The Arbor Day Foundation sent me a Tree Survey a few months ago. At least it called itself a survey, but it turned out to be more of a pitch for donations in the form of a questionnaire. Still, I decided to finish reading the thing before I tossed it in the wood burner with […]
Planting the millionth tree
Posted inGoat
The Nevada surprise
For the last 12 years, Nevada has had but three Representatives in the U.S. House: Two from the southern Clark County cities where 70 percent of Nevada lives and works, and another representing everybody else — all of rural Nevada from Elko in the far northwest to Pahrump on the state’s Western border with California. […]
Posted inGoat
From coal mine to clean energy
At first glance, the man greeting visitors last Friday at the start of the gravel road leading to Elk Creek mine, a coal mine in Colorado’s North Fork Valley, might have been mistaken for a miner. His bright orange vest and black hardhat looked the part. But both items lacked the black dust that settles […]
Posted inWotr
Remembering George McGovern as the elections pass
As the 2012 election recedes into the background, it’s still time to play the post-election game called “What did it really mean?” or, in the case of this election, “What did we get for $2.6 billion?” Pundits on the yak-yak circuit got the jump on the game when the election was quickly called for President […]
Posted inRange
Sportsmen given credit in Montana’s Dem governor win
Although not as highly watched as Montana’s seat in the US Senate, sportsmen are also being given partial credit for tipping the scales toward the Democratic victor, Steve Bullock, over Republican Rick Hill in the 2012 race for Montana Governor. A Lee newspapers analysis quoted Bullock campaign manager Kevin O’Brien, as he passed around the […]
Posted inGoat
A Western obstructionist gets obstructed
Updated 9:49 a.m., 11/12/12 James Inhofe, a 77-year-old senator from Oklahoma, a grown man with no history of mental illness, claims to have uncovered divine logic that refutes the science of global warming. He has sanguinely decoded the rubric among verses in the first book of the world’s most famous text — the Bible. Here […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Utah’s utopia, unfulfilled
I found Jonathan Thompson’s article on Utah’s split personality between its politics and economic policies interesting and informative (“Red State Rising,” HCN, 10/29/12). Especially insightful is his observation about the economic disparity between the Wasatch Front and the rest of the state’s communities. If one checks the most recent annual data published by the U.S. Commerce Department, you […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
The violent story of our first national park: A review of Empire of Shadows
Empire of Shadows: the Epic Story of YellowstoneGeorge Black548 pages, hardcover: $35. St. Martin’s Press, 2012. Whenever my country’s absurd politics wear me out, I remind myself that we were the first nation to have a true national park: Yellowstone. Sometimes, I’ll even drive the four hours or so south from my home to the […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
The bastard child of the range
About 10 years ago, reporter Dave Philipps found himself staring in awe at the thousands of captive mustangs corralled near Cañon City, Colo. He was there to write about wild horses rounded up from public rangelands by the Bureau of Land Management. Some were adopted out, he was told, but most would go into “retirement”: […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Legend of the gray-headed hunter
“Red sky at morning, hunter take warning,” I told Jimmy Jack Mormon, as we stumbled along a frozen rutted road in the Montana dawn. “Ssshhh,” Jimmy ordered. “You’re warning the deer.” “Oh, they’ve already heard about me,” I whispered back. I’d missed two the evening before. Beautiful does, both, stepping carefully out of a willow […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Feds reluctant to kill wild horses
If caring for captive wild horses costs so much, why not just sell them for slaughter? It’s the “simple solution,” former Bureau of Land Management wild horse and burro program chief Don Glenn, now working for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, told a federal advisory panel this spring. “It makes no sense for the taxpayers […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
BLM “ecosanctuaries” unlikely to provide relief for wild horses
On a crisp May morning, Madeleine Pickens, a 65-year-old businesswoman and the soon-to-be-ex-wife of billionaire financier T. Boone Pickens, steps out onto the weathered porch of her old Nevada ranch house wearing taut white riding pants, suede boots and movie-star glasses under glossy platinum hair. She points briskly, using a dachshund mix named Tommy that […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Inslee’s opportunity
I hope Jay Inslee wins the Washington gubernatorial race and takes a courageous and legacy-making stand with the governor of Oregon to remove the Snake River dams to restore the salmon runs (“Races where the environment matters. Sort of.” HCN, 10/29/12). The science on this is conclusive. If Jay can win his race, it will […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Getting involved with the West
The High Country News Board of Directors gathered in Santa Fe, N.M., in late September to toss around story ideas with readers, discuss HCN‘s growing digital audience, and strategize about the future. The context for the discussions was a proposed $2.2 million budget that aims to improve the quality of the magazine and website, while […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Enough (political stories) already
I was disappointed with what appears to be a new political stance on the part of HCN (“Red State Rising,” HCN, 10/29/12). First came an article devoted to electoral politics in Montana and Denny Rehberg. Now comes the most recent edition on the politics of Utah. While I recognize the essential nature of politics as […]
