Ten years ago, I gathered with 22 other undergraduates on the shady side of a prefab building, sheltered from the glare of a Death Valley autumn day. We were there to talk with activists from the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, who had recently won a 7,750-acre reservation, only a small fraction of it in the national […]
Tilting the balance of power
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
The truths that matter: A review of Truth Like the Sun
In Truth Like the Sun, Washington novelist Jim Lynch straddles two Seattles: the little-known Western town in the 1960s, on the brink of exploding into a world-class city, and the modern Seattle of four decades later, at the height of the dot-com boom. He braids these incarnations of the city into an intricate narrative of […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Taking it to extremes: A review of Salt to Summit
Daniel Arnold breathes new life into the fabled Wild West as he takes readers on a journey of extremes in Salt to Summit: A Vagabond Journey from Death Valley to Mount Whitney. Arnold blends history and adventure recounting his expedition from Badwater Basin in Death Valley to the summit of Mount Whitney. With a distance […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Protecting the forests, and maybe the deserts, too
At an emotional press conference in Jackson a few weeks ago, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead expounded on his love for Wyoming, recalling how his family taught him to revere “the beauty … the open space, the clean air, the wildlife, the recreational opportunity” found in the state’s mountain forests. He reminisced about the trips that […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Political paradox
Jonathan Thompson’s brilliant article, “Red State Rising,” shines some much-needed light on the paradox of politics in Utah, where government officials routinely manage economic growth and funnel subsidies to businesses — even while professing to hate big government and love free markets (HCN, 10/29/12). In putting a human face on this story, though, Thompson went […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Keep the political stories coming
I was disappointed in the Nov. 12 letter, “Enough (political stories) already,” which berated HCN for covering “electoral politics.” All politics are “electoral politics.” This year, it has been unusually disgusting, and, yes, divisive, thanks to ideologues and Big Money. The answer is to fix the system, not to encourage ignorance. If HCN is to […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Extra! Extra! Beer in Utah!
Congratulations on the excellent article, “Red State Rising” (HCN, 10/29/12). It was great to see a positive story about Utah. The Air Force moved me here 36 years ago, and for many of those years the state received more than its share of negative stories, usually focused on the failure of business and government leadership to […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Cowtowing to ranchers
While this article was informative and generally balanced, it only hinted at the intensity of cattle grazing and how it compares to the wild horse population (“Nowhere to Run,” HCN, 11/12/12). The BLM factsheet on grazing states that in 2011, BLM lands were authorized to support 8.3 million animal unit months (AUMs). The BLM estimates […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Another win for the pronghorns
We’re delighted to announce that High Country News has won the prestigious 2012 Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism for “Perilous Passages,” a Dec. 26, 2011, package of stories on wildlife migration, by former editorial fellow Emilene Ostlind, assistant editor Cally Carswell and Mary Ellen Hannibal, with photos by Joe Riis. “Passages” also recently won […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Agrichemical companies power up genetically modified seeds
One sunny afternoon, Andy Nagy and Donald Shouse drove past apple trees, plum orchards and sugar beet fields to a farm north of Twin Falls, Idaho. The late August setting was one of pastoral beauty, but the two researchers concentrated on the dirt underfoot. A farmer had asked them to come investigate some problem weeds. […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
A snapshot of the 2012 election, by the numbers
84.1 Percent of population that is Native American in Sioux County, N.D. 83.9 Percent of Sioux County votes cast for pro-oil Democratic Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp 1 Percent by which Heitkamp won North Dakota’s open Senate seat 10 Number of Utah’s 29 counties in which Obama received 10 percent or less of the vote 100 […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
A review of Continental Divide: Wildlife, People and the Border Wall
Continental Divide: Wildlife, People and the Border Wall, Krista Schlyer, 292 pages. Softcover: $30, Texas A&M University Press, 2012 Walls do not solve problems; they make them. That is the simple, elegant premise of writer and photographer Krista Schlyer’s book Continental Divide, which chronicles the unintended ecological and social consequences of the wall along the […]
Posted inGoat
Water wins
Water agencies in three Western states will soon be trading money for water with Mexico, after officials signed a pact Tuesday updating the terms of the 1944 agreement that dictates what portion of Colorado River water our southern neighbor receives each year. At a cost of $10 million, regional agencies in the thirsty states of […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Altered amphibians
This August, University of Colorado-Boulder disease ecologist Pieter Johnson made a ghoulish discovery in an Oregon pond: an “octo frog,” with eight hind legs. It was a particularly disturbing example of the kind of amphibian malformations Johnson has recorded in 17 states, six of them Western, since 1996. A common, period-sized flatworm, Ribeiroia ondatrae, plays […]
Posted inWotr
Point Reyes National Seashore, embattled at 50
We’re supposed to be celebrating here at Point Reyes, a foggy enclave along the Northern California coast about an hour’s drive and a world away from San Francisco. Fifty years ago, President Kennedy signed the Point Reyes National Seashore into existence. For years, a national seashore had been little more than a pipe dream until […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Zombies and zombees
COLORADO AND WASHINGTON Zombies must be a little too much in movie news these days. Maureen Briggs of Montrose, Colo., was fishing at Lost Lake on the Gunnison National Forest when a man and his two sons hiked by, with the younger boy asking: “Have you seen any zombies here?” Her reply, “Not yet.” But in […]
Posted inRange
The war on New Mexico’s water
As residents of the West, each of us keeps, either consciously or not, a checklist of those things that make our lives here worthwhile. Some of those things add to our quality of life, like cultural diversity and breathtaking landscapes. Others, like clean water, fall more into the necessities of life category. Without clean water, […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Costly new geothermal technology could edge out fossil fuels
At the northern edge of the Geysers, the world’s largest geothermal complex, which sprawls over nearly 40 square miles north of Santa Rosa, Calif., Houston-based power company Calpine is conducting an experiment. On the surface, not much sets the project apart from the 18 ridge-top power plants and dozens of other drilling platforms here, most […]