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 […]
Common ground in a fractured land
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 […]
Posted inGoat
Haste makes waste
Following a tip from HCN contributing editor, Craig Childs, I purged 500 words for this blog in 30 minutes, a stick-‘em-up way of pilfering my brain for production and creativity. I scored a good foundation, but since I’m still an apprentice, the rest was babble. The guiding rule for now is that haste makes waste. […]
Posted inRange
Lessons from the Old West: Don’t ban it, brand it
By P.J. Hill Last Saturday was roundup and branding day at my ranch in the Madison River Valley, about 20 miles west of Bozeman, Montana. Neighbors came to help and I put the P J (my registered brand) on the left side of my calves. As I carefully placed the irons on each calf (yes, […]
Posted inGoat
Could Arizona go blue?
To gauge how conservative Arizona is, look no further than the national headlines over the last few years: Its state legislature passed one of the most stringent immigration laws in the country, allowing police officers to check the immigration status of people who are dressed suspiciously, or otherwise strike an officer as likely to be paperless. […]
Posted inWotr
Wolf management in Idaho is not ready for prime time
Idaho’s treatment of wolves has not yet sunk to the bygone days of state bounties and federal poisoning that exterminated all the wolves in the Lower 48 states, except for a few in northern Minnesota. But it’s not far off the mark. With at least 378 of the state’s approximately 1,000 wolves already trapped and […]
Posted inApril 16, 2012: The Other Bakken Boom
When Peter Gleick fell, California’s water world lost big
updated 4/17/2012 On Feb. 14, an anonymous source released internal documents from the Heartland Institute, a conservative Chicago-based nonprofit that casts doubt on global warming science, to more than a dozen climate bloggers. The documents revealed Heartland’s major funders, including the Charles Koch Foundation and many large corporations, detailed a nearly $1.6 million program to […]
Posted inGoat
Last in line
The outbreak started in February. Migratory waterfowl heading south along the West Coast found the wetlands of northern California’s Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge — a major stopover point on the Pacific Flyway — half dry. Nearly 2 million birds passed through the area as winter edged toward spring, many crowding into the remaining 15,000 […]
Posted inWotr
When wolf-trapping goes viral
Something new and provocative came through my Facebook feed last month. The anti-trapping organization, Footloose Montana, posted photos of three trappers, all posing with wolves that they’d killed in Idaho. It wasn’t the pictures of dead animals that startled me; to motivate its membership, Footloose Montana regularly posts grotesque images of suffering animals caught in […]
Posted inRange
Earth Day — Gone Fishin’
Earth Day was once again full of stark warnings about global doom and scolds over my level of recycling and my carbon footprint. So I went fishing. In particular, I took my 8-year-old to an old gravel pit that has been landscaped into a pond and stocked with rainbow trout straight from the hatchery. One […]
Posted inApril 16, 2012: The Other Bakken Boom
The Other Bakken Boom: America’s biggest oil rush brings tribal conflict
Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, a lilting swath of prairie in western North Dakota, was once a quiet place. Though thrice the area of Los Angeles, it had only 5,000 residents. Even New Town, a more populous district east of a reservoir called Lake Sakakawea, looked sparse and ephemeral. There was a granary, a fire station, […]
Posted inRange
Sagebrush rebellion rides again
I don’t relish this role, you know. If you happened to have read some of my other posts you may have noticed a certain pattern. Sure, there’s the occasional outlier column that addresses toilets, or aspen trees, or what have you, but on a pretty regular basis I’m the lady who sheepishly discusses all the […]
Posted inGoat
Friday new roundup: froze-to-death hot springs
Back in 2010, as an employee of the Forest Service, I watched fire line explosives obliterate a dead cow to the dust that flies eat. It’s not uncommon forestry work, though it is spectacular. And White River National Forest employees might get the same opportunity this spring near Aspen, Colo. A small herd of cows […]
Posted inWotr
A good ranger stands up to bad bureaucrats
When a woman ran to the front door of Yellowstone Park Ranger Robert M. Danno with a small bundle in her arms and a panicked look on her face, he grabbed the medical kit the National Park Service had issued to him. Danno, whose duties included emergency medicine as well as law enforcement, carried the […]
Posted inApril 16, 2012: The Other Bakken Boom
Librotraficantes smuggle controversial books to Arizona
Outside Casa Ramirez, a Houston, Texas, cultural center, a group of friends feasted giddily on pan dulce and café. It was the morning of March 12, a Monday. Nothing about the assembly seemed subversive. Yet 28 of them would soon cram a commuter bus with boxes of prohibited books and drive toward Tucson, Ariz., calling […]