Elsewhere, CaliforniaDana Johnson276 pages, softcover: $15.95.Counterpoint, 2012. Dana Johnson’s thoughtful and affecting first novel, Elsewhere, California, is narrated by a girl named Avery, whom we first meet as a child growing up in South Central Los Angeles in the ’70s and ’80s. When her brother is threatened by gangs, their parents decide to move to […]
Up the road and a world away: A review of Elsewhere, California
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Round ’em up
The ongoing feral horse debate is a prime example of a small special-interest group getting its way and creating an unsustainable public program (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). Feral horses are a serious threat to our native ecosystems. Research has shown that areas inhabited by feral horses have fewer plant species and less grass and overall […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Of faith and frostbite: a review of True Sisters
True SistersSandra Dallas341 pages, hardcover: $24.99.St. Martin’s Press, 2012. In the 2012 presidential election, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emerged from the shadows with the first Mormon candidate for the nation’s highest office. Colorado writer Sandra Dallas’s 11th novel examines the history of a religion not widely understood outside its Utah base, […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Good news and goodbyes
HCN contributing editor Michelle Nijhuis has won a 2012 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in the magazine category. Michelle’s story “Crisis in the Caves,” published in the July/August 2011 issue of Smithsonian magazine, reported on white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has decimated bats in the northeastern U.S. and is poised to spread across the […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Distracted in Green River
Right from the title — “The outsiders: What are a bunch of hipsters doing in Green River, Utah?” — Emily Guerin establishes that her article will be concerned not with issues, but with appearances. It is a shame. Issues of acceptance and identity — persistent in small, economically downtrodden Western communities — are real and […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
BLM’s equine quagmire
It’s unconscionable that current policy has tripled the Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse and burro program budget since 2000 to a massive $76 million. Dave Philipps’ fine piece of reporting mentioned many of BLM’s management strategies, such as roundups, adoption, fertility control and sanctuaries (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). A few more were overlooked, […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
A sampler of wildlife tech
PingersRadio transmitters, sometimes called “pingers,” are a classic monitoring method. Powered by batteries, they transmit very high frequency signals that are picked up by antennas or satellites. Until recently, the batteries’ weight and size couldn’t be reduced enough to use transmitters on small animals and fish. But now, says Doug Bonham, a freelance circuit-board designer […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
A new measure of poverty shifts rankings in the West
Thumbnail photo CC via Flickr user Palmspringsdude. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A new measure of poverty shifts rankings in the West.
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
A bird in hand
(This is the editor’s note accompanying two stories on the evolution of wildlife-monitoring technology.) Nearly 40 years ago, during a college ornithology course, I helped set up a “mist net” — something like a volleyball net with nearly invisible super-fine mesh — in a spot between bushes where small birds flew. One by one, unsuspecting […]
Posted inWotr
How, 150 years ago, the Homestead Act transformed the West
All across forests of the West, 10-by-12-foot cabins stand forlorn and forgotten, many with tumbledown roofs and gaping doors. Yet these modest homesteads represent a revolution in public-land policy: They were the culmination of an American dream born of Thomas Jefferson’s belief that at our best, we would become a nation of independent farmers. This […]
Posted inGoat
West is best?
A post-Thanksgiving hike should not be too strenuous. It needs to be vigorous enough to help awaken from a food coma but not so tough as to ruin the long weekend. This year, a light stroll through nearby Dominguez Canyon, with a close group of friends, fit the bill. After just a short drive and […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
The right tributary
Yesterday I took a long walk up a cold stream in search of bull trout. I didn’t really expect to see fish. Instead, I’d come to see redds — the gravel nests in which fish lay eggs — because I’d been trying to write a story about salmon and realized I knew nothing whatsoever about […]
Posted inWotr
Here come the Super Storms
Once again, we were all New Yorkers. Watching the heartbreak that continues in Staten Island, parts of Queens and along the pummeled Jersey Shore, our sympathies turned eastward toward the victims of this unusual “Super Storm.” But just how unusual was it? Sandy’s devastation gives us the opportunity to remember another giant storm that barreled […]
Posted inGoat
When deer attack dogs
I was innocently working away in my office (living room) when the barking began. We live in a medium-sized town in southwestern Colorado, where owning a dog seems to be a prerequisite, and every canine in the neighborhood was going off about something, resulting in a cacophonous symphony. Our dog, Princess (no, we didn’t give […]
Posted inRange
Trouble In Mind
Two images stand out from photographs I’ve taken here in northwestern Montana in the last couple months. One is from hunting for deer in November, the other from hunting a Christmas tree last weekend. The snowshoe hare in mid November is practicing “mind over matter.” He trusts his natural camouflage to keep him safe, even […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Pussycat kill kill!
THE NATION Forget denouncing wind turbines as bird Cuisinarts; lovable pussycats rank as the true killing machines. Housecats wipe out some 4 billion animals every year, including at least 500 million birds, reports Wyoming Wildlife. The magazine cites a novel new study by two groups, the National Geographic Society and the University of Georgia, that […]
Posted inWotr
If we don’t get our energy here, where will we get it?
A few weeks ago, a Texas oilman cornered me at a brewery in the high-mountain town of Ouray, in western Colorado. Some young women from Moab had just taken the table next to my friend and myself, when the fellow wandered over to buy us a round. Eventually, he revealed that he worked for ConocoPhillips. […]
Posted inGoat
End of an era?
Last Wednesday, to rather muffled fanfare, the Department of the Interior released a new set of rules that will make it easier for tribes and Indian landowners to lease their property for economic development. Native Americans will be able to do the things that private landowners do all the time: apply for a mortgage; establish […]