When Colleen Bailey became head of the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Calif., a few years ago, she asked locals what they wanted from the organization. The response surprised her: “Solve our gang problem, please.” But it also made sense. The Center is highly visible and can muster significant resources. And Salinas, despite its proud […]
A literary organization tackles California gang violence
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: The silence of desert greetings
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert.Rants from the Hill is now a podcast too! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. […]
Posted inArticles
Rantcast: The silence of desert greetings
In May’s Rantcast, also available in written form at our community blog, the Range, Mike wonders why he and his fellow desert dwellers tend to be so laconic. He recounts three different interactions he has had with others living in the desert; each of which casts a light onto the nature of those who choose […]
Posted inRange
How now, Browns Canyon
U.S. Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, got two differing views about Browns Canyon when he met with constituents and hiked in the area during the congressional Easter recess. The meetings were in Chaffee County in central Colorado. The Arkansas River flows through Browns Canyon, which sits between Salida and Buena Vista. It may well […]
Posted inGoat
A towering problem
Imagine it’s a cool autumn evening and you are a small songbird winging southward after an exhausting breeding season in Canada. The hazards of the terrestrial world — hungry cats, window-skinned skyscrapers, careless drivers — have melted away. Up here, one thousand feet above the Earth, it’s smooth sailing. South America — and its feast of insects — awaits. In the 1950s, reports […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Visitors, books and brand-new babies
The unseasonably warm weather we endured this March, which melted much of Colorado’s snowpack, had a bright side: It brought an early flood of visitors. Emily Guerin and Marie Sears stopped in after their backpacking holiday was thwarted by the weather. The college friends are bound for new challenges. Marie will enter medical school this […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Same church, different pew
As a Floridian with a second home in Teton County, Idaho — we bought an existing home — I read your words with interest (HCN, 3/5/12, “The Zombies of Teton County”). In my “real life” in Florida, I am a land-use activist. What does that mean? Our county council members would probably say it means […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Pragmatism is doomed
Setting a target for reducing fossil-fuel dependence without micromanaging how it is met makes sense, though I would like to see energy producers and consumers receive credit for conservation (HCN, 4/16/12, “Solar + wind + nuclear + natural gas = clean energy?”). Nevertheless, passage of Sen. Bingaman’s bill would represent progress, and I would hate […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
New telling of a geologic saga: A review of Rough-Hewn Land
Rough-Hewn Land: A Geologic Journey from California to the Rocky MountainsKeith Heyer Meldahl320 pages, hardcover: $34.95.University of California Press, 2011. Landscapes tell stories, and Western North America has no shortage of geological sagas in the making. Keith Heyer Meldahl offers a fresh account of this gripping Earth epic in Rough-Hewn Land: A Geologic Journey from […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Mexico’s conservationists keep fighting the good fight
Note: This editor’s musing accompanies a main story profiling Sonoran rancher Carlos Robles Elías and a sidebar describing many conservation efforts in Northwest Mexico. “150 Miles of Hell”: That’s the scorching headline over a typical story about the U.S.-Mexico border, in the April issue of Men’s Journal, a New York City-based monthly with a circulation […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Low snowpack means a dry summer for the West
The winter of 2012 produced more apocalyptic records than hip-hop MCs on the eve of Y2K. March was the warmest on record for the Lower 48, averaging 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average. In the West, La Niña predictably soaked and chilled the Northwest while leaving the Southwest warm and dry. The positive […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Doc’s Legacy
Ed Marston’s essay, “Goodbye, Doc,” in the April 16, 2012, issue particularly resonated with me. As co-editor with my partner, Mark Schiller, of northern New Mexico’s journal of environmental and social justice, La Jicarita News, I’ve contributed articles, butted heads with editors, and written letters of complaint to High Country News over the years. We […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Dispatches from the other border: A review of A Good Man
A Good ManGuy Vanderhaeghe448 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Grove/Atlantic, 2012. The U.S.-Canadian border has always been overshadowed by its more rambunctious southern equivalent. Still, for a brief period in the late 1800s, the 49th parallel was more than the often-overlooked international boundary it is today: It was the dividing line between two nations deep in the process […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Common ground in a fractured land
I arrived in Teton County, Idaho, as a regional bank president the week after the development moratorium was put in place back in 2007 (HCN, 3/5/12, “The Zombies of Teton County”). I rode the “real estate wave” in from Telluride, Colo., where I had also been a bank president. For me, conspicuous development and wealth […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Bravo, Bob!
Bravo for Bob Rawlings, the “Water Warrior,” and for the Pueblo Chieftain for their battle to keep their river water in their valley (HCN, 3/19/12). The situation where we are headed is grim. When all the agricultural water is gone to the thirsty, growing cities and agriculture is left high and dry, city people will […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Arizona’s clean-election law is pruned, but not uprooted
In the late 1980s and early ’90s, a string of political scandals left Arizona voters incensed. Ultra-conservative Gov. Evan Mecham was impeached in 1988 for misusing campaign contributions. The next year, both Arizona U.S. senators, Dennis DeConcini, D, and John McCain, R, were accused of corruption for meddling in an investigation of Lincoln Savings and […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Map of conservation areas in Mexico
This map shows conservation areas in Mexico; numbers correspond to highlighted conservation areas described in the accompanying article.
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
How conservation works south of the border
Note: This is an expanded version of a sidebar published in the High Country News magazine, accompanying a main story profiling Sonoran rancher Carlos Robles Elías and an editor’s note providing more perspective. The first nine items here correspond to numbered locations on the sidebar map of Northwest Mexico; below those nine, there’s a list […]
Posted inWotr
A final hats off to rancher Doc Hatfield
Doc Hatfield died March 20 at his home in Sisters, Ore., just after his 74th birthday, soon after his and his wife Connie’s 49th anniversary, and an extraordinarily long three years after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which usually kills within a year of diagnosis. Many Westerners may not have heard of them, but the […]
Posted inWotr
The truth about wolves is hard to find
I spent this winter in northwestern Montana close to the border of Idaho’s Panhandle, a place well known for its dense population of wolves. To hear hunters tell it, I should have seen a deer or elk skeleton every few feet on the forest floor and a lurking wolf behind every tree. Game numbers have […]