A new conservation program that gives landowners incentives to improve habitat for lizard and prairie chicken.
Carrots for conservation
Posted inRange
New Keystone XL route could still threaten Ogallala aquifer
By Lisa Song, InsideClimate News “A relatively modest jog around the Sandhills”—that’s how one TransCanada executive describes the Keystone XL oil pipeline’s new route through Nebraska, which is expected to be released in the next few weeks. But while the path will avoid the Nebraska Sandhills—a region of grass-covered sand dunes that overlies the critically important […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
What describes us doesn’t define us
Tom Zoellner has some great points about how Arizona fails the mentally ill, but I take issue with his assertion that Tucson neighborhoods are among the “coldest and most distant,” implying that we’re a hollow community and partially to blame for Gabby Giffords’ shooting (HCN, 2/20/12, “Extreme Arizona”). Zoellner says that he can attest to […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Watershed investments
National forest lands are the headwaters of some of our most coveted river systems and provide water for a range of uses (HCN, 2/20/12, “Trickle-down economics”). In the West, we rely on national forests to supply over half of our water. Climate change is increasing pressure on these water resources. The resulting threats — insect […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Stroke of insight: A review of Before the End, After the Beginning
Before the End, After the BeginningDagoberto Gilb194 pages, hardcover: $24.Grove Press, 2011. Before the End, After the Beginning, Dagoberto Gilb’s remarkable new fiction collection, begins with an arresting story written in lowercase letters, titled “please, thank you.” The reason becomes clear when a nurse reminds the narrator that he’s suffered a stroke, much as Gilb […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Sodbusting farmers plow up the Northern Plains prairie
Updated April 17, 2012 Last November, University of Wyoming economist Ben Rashford traveled across North Dakota to see the area’s famed prairie pothole region, a patchwork of wetlands and grass running from Iowa up through the Dakotas into eastern Montana. He rode with a member of the conservation group Ducks Unlimited, who showed him the […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Scars of an unfinished ski area
South of Missoula, Mont., there’s an intriguing albeit unnatural landscape feature. Nine years ago, Tom Maclay cut 30 ski runs through his 2,900-acre family ranch, pursuing his vision of a ski resort on Lolo Peak. His proposed Bitterroot Resort resembled other popular ski ventures — an all-season, upscale residential village augmented by shopping, restaurants, a […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Requiem for Arizona
Better access to mental health care in Arizona is an admirable goal, but it will do little to mitigate the madness of 6.5 million people trying to hustle a living in a nearly waterless state (HCN, 2/20/12, “Extreme Arizona”). I grew up in Arizona in the 1950s, when it was a much more livable place. […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Limbaugh of the Left?
I read HCN religiously and hold it out to my right-wing friends as a source that can be trusted to present a Western perspective. But this lead story was flabbergasting (HCN, 2/20/12, “Extreme Arizona”). I felt like I was listening to a left-wing version of Rush Limbaugh. As a third-generation native Arizonan who lives two […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
HCN takes a spring break
In mid-March, as spring starts to sneak back to our hometown of Paonia, Colo., the HCN crew will be taking one of our four annual publishing breaks. Look for the next issue to hit your mailbox around April 16. ALL THINGS DIGITALAs an HCN subscriber, you get free access to all content on our website, […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Generosity of voice and heart: A review of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest TrailCheryl Strayed336 pages, hardcover: $25.95. Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. A well-worn hiking boot dominates the cover of Cheryl Strayed’s new memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail. It’s a striking symbol of tenacity and a visual reminder of how travelers braving the […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Falling to pieces
I’ve lived in Tucson for more than 30 years and I have mourned the steady erosion of social cohesion, the death of the village that raises the child (HCN, 2/20/12, “Extreme Arizona”). Whether due to a transient population only invested in selfish seasonal pleasure, or to rugged land and a challenging climate, to dry air […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Colorado water diversions, urban and rural
I was born in Boulder, Colo., just long enough ago to witness the merging of the state’s Front Range communities into a megalopolis at the eastern foot of the Rockies. In my early 20s, I moved to the more sparsely populated Western Slope, spending time in Gothic, Leadville and Aspen before finally ending up in […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Colorado’s only full-time water reporter
In 2004, Pueblo Chieftain publisher Bob Rawlings, assisted by his daughter, Jane, was running full-throated editorials against water transfers and occasionally making news himself. The not-exactly-impartial coverage of the controversy bothered Chris Woodka, then a managing editor. So he asked to be assigned to the water beat. “I said, ‘OK: I’m going to do it […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: repeals and drying rivers
As we reach the end of a week that seems rife with repetitions, and as candidates continue to wax and wane in popularity like so many moon cycles, we’re holding steady. Resignations have also been running amok, with some so fed up they leave their company, their zoo or even their empire, but fear not […]
Posted inWotr
A moral issue confronts industrial farmers
Did you know that Nebraska is being invaded by “terrorists” and “conspiracists?” Perhaps the kindest descriptive noun some unnerved Nebraskans are using these days is “extremists.” Brace yourself: The terrorists and extremists in question are various organizations and people who care about the welfare of farm animals, led by the Humane Society of the United […]
Posted inGoat
Catching up on carbon capture projects
On a recent bike ride home from Paonia’s Paradise Theater, where the evening film was Melancholia, Lars Von Trier’s surreal goodbye to planet Earth, I observed the starry Colorado sky like a born-again tramp and only slightly avoided succumbing to the dolor from the film’s creeping commentary on humanity’s desperate plight against a doomed existence. […]
Posted inWotr
Saying good-bye to the ranch
All my childhood memories take me back to my family’s guest ranch in a remote area of northwest Colorado. Without this place, what would I have to remember? There are the good memories of riding through uncut hay meadows and racing toy boats down our backyard stream, all set beneath the looming peaks of the […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
The BLM struggles to get ahead of oil and gas development in the West
About 20 miles east of Lander, Wyo., cliffs rise from a sagebrush-laden basin between the Wind and the Sweetwater rivers. The erosion-carved rocks display unusually intact geological layers from 10 to 53 million years ago. Golden eagles and ferruginous hawks soar high above; greater sage grouse and pronghorn winter at the base. All this helped […]
Posted inRange
Wildlife on working lands get a leg up
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Rural landowners in the West, and in several states back East, just got a big incentive to protect seven vulnerable species on their property. Working Lands for Wildlife, a new partnership between the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was announced last week. The money […]