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 […]
Another win for the pronghorns
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 […]
Posted inWotr
Washington wipes out a wolf pack
A wildlife tragedy began in Washington state on Aug. 7, when the state Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that a wolf in the Wedge Pack had killed a calf on a ranch close to Canada. Afterward, the rancher said that wolves were continuing to kill or maim his cattle. Wildlife staffers examined his claim […]
Posted inRange
Instagram gratification
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House It’s hard enough to stayed focused during a holiday week but, leave it to the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to create a truly spectacular distraction. If you’re looking for a time suck, read on. If not, get out before scrolling down. Introducing the DOI’s Instagram page. It features […]
Posted inGoat
For sale: The North Fork Valley
A few weeks ago, a Texas oilman cornered me at the Ouray Brewery. My friend and I were in Colorado’s “Little Switzerland” for a hike, a hot spring and a beer. When some attractive young women from Moab took the table next to ours, a camo-decked, rosy-faced older fellow who had been singing the “Green […]
Posted inRange
Turning climate change talk to action
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House I have a file on my desktop called “Cool Ideas.” It’s filled with news items on practical steps Westerners are taking to address climate change. I collected them over this election year while the issue drew platitudes and punch-lines from the candidates but little meaningful discussion on the national […]
Posted inGoat
The future of campaign spending
Imagine you’re one of the 40,000 people in America with a net worth of over $30 million. That’s enough to have some spare cash to play with. Why not use it to influence politics? Come on. You know you want to. Yet, you’re faced with a problem. According to analyses by the Center for Responsive […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Is there a way through the West’s bitter wild horse wars?
On a sunny spring day, T.J. Holmes creeps up a dusty arroyo in southwestern Colorado. The 41-year-old former journalist and mountain-bike champ wears beat-up jeans, her blonde curls unfurling from a sun-bleached visor and a big gun slung over one shoulder. The chalky hills of Disappointment Valley look as if they deserve their name. This […]
Posted inArticles
West of 100: Goodbye, listeners
We hope the seven episodes of West of 100 we’ve produced this year have stimulated your curiosity and warmed your ears. Unfortunately, we’ve decided to discontinue the podcast. We’ve concluded that our small staff can better serve our audience by concentrating our resources on conducting the best in-depth reporting on the American West that you […]
Posted inGoat
Computerized canyon
The Grand Canyon is already a public spectacle, with good reason. Every time I’ve visited I’ve been humbled by the frisson of insignificance I feel when peering into its vast orange depths. Ashamedly, I’ve only done the Canyon-lite tour – driven slowly around the car-accessible parts of the south rim, stopping at the viewing points […]