By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House In the months since Solyndra’s collapse, there have been many inquiries into who knew what and when, and why this particular company was chosen to receive $528 million in loan guarantees. Did the White House hand-pick Solyndra as a quid pro quo for campaign contributions? Did the Department of Energy […]
Changing the way renewables are funded
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: Road rage and a wild lands successor
Several Utah counties and the state think the Bureau of Land Management is playing troll in a billy goat saga by limiting access to several hundred road segments that cross public lands. County and state officials want to wrest road control from the BLM, and hope U.S. District Court Magistrate Brooke Wells will grant them […]
Posted inWotr
Breathing clean air comes in second in Congress
Even in these politically polarized times, one might think that breathing clean air could muster some bipartisan support in Congress. A quick look at the bills the House of Representatives has been passing lately should dispel that naïve notion. Three bills aimed at delaying new air pollution rules on coal-fired power plants, cement kilns and […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Daniel Marlos shares his knowledge and love of the insect world
In early June, Daniel Marlos, an eccentric, cherubic-faced Los Angeleno, received an intriguing message from a friend: “If there weren’t two little, scrawny legs, I wouldn’t think it was a living thing!” she said, describing a creature loitering on her porch. She emailed Marlos a photo of a tawny, wingless insect, its legs cartoonishly splayed […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Of things falling
WYOMING Marvin Bass, a Florida man who hadn’t taken a vacation in five years, didn’t get to enjoy his visit to Yellowstone National Park as planned. He was driving a borrowed 42-foot motor home up 8,431-foot-high Teton Pass when he realized how much it was laboring on the 10 percent grade. So Bass parked the […]
Posted inGoat
A Flood of Fault
—John McPhee, Atchafalaya, 1987 The Army Corps of Engineers’ Missouri River Division is not the place to work if you have a pathological need to be liked. That’s because the Corp’s water management priorities on the Big Muddy involve a crazy-making number of stakeholders, each with different and often conflicting interests. There are downstream barge […]
Posted inWotr
Of marigolds and a day with the dead
Living close to the Mexican border, I’m often asked if I have problems with drug smugglers or “illegals” trekking across our land here in the mountains of southern Arizona. When I tell friends in the Midwest or New York or Oregon that my main worry is walking into a Safeway parking lot in Tucson and […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: After 10,000 years
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Wanting to climb one last mountain before winter shuts down the high country until June, on Veteran’s Day I headed with my buddy Steve to Mount Augusta, a 10,000-foot peak in the remote Clan […]
Posted inGoat
The (slowly) changing face of energy country
Change often comes quickly to energy country. Take Williston, N.D., at the heart of an oil boom which has more than doubled the state’s oil production since 2008. Williston mayor Ward Koeser recently told NPR that in just a few years’ time, the town’s population has grown from 12,000 to an estimated 20,000. And he […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Feds attempt to speed complicated process of building power lines
On a brisk October day, Paul Christensen is helping harvest sugar beets on his southern Idaho farm. His work as a Cassia County commissioner keeps him busy, he says, but he still enjoys “playing in the dirt.” He’s not the only one: Cassia is among Idaho’s most productive agricultural counties. That’s partly why it has […]
Posted inGoat
Spotty enforcement in the gas patch
Multiple choice question: Last year, Colorado collected $1.2 million, Wyoming $15,500, California $13,123 and New Mexico $0, for fines associated with what activity? A. Poaching of big game animals B. Misleading labeling of food items C. Oil and gas drilling D. Late returns of library books Unless you’ve been in solitary confinement for the last […]
Posted inRange
Jack rabbit surprises
A small mention in a column in my local newspaper last week sent me scurrying to Google and other databases to find out more. The topic? A recent decline in the black-tailed jack rabbit (Lepus californicus) population. Okay, it’s not that I’ve ever been all that interested in jack rabbits, though now I’m kind of ashamed of that. […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Why do people yearn to possess wolves and other wild animals?
I’m hazy about some of the details, because it happened about 25 years ago, but the essence of what I saw is seared into my mind. As I was driving cross-country on a lonesome two-lane through New Mexico desert, I came upon a forlorn-looking roadside zoo. I saw the sign, felt curious, pulled into the […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Reluctant assassins: A review of The Sisters Brothers
The Sisters BrothersPatrick DeWitt325 pages, hardcover: $24.99.HarperCollins, 2011. Although it’s set during the Gold Rush era, Oregon author Patrick DeWitt’s second novel, The Sisters Brothers, is modern Western noir at its finest. The notorious brothers Eli and Charlie Sisters work as professional hit men. Eli, the narrator, is the good-natured “fat one.” Charlie, a merciless […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Montana’s dirty underbelly
What an outstanding story (HCN, 9/19/11, “Lost Opportunity”). I moved to Montana eight years ago and have seen only snapshots of the full picture. This story is a well-balanced portrayal of a rarely seen, dirty underbelly here in Montana. It avoids the simple sound-bite friendly rhetoric that too often dominates discussion of environmental issues in […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Meditations on craft: A review of What I Learned at Bug Camp
What I Learned at Bug Camp: Essays on Finding a Home in the WorldBy Sarah Juniper Rabkin173 pages, softcover: $15.Juniper Lake Press, 2011. Twenty-some years ago, University of California, Santa Cruz, writing professor Sarah Juniper Rabkin banished us from the classroom and told us to write outside, under a redwood. The assignment left a lasting […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
In the weeds
Amy Whitcomb’s essay really puts the job of eliminating invasive weeds from federal lands into perspective (HCN, 10/17/11, “Among the processes of place”). I have been doing the same for the National Park Service since 2006, traveling all over the Southwest, mostly trying to eliminate tamarisk (saltcedar) and Russian olive. Currently, I am in the […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Forgotten Fossils
On page 3 of the recent issue appear “snapshots” of four national park units’ paleontological resources (HCN, 10/17/11, “A fossil-fueled survey”). Among those highlighted is the 2010 discovery of Barnum Brown’s dinosaur dig sites in Big Bend National Park. After six years as chief ranger of that park (1977-’82), I was assigned to Buffalo National […]