller at the Houston facility was operating pipeline controls at his new workstation, known as “console 2.” This controller had recently been trained on this console, and had been […]
Posted inWotr
Big water projects should make Westerners nervous
Across maps of the arid West, expensive water pipelines are being plotted to meet the region’s profound need for water. Among those under serious consideration are a 263-mile pipeline to bring eastern Nevada water to Las Vegas, southwestern Utah’s 139-mile Lake Powell pipeline, and the 500-mile Flaming Gorge pipeline from Wyoming to Colorado. Each would cost […]
Posted inGoat
Transmission: The missing link in the renewables revolution
You want to cut carbon to the levels recommended by the International Panel on Climate Change? Then you’ll need 100,000 Megawatts of new renewable power integrated into the electrical grid. And in order to get that, you’ll need a lot — try 25,000 miles — of new high voltage transmission lines. That was the message […]
Posted inGoat
Hello, climate change
Environmentalists got what they’ve been waiting for Monday, when President Obama reinvented himself as a committed liberal in his second inauguration speech. He referred to climate change by its proper name, rather than dancing a little rhetorical jig around it, and even summoned the Almighty. God, he said, “commanded” the planet to our care. He […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Great Old Broads for Wilderness laugh and learn
The pro-wilderness group teaches elders how to engage in public lands management, while having a great time.
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Oil and gas companies pour money into research universities
Northwest Colorado’s Piceance Basin — 5 million acres framed by cliffs and hogbacked mountains — overlies roughly 300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to supply the nation for 50 years. It’s also ideal mule deer habitat; state wildlife managers once called it “the deer factory.” But as drilling ramps up, deer numbers plummet. […]
Posted inWotr
Guns are different for women in the West
“In Montana, women go around with a baby bottle in one hand and a gun in the other,” quipped a man recently as he sat at the bar in Happy’s Road House, outside of Libby. Unlike the rural Montana women to whom he referred, my introduction to guns didn’t come about because I was surrounded by […]
Posted inGoat
Designing for behavior change
Dual flush toilets are, in my opinion, a great water-saving invention. Yet one of my biggest pet peeves is a type of dual flush toilet that I often see in public bathrooms. In this particular design, to use less water, you push the flush handle up; to use more water, you push it down. Yet […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
The Power Lung Kid
At 8:30 a.m., the Power Lung Kid knocks at my trailer door. I’m eating Lucky Charms, staring out the window at the low-slung volcanic rock and aspens that rise into the ponderosa, spruce and fir of south-central Oregon. “You know why I’m called the Power Lung Kid?” he asks, leaning back in his chair. “No,” […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
The more you know, the more you marvel
I was prepared to scowl at Jim Robbins’ article, “Wildlife Biology Goes High-Tech” (HCN, 12/10/12), after reading the subtitle — “But has our science lost its soul?” Science has no “soul.” It deals with the physical, tangible universe. As a professional ecologist and longtime teacher, I have grown impatient with the complaint that memorizing all […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Oil boom spurs a rush on extractive education programs
Last May, Russell Carr crammed his possessions into his 4Runner and drove 30 hours to North Dakota, seeking a new start. The strapping 22-year-old had just earned a degree in civil engineering at the University of Nevada, in his hometown, Reno, but the local firm he’d been courting offered a starting wage of only $17 […]
