It’s Friday and that means it’s time for a roundup of some of the important Western news of the week. Our interns are all missing in action, one of the editors is in the Grand Canyon and another is in the canyons of New York City, and so I’m taking on this update. And then […]
Friday news roundup: fires start, wildlife die
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Retirees join environmentalists in fighting Arizona copper mine
Nestled as it is amid saguaro-studded hills, under a sky crisp blue by day and starry by night, you’d never guess Queen Valley, Ariz., is only 40 miles east of Phoenix. Its cozy homes surround a lush golf course, about four miles from a swath of state land perfect for four-wheeling, hunting and bird-watching. About […]
Posted inWotr
Don’t bury her deep in the cold, cold ground
As anyone who knows her will tell you, my mother is opinionated. She knows exactly what she wants in life, and — as I recently learned — in death as well. She and I have been discussing her funerary wishes off and on since her own mother passed away a year ago. It was an […]
Posted inRange
Make anglers allies for endangered species
The prism of clear river water can distort and magnify the size of a fish, an effect amplified by adrenaline and nostalgia. Still, I remember one fish big enough to shake my whole view of the world. I was of that tender age when one believes one’s father to be capable of anything except failure. […]
Posted inWotr
Rachel Carson’s redwood dreams, and 50 years of “Silent Spring”
As a child of the 1950s, I remember hot summer nights that were only relieved when a truck came by spraying a cool mist that would kill mosquitoes. We kids ran after that mist like it was the ice cream truck. Several years later, with the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962, parents […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
How to dispose of frozen cows
COLORADO Time has run out for the frozen cows of Conundrum Hot Springs, the immensely popular, 11,200-foot-high stopover for hikers in western Colorado’s White River National Forest. According to the Aspen Daily News, several cows jammed themselves into a Forest Service cabin this winter, apparently to get warm, though unfortunately they were unable to figure […]
Posted inGoat
The time for oysters
Next time you find yourself in the San Francisco Bay Area, which for your own sake will be soon, I hope, there are a few things you ought to do. Walk across the Golden Gate, go one of the Thursday “NightLife” events at the Academy of Sciences and drive north to Tomales Bay and feast […]
Posted inRange
Treaty tribes dedicate final replacement fishing site
DALLESPORT, Wash. – On April 25, 2012, representatives from four tribes, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Army Corps of Engineers all stood by the Columbia River to mark the end of a construction project both useful and symbolic. It was the completion of the 31st — and final — fishing access site on […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Western legislatures grab for control of public lands
In late April, Arizona’s Legislature approved a bill demanding that Washington, D.C., give the state control over most of its federal land. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed a similar measure in March. These bills are, of course, highly unlikely to result in any actual transfer of land; most legal experts think they’ll prove unconstitutional, and […]
Posted inRange
Debate over what makes a road rages on in Utah
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House This spring, to fulfill a friend’s birthday wish, we traveled from Colorado into Utah, dropped south off of I-70 near Green River on Utah Highway 24, and drove about 30 miles before leaving the pavement. Our destination was the West Rim trailhead in the Horseshoe Canyon Unit of Canyonlands National Park. […]
Posted inGoat
The Colorado River and Big Daddy drought
It’s not news to any of us that most of the West is in drought, that we’re using more water each year than snowfall and rain replenish, that one of our biggest watersheds, the Colorado River Basin is overallocated and its reservoirs are slowly silting up. Now, Utah’s Deseret News has published a thorough, informative […]
Posted inGoat
From gust to gale
The Energy Integrity Project is one of a growing number of “grass-roots” groups around the country that aggressively lobby against regional wind development projects and renewable energy policies. And while most are small, NIMBY-type outfits, documents recently obtained by the Checks & Balances Project — a government and industry watchdog organization — suggest that these […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Western legislative roundup
Western legislatures, except California‘s, have finished for 2012. Montana and Nevada didn’t have a lawmaking session this year, but elsewhere, election-year politics, not surprisingly, influenced what happened. In New Mexico, many Republican-favored bills were shot down by a Democrat-controlled Legislature, including a measure to repeal a 2003 law that allows undocumented immigrants to get drivers’ […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
The least — and most — American of places: A review of Rez Life
Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation LifeDavid Treuer368 pages, hardcover: $26.Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012. Accomplished novelist David Treuer turns to nonfiction in his latest book, which combines elements of his own life on “the rez” with a historical look at North American Indian life over the past several hundred years. Since “most people will […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
The delights of urban wilderness
I spent most of my awkward teenaged years sequestered in subdivisions among manicured lawns and black-topped cul-de-sacs. Fortunately, when after-school TV got too boring, I could leave the house and go exploring — wandering alone through the scruffy patches of woods and fields that edged our orderly neighborhood outside St. Louis, Mo. I remember the […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Matters of life and death: A review of Contents May Have Shifted
Contents May Have ShiftedPam Houston320 pages, hardcover: $25.95.W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Pam Houston writes somewhat like a modern-day Jane Austen, although rather than merely dance at the ball, Elizabeth Bennet gets to go backpacking with Mr. Darcy in the San Juans (or perhaps take a trip to Tunisia or Bhutan). Beginning with her […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
HCNers go to journalism conferences
High Country News‘ hometown of Paonia, Colo., has great food, great people, great access to mountains, rivers and deserts, and a great climate. What it doesn’t have, beyond our little office, is much in the way of opportunities for journalistic cross-pollination or training. So we were thrilled when HCN online editor Stephanie Paige Ogburn won […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Dear HCN: Reader survey responses
Our annual reader surveys have been trickling in, and as always, they’re chock-full of thoughtful criticism, enthusiastic encouragement, and suggestions for widening — or narrowing — our field of view. Here’s a sampling of what’s on your mind. One of the things we appreciated is that HCN is apolitical. I found Tom Zoellner’s “Extreme Arizona” […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Bark beetle kill leads to more severe fires, right? Well, maybe
The lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forests of the Intermountain West are reeling under a one-two punch: more frequent and severe wildfires, and an epidemic of tree-killing bark beetles. Once-green forests are filled with red dying trees and patches of gray dead ones. From a distance, the effect is oddly beautiful. Up close, people often experience […]
