NEW MEXICO Coyotes roam freely throughout New Mexico, but finding a family of five hanging out in an Albuquerque churchyard surprised Ruth Wilson, who lives across the street and enjoys watching them. The church is in a busy part of town and so whenever police or ambulance sirens sound off — which they do several […]
A coyote chorus
Posted inGoat
There ain’t no app for that
It feels weird to write about this in a blog — a purely digital format. Hell, the fact that I’m typing this on a computer makes me feel like a full-on techno-weenie. That’s because the subject of this little article, a guy named Dean Coombs, puts out a newspaper every week without the benefit of […]
Posted inGoat
The climate conversation
You are a High Country News reader, and thus, unlikely to be a subscriber to People magazine. But try as you might to stay above the pop culture fray, you’ve probably heard by now: Princess Kate is pregnant. She craves lavender shortbread. She is not, it turns out, too thin to be pregnant, though the […]
Posted inArticles
You can’t keep a cow from water (or Jon Marvel from grazing issues)
In September, the Western Watersheds Project announced that it was seeking a successor to Jon Marvel, its founder and executive director. Marvel, who lives in Hailey, Idaho, began his campaign to end public lands grazing back in the early 1990s, following a dispute with a neighboring rancher whose cattle bedded down on Marvel’s property and […]
Posted inGoat
A royal(ty) mess
If a U.S. company sells coal overseas, should it pay royalties based on the price of that coal if it was sold domestically, or on the actual price it is sold for overseas? Mining companies have been paying royalties based on the first price, that of domestically-sold coal. That’s never been much of an issue, […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: A prospect from the singing mountain
“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. Damned ancient Mayans. In anticipation of the end of the world on December 21, I put off my Christmas shopping, blew off my deadline for this Rant, […]
Posted inGoat
A bridge to nowhere?
Early into the new year, researchers measuring methane leaks from natural gas fields in Utah found that far more of the climate-forcing gas was being emitted than they thought (methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat). Preliminary results from that research, in the Uinta Basin, show that 9 percent of […]
Posted inArticles
In Montana, Dark Money Helped Democrats Hold a Key Senate Seat
In the waning days of Montana’s hotly contested Senate race, a small outfit called Montana Hunters and Anglers, launched by liberal activists, tried something drastic.It didn’t buy ads supporting the incumbent Democrat, Sen. Jon Tester. Instead, it put up radio and TV commercials that urged voters to choose the third-party candidate, libertarian DanCox, describing Cox as […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
Fighting development in floodplains
HAMILTON, WASHINGTON Karin Vail’s modest white house near Washington’s Skagit River seemed like a perfect choice when she bought it 22 years ago. She looked forward to raising her family on its spacious one-and-a-half acres. Now, however, she just wants out. Vail, a resolute woman in her mid- 40s with long, curly red hair, stands […]
Posted inWotr
There are too many unwanted backyard horses
I was sitting in a comfortable chair one evening, reading a vintage book about the Old West, when I happened to glance out the window to see a horse cropping the grass along my driveway. I don’t own a horse. I don’t want a horse. Too many of my neighbors own horses, only to let […]
Posted inGoat
The wild and not so gun-loving West
On many a summer evening in the small, former mining town of Silverton, Colo., the staccato sound of gunshots echoes through the otherwise quiet streets. Follow the shots and you’ll come across a cast of stereotypical Old West characters riddling one another with bullets, as folks no doubt did once upon a time in these […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s hear it for a bipartisan-minded Republican
Imagine a Republican leader who racked up the following achievements: He fought smog by regulating vehicle emissions, kept dams from choking free-flowing rivers, set aside big chunks of wild backcountry for permanent protection, and supported a strong treaty to prevent harmful gases from mucking up the atmosphere. Democratic operatives might just invite this candidate to […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Deer assaults
CALIFORNIA There’s no doubt about it, says Connie Jenkins: A deer suddenly assaulted her small Honda while she was driving along a winding canyon to her home high above Malibu. Yet the suggestion in a letter from an expeditor for Farmers Insurance that she seek damages from the “third party” — which in this case […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
Reviving Custer: Re-enactment and revision at the Little Bighorn
Rick Williams always bore an uncanny likeness to George Armstrong Custer. It was the nose, beakish and narrow, and the plush, platinum mustache. This was fortunate for a Civil War re-enactor. One day in 2002, a tailor outfitted Williams in a red tie and Union general’s coat. “It was scary,” he recalls. “Everyone was saying, […]
Posted inGoat
2012 in numbers
Dear Readers: I have grim and terrible news to share with you. I was taking a look at my trusty wall calendar, the one put out by local electric coop, to see what kind of photo of a lineman playing with high voltage lines was on the next page, when I noticed there was no […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
A mining rush in Canada’s backcountry threatens Alaska salmon
Last summer, John Grace, one of the world’s elite kayakers, traveled more than 3,000 miles from his North Carolina home into the wild northwest corner of British Columbia, to explore the Iskut River. It’s the biggest tributary of the Stikine River, which flows all the way to the Alaska panhandle coast, and together they’re the […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
An underwater forest reveals the story of a historic megadrought
A curved tree saw in his gloved hand, a scuba tank on his back, Phil Caterino worked quickly to slice through a pine branch 100 feet below the surface of a small tarn south of Lake Tahoe. Bubbles streamed from the regulator in his mouth, rising through the blue alpine water and green flecks of […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
You get what you pay for
I have farmed vegetables for the past couple years and know that weeds are a challenge and profit margins are usually tight. But I do not currently support GMOs (“Weed wars,” HCN, 11/26/12). I believe in the benefits of crop rotations and trying to outsmart weeds rather than soak them in chemicals. I was really […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
Western water, in poetry and policy: A review of Dam Nation
Dam Nation: How Water Shaped the West and WillDetermine its FutureStephen Grace360 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Globe Pequot, 2012. To snatch a moment from the wild and capture it in words that pulse with life is quite a feat. Stephen Grace, author of the 2004 novel Under Cottonwoods, makes it seem effortless. When he describes sandhill cranes […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
Techno-eco-literacy
Jim Robbins’ article “Wildlife Biology Goes High-Tech” is an excellent exploration of the explosion of technology used by wildlife biologists these days (HCN, 12/10/12). As someone who has first-hand experience with some of these technologies, I agree that we can now ask critical ecological and conservation questions that we couldn’t have approached a decade or […]