This week was a tough one for news watchers. Our favorite Monkee died, yet another member of that rare, endangered species — the moderate Republican — fell by the wayside, and good manners seem ever on the wane. Even upstart subway station ads are becoming shockingly rude. Despite our general melancholy, we still took heed of tweets […]
Friday news roundup: Endangered species, oily disappointments
Posted inGoat
Into the Big Empty
Cross posted from the Last Word on Nothing. I grew up in the Hudson Valley of New York State, and went to college in western Oregon — both beautiful places, beloved by many. But I never knew what it was to love a place until I spent a college summer in southern Utah, where I worked […]
Posted inWotr
A fresh focus on frack attacks
A widely reprinted AP story recently broke the stunning news that the energy industry doesn’t like “fracking.” They like fracking itself — injecting water, chemicals and sand into wells to break hydrocarbons free of tight rock formations. What they hate is the word: Fracking sounds just plain nasty. “It’s Madison Avenue hell,” says Dave McMurdy, […]
Posted inGoat
Fear and loathing in Arizona
Though I can’t recollect exactly what I ate, Dr. Brown had a BLT. Our Texas governor had recently left for the White House. We were having lunch at IHOP on University Street in College Station and talking about black film, rapper Tupac Shakur (she disliked him) and romances gone sour. Dr. Brown taught “African Americans […]
Posted inRange
Crowd control and wilderness redux at Yosemite’s Half Dome
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Every year, from sunup ‘til sundown, from Memorial Day into October, there’s a traffic jam of sorts high above the Yosemite Valley floor. The trek to the top of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park’s iconic peak, is a destination hike for people from all over the world. The trail, which ascends […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Black bears named “Blue,” pink Chinese dust
MONTANA A 200-pound black bear with a flair for home decorating denned this winter in the crawlspace beneath a family cabin at Georgetown Lake, west of Butte, Mont. Once dug in, the bear noticed the stairs and a trap door above it, reports the Billings Gazette, and proceeded to break open the door and wander […]
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A conversation I look forward to having with the NRA
“Hello, Mr. Wray. This is John from the National Rifle Association. How are you doing tonight?” “Fine, thanks.” “Mr. Wray, as a Life Member of the NRA, I know you are concerned with our right to bear arms. Are you aware of Obama’s under-the-radar effort to destroy our Second Amendment rights?” “You mean President Obama?” […]
Posted inRange
Lessons from the Musselshell: the aftermath
Editor’s note: This is the fourth blog in a series by contributor Wendy Beye, chronicling a restoration effort on Montana’s Musselshell River. Floodwaters dallied in Musselshell River’s floodplain for months, precluding any attempts at damage assessment or repair. The first priority was to restore community water systems and roads. Dump trucks, excavators, and graders were tied […]
Posted inRange
Land of Disenchantment
The Territory of New Mexico became the 47th state of the union in 1912, so the state is celebrating its centennial this year. It’s also looking for a new marketing slogan to revive its tourism industry. For nearly 80 years, it’s been “the Land of Enchantment,” but the spell seems to be wearing off. As […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
Environmental warrior Martin Litton is still fighting at 95
Martin Litton, 95, wastes no time on proprieties. “I’m supposed to be dead, you know,” he growls on a January morning, leading me through a thicket of potted plants into his home in the hills near Palo Alto, Calif. A towering presence with a booming voice, Litton has spent his life battling developers, extractive industries […]
Posted inRange
Climate debate hearkens back to days of the bison
An old bison bone on my desk has me thinking about air pollution, climate change and the American mind. You remember the basics from history class: Tens of millions of bison roamed the Great Plains. Along came Manifest Destiny and market hunters shot them for hides, tongues and just to get the great beasts out […]
Posted inGoat
All (climate concerned) eyes on D.C. court
For environmental law wonks, the debate unfolding in a Washington, D.C., federal appeals court this Tuesday and Wednesday is the courtroom equivalent of the Super Bowl: the stakes are high and everyone is watching. Playing offense are a few states, including Texas, Utah and North Dakota, along with Big Coal, Big Oil, Big Ag, the […]
Posted inWotr
Our nuclear legacy should have taught us something
Here in Moab, Utah, where we can watch railcars carry off the radioactive uranium waste that was stored right next to the Colorado River, many locals are steeling themselves for the return of yet more uranium to their lives. During the Cold War, Moab was called the uranium capital of the world, as the element […]
Posted inRange
The battle for new wilderness: A closer look at Montana’s Sleeping Giant
Editor’s note: This is the last story in a group of pieces produced for High Country News by students in the University of Montana’s online news class. They ran over a period of two weeks in the Range blog. You can see a list of all the stories here. By Daniel Viehland On Nov. 10, […]
Posted inRange
Left out of the Arizona debate: energy
On Wednesday, February 23rd, the four Republican presidential candidates were in my town, Mesa, Arizona, for yet another round of “debate.” As everyone knows (and as Tom Zoellner’s recent book excerpt reminded HCN readers), Arizona is friendly turf for these guys, and conservative Mesa may be friendliest of all. The audience at the Mesa Arts […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
How Arizona’s culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
To understand why Jared Lee Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 18 others 2011, look to Arizona’s vitriolic politics.
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: environmental antiheros and solar booms
Picking apart the news through the hurried swoosh of this stunted week, I leaned back in my rickety desk chair for a few minutes to consider which rugged individualist in this day and age concerns me more. Is it the ironman fugitive on snowshoes who vanished in the powdery woods of Southern Utah nine years […]
Posted inWotr
Some politicians turn public lands into a political football
As presidential candidates crisscross the country — even dropping in on a few Western states — some have been making revealing comments about the vast public lands that help to define the American West. For instance, former Gov. Mitt Romney said, “I don’t know why the government owns so much of this land.” In the […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
I don’t love my dog
There’s a dead fawn outside my front door. The sweet young body is completely covered in tall grass, which means this is a mountain lion kill, which means that the mountain lion responsible is going to come back for the next few mornings and nights to finish eating. I must admit that, although I’m reflexively […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Hollywood turns wolves into man-killers
THE WESTOnce again, Hollywood has chosen mythmaking over reality in its portrayal of predators, in this case, Alaskan wolves, in a new movie called The Grey. According to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, the “man-versus-beast thriller” pits stranded oilfield roughnecks against extreme cold, hunger and a pack of starving wolves; when carnage erupts, “the wolves are usually […]