If you want evidence that it’s an election year, look no further than this press release from the Department of the Interior. It announces the department’s first-ever regulations (pdf) for certain federal lands covering several aspects of that ever controversial practice, hydraulic fracturing, wherein millions of gallons of water, plus measures of sand and chemicals, […]
Frack fricasee
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Note: along with the sidebar at left, a separate editor’s note accompanies this story. At 6:30 on a warm spring morning, a brightly colored summer tanager flits above green cottonwood, willow and sycamore trees. Lower down in the forest, a vermillion flycatcher darts from one mesquite branch to another. A piercing cry — “ke-er” — […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: educating tramps everywhere
Winter has fully thawed and traveling season is upon you. You’ve spruced up the RV, swept the garage and a cooler full of ice and Shasta is sparkling on your fresh-cut lawn. Now you’re sweating behind the knees and the children are whining with their mouths to the sky, like hungry eaglets. It’s time to […]
Posted inWotr
Micah True, born to run
It was less than two years ago that I first met the near-mythical Micah True, also known as “Caballo Blanco,” Spanish for White Horse, and the central character of the bestselling book, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen. He recently made headlines when he was […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Imaginary journeys on a rowing machine
I don’t mind exercise. Really, I don’t. But I’ve always preferred to do it while accomplishing something else: going to work, talking to a friend, running an errand. At the very least, I like to huff and puff outdoors, away from the computer and incipient carpal-tunnel syndrome. Going to a gym? It’s always seemed a […]
Posted inGoat
Salmon song
From the outside, the sprawling new red shed at the base of Warm Springs Dam, in Sonoma, Calif., looks suited to cows, pigs and other farm animals. But a peek inside reveals several dozen above-ground tanks, resembling water troughs, and pools, resembling Doughboy Pools. In total, the tanks and pools hold roughly 200,000 young coho […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Making roads out of toilets
NEW MEXICOIt’s hard to know whether the calf appreciated its ride in the backseat of the car; maybe it got to poke its head out the window and flap its tongue in the wind, in classic Fido fashion. But the animal must have looked noticeably larger than even a very large dog, because a deputy […]
Posted inRange
Little grousing on the prairie
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House I’m embarrassed to say that, in the decade I’ve lived on the Colorado Front Range, I’d never been to the Pawnee National Grasslands; that is, until last week. With mountains in my rear-view, I drove east from Fort Collins. Before long, I crossed the border into Weld County (called […]
Posted inWotr
The hoof stops here
Horse slaughter is back on the table, so to speak. What amounted to a congressional ban against the practice ended when the 2011 Agriculture Appropriations bill reinstated federal funding for inspecting horses before they’re sent to a slaughterhouse. But it’s hard to know what will happen next. The Bureau of Land Management’s advisory board overseeing free-ranging […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
A literary organization tackles California gang violence
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 […]
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 […]