In the West, big game hunting can be big business. In January, a New York man shelled out $300,000 at auction for a tag to hunt Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep in Montana this fall — almost equaling the 1994 bid record of $310,000 for a bighorn tag. All Western states have similar auction programs for […]
Big game tag auctions raise big bucks for Western states
Posted inApril 16, 2012: The Other Bakken Boom
At the boiling point
Thanks for Matt Jenkins’ article on the “water warrior” and the woes of interbasin water transfers that affect so many regions of Colorado and the West (HCN, 3/19/12, “Water Warrior”). It is also time to think about how we are boiling our water away in order to create electricity in the steam-generating plants that dominate […]
Posted inApril 16, 2012: The Other Bakken Boom
A lament for open range
Thanks to Jonathan Thompson for pointing out that there is more nastiness involved in the drilling and production of natural gas than fracking (HCN, 3/19/12, “A fresh focus on frack attacks”). Once-open Western rangelands have been transformed into industrial slums, complete with contaminated water and air. Habitats have been destroyed and wildlife populations displaced or […]
Posted inApril 16, 2012: The Other Bakken Boom
A headstrong hero
It was a great pleasure to read the article in the Feb. 20 edition of High Country News on Martin Litton (“A restless giant”). He is one of the heroes of the American West: passionate, headstrong, principled. The photo of him rowing the dory in the Grand Canyon should one day make its way to […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: Water’s the word in Western news
While the perennial news of the West remains it’s drying, it’s drying, it’s drying, this week brought us a welcome respite: thunder and rain storms. The air smelled fresh, the fields greened and the cars went another week without washing. Water related news also poured down through the intertubes too: read on. Salmon chroniclesAbout […]
Posted inWotr
Face it: All forests are “sluts”
If you think the word “slut” insults women, how about the use of the word “virgin” to describe a forest that’s never been logged? It’s a commonly used term. Dictionary.com, for instance, defines “virgin forest” this way: “a forest in its natural state, before it has been explored or exploited by man.” Still, I was […]
Posted inWotr
Dead man working
There are plenty of ways for roughnecks to kill themselves. When I worked as a roofer in Deer Lodge, Mont., the guys on the crew would tell the same joke that’s been amended to every one of my blue-collar jobs: “If you fall off the roof, you’re fired before you hit the ground.” The joke […]
Posted inGoat
An unworthy opponent
For about a month, I’ve had my eye on the Arizona legislature’s uncanny will to pass fanatically conservative laws. This week seemed to reinforce that will, illustrated by these headlines: “Arizona bill would let mine firms shroud cases of pollution” and “Arizona okays secrecy for environmental reports.” While the headlines grab readers, they’re hyperbolic, and […]
Posted inWotr
Solar power works best when it stays small and local
In the spring of 2010, I was minding my own business, directing a small nonprofit whose focus for 15 years has been to fight any and all attempts to privatize public land. From bad land swaps that benefit billionaires and cheat the public to congressional selloff schemes, we thought we’d seen it all. Then along […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A farewell to Montana’s grand madam
MONTANARuby Garrett, the racy grande dame of Butte, Mont., died March 17 at age 94. For many years, Garrett was the proprietor of the Dumas, the town’s last brothel, until it closed in 1982, reports the Montana Standard. Garrett had a couple of brushes with the law along the way, serving six months in jail […]
Posted inGoat
The unbearable lightness of winter
Maybe it’s because my meteorologist mom used to load our family into our old Dodge van to venture forth onto the flats east of Boulder, Colo., every time there was a severe nighttime thunderstorm to park beneath and ogle (a van, she and my dad reassured my brother and I, makes a pretty good Faraday […]
Posted inArticles
The itch that riles Frontera author Denise Chavez
Year after year, artists and authors, wrestlers and dancers, mariachis and chefs and people of all ethnicities have gathered in the tiny town of Mesilla, N.M., for the Border Book Festival, an unusual celebration of Frontera art and literature. The festival, which attracts internationally known writers and publishers to this impoverished region, features Latino-centric craft […]
Posted inRange
Lighten up, take a load off
All this serious, recent talk (also see this) about Western water shortages and new pipelines gets me thinking again about a not-so-serious but related subject: poop. Granted, there are many very serious aspects of poop such as its disease-carrying properties. You may be aware that some of these benefits are old news to Joseph Jenkins, […]
Posted inRange
A toxic cocktail runs through it
The Yakama Nation calls for additional remediation of the Willamette River.
Posted inGoat
Insects v. orange juice lovers
In the battle of man (and his morning glass of Tropicana) versus a 3-millimeter long, mottled-brown insect, the insect has mostly been winning. Asian citrus psyllid, and the disease it transmits, the uncurable-and-deadly huanglongbing, also known as citrus greening disease, has been cutting through citrus orchards in the major U.S. orange-producing states since 2005, when […]
Posted inArticles
Could doing chores save the world?
A version of this essay originally ran in Sage Magazine, a publication run by students at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. On the day I arrive at Lama, N.M., it takes me a few minutes to find the people. When I find them, they are all holding hands around a large octagonal […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: climate action and water wars
Not all environmentalists have recognized their starvation for fiction depicting climate doom, but when they do, Paolo Bacigalupi has a book for them, “The Drowned Cities.” Bacigalupi told his friend and former High Country News editor in chief Greg Hanscom, in a recent Q&A, about his befuddlement regarding the lack of “ecocollapse” parables in popular […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Following the Old Spanish Trail across the Southwest
In his search for the routes used by the West’s early travelers, archaeologist Jack Pfertsh has become a detective of detritus. Today he’s on the hunt for old tin cans and fragments of purple and green glass. The mid-November sun is sinking as we walk the windswept land just north of Delta, Colo. Brown grasses […]
Posted inGoat
Biofuel crops invade gas tanks, habitat
From bindweed to tamarisk, invasive weeds are a scourge of many Western communities; certainly not something anyone wants more of. Yet a clause in newly proposed bill to promote biofuels energy may open up a loophole that would send federal dollars to pay farmers for planting and growing certain highly invasive plants as bioenergy feedstocks. […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Falcon fear factor
OREGONThree peregrine falcons named Judah, Carbon and Zinc are the go-to birds for a Portland garbage station when it wants to discourage pesky seagulls that scatter food scraps and foul nearby roofs and cars with their droppings. The raptors don’t have to attack the gulls to haze them away, reports The Oregonian; all they need […]