Aspen Skiing Company Sustainability VP Auden Schendler, and professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones on why ski corporations and pro athletes should step up to the climate crisis — and how they can do it. Tune in to West of 100 around the middle of each month. Available via our RSS feed, or subscribe for free through iTunes. Music: “CGI Snake” […]
The ski industry, climate hawk?
Posted inGoat
On droughts and fires past
At first glance, nothing about the photo seems awry. It shows a truck spraying water on the dirt streets of Silverton, Colo., elevation 9,318 feet, to keep the dust down, a regular occurrence in May or June. This photograph, however, was taken on New Year’s Day. In the background, mountain slopes that regularly see some […]
Posted inGoat
Beetle Evolution
The tamarisk leaf beetle is an unlikely citizen of Utah. And until recently it wasn’t found there. The tamarisk-munching bugs that now inhabit Utah, Colorado, and other parts of the West have their roots in Eurasia and hail from northwestern China and Kazakhstan. Scientists brought their ancestors to the U.S. in 2001 and set them […]
Posted inWotr
Floods, fire … are locusts next?
There must be a fellow named Job living in Roundup, Mont. That would explain the latest punch to the belly of this small rural community. The first punch occurred a year ago this May, when deputies drove through neighborhoods along the Musselshell River, rousting people out of their beds for immediate evacuation. Rain had fallen […]
Posted inArticles
Following Dad down the road
I thank you for the music, and your stories of the road;I thank you for my freedom when it came my time to go;I thank you for your kindness, and the times that you got tough.And Papa, I don’t think I’ve said “I love you” near enough. –Dan Fogelberg, from his song “Leader of the […]
Posted inRange
Wheels of change
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Many people who’ve hiked or run on mixed-use trails have experienced that moment when, lost in your mind, a mountain biker comes tearing down the slope from behind, scaring the spit out of you. I’m not fond of that particular sensation but, while I’ve been on umpteen trails […]
Posted inGoat
Documenting drought from the ground up
While her neighbors in Nebraska water their lawns, Denise Gutzmer pages through thousands of online articles about crop loss, wild fires and water shortages. As a climate scientist specializing in drought impacts, the waste bugs her. “I have a different sense of the importance of water than my neighbors do,” she said. But aside from […]
Posted inWotr
Black Sunday, 30 years later
I’m a fairly outspoken environmentalist, so what was I doing having dinner recently in Grand Junction, Colo., with retired executives from ExxonMobil, the largest oil company in the world? Well, it was kind of a reunion, since Exxon and I go back to the early 1980s, a time when I was teaching fourth grade in […]
Posted inRange
Disney’s Unlikely Heroine: The Huntress
For decades, Disney cartoons have reliably produced two stereotypes: brutish, cruel hunters and dizzy, passive princesses. But, holy daughters of Diana, times have changed. Maybe Disney’s anti-hunter bias is just the natural result of having a cast full of talking animals. But think about it: there’s Clayton, the evil hunter who nets Tarzan’s family of […]
Posted inArticles
Beyond the politics of no: Luther Propst and collaborative conservation
More than two decades ago, Luther Propst jumped away from a law career back East to found the Sonoran Institute in Tucson, Ariz. Since then, the nonprofit has helped dozens of Western communities — from Driggs, Idaho, to Rifle, Colo., to Tucson itself — grapple with growth while incorporating conservation goals into their plans for […]
Posted inGoat
Got rabies: skunks are top carrier in Colorado
Skunks get a bad rap. Of course, not every animal douses targets with rancid juice from their anal glands from 10 feet away, so perhaps it is deserved. In Colorado the striped mammals have recently earned a new form of notoriety that adds to their stinky status: They’ve jumped into the lead as the main […]
Posted inGoat
What’s up with conservation and the farm bill
On Thursday, the House Agriculture Committee released its version of the new farm bill, a ginormous piece of legislation passed every five years or so that doles out money not only to farmers, but to food stamp recipients, school lunch programs, and conservation efforts. The Senate passed its version in May. The House Ag Committee released […]
Posted inArticles
The West, in pictures
SAGE Magazine, a student-run environmental magazine at the Yale Forestry School, recently ran a photo essay of Western images submitted from students and people around the region. Here, we showcase a selection of these photos, which include beautiful wildlife photography and poignant illustrations of humans’ relationship to the natural world.
Posted inGoat
Critical habitat under scrutiny
Endangered leatherback sea turtles can thank the Endangered Species Act for the government’s decision to add a chunk of ocean on the West Coast to their protected habitat earlier this year. In January, the feds expanded the graceful sea dweller’s critical habit to 41,914 salty square miles off California, Oregon and Washington. The leatherback is […]
Posted inRange
Seeing the (overcrowded) forest for the trees
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House I was wandering around Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) last week, absorbing the cooling sight of snowfields and the 30-degree temperature drop earned by more than doubling my elevation from Boulder. On my way along Trail Ridge Road, I stopped at the Farview Curve overlook on the west […]
Posted inWotr
The Forest Service faces a test in Arizona
Arizona’s flammable ponderosa pine forests stretch from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon above the Mogollon Rim to the White Mountains in the east. Most of that land — glory country for recreationists, as well as the watershed for the Grand Canyon, the Phoenix area and many nearby towns — lies within four national […]
Posted inArticles
On the prowl with Oregon’s pygmy owls
On his first Father’s Day as a parent, John Deshler is in Portland’s Forest Park. When I called several days ago, he was checking on a northern pygmy-owl nest site, carrying 5-month Henley with him. “My baby’s been good luck,” Deshler says. “I don’t bring her out here very often, but we did find a […]
Posted inGoat
Grand Cacophony National Park?
Peace and quiet can be hard to come by at the Grand Canyon. When I camped among the ponderosa pines just outside the park gates last summer, my nightly soundtrack was a chorus of Jeep-towing RVs, the baritone rumble of Harleys and Guns N’ Roses wafting from a nearby campsite. These sounds could be the […]
Posted inWotr
Watch out for those fake Canadians
I’ve spent much of my life roaming the wild backcountry of northern Montana on hunting, fishing and backpacking trips. Although I’ve had a few humbling encounters with grizzlies, lightning and avalanches, for the most part I’ve always felt reasonably safe and secure. I never ran into any suicide bombers or terrorists and never dreamed I […]
Posted inJune 25, 2012: Special travel issue
Tracking Ice Age people in Oregon
Wind-whipped rainclouds formed a low ceiling over the oceanic buttes and basins of south-central Oregon. The usually sundrenched sage darkened in the weather as I walked, my hood pulled up against the grass-bending tug of the northwest breeze. The air smelled richer than it usually does on the dry side of the Cascades, the sagebrush […]