In gas patches East to West, tales of tainted water wells have garnered widespread media attention, putting hydraulic fracturing — broadly credited for the natural gas industry’s meteoric expansion of late — at the center of one of the country’s hottest environmental fights. But despite reams of circumstantial evidence, incontrovertible proof that fracking itself — […]
EPA aims to clean up polluted air in Western gas fields
Posted inSeptember 5, 2011: For the love of hummers
Calling all science nerds
One August many years ago, I joined a weeklong expedition to Michigan’s thickly forested Isle Royale to help gather information about the local moose and wolves. Six of us volunteers, led by a biologist, bushwhacked all day through dense underbrush searching for moose antlers and bones. Whenever we found them, we took measurements, recorded more […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2011: For the love of hummers
PG&E conservation lands
PG&E made 140,000 acres of watershed lands available for conservation as part of a bankruptcy settlement with the state of California, which bailed the utility company out. The nonprofit Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council is disposing of the parcels, shown here in grey.
Posted inRange
This is your brain on climate change
By Anne Fahey, Sightline.org Remember those old anti-drug television commercials with an egg sizzling in a frying pan? Here’s a new twist: This is your brain. This is your brain on climate change. I’ve written before that with or without multimillion dollar campaigns to discredit climate science (and scientists), our brains don’t seem very well equipped to fathom the scope […]
Posted inGoat
Friday News Roundup: Of Fuel and Frogs
TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline — the world’s largest — has dominated the news this past week. Last Friday, the State Department issued a final Environmental Impact Statement for the pipeline — which would run oil from the Alberta tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries — that concluded the project would not significantly impact the […]
Posted inRange
Beware of wolves cloaked in “access”
America’s national forests and our fish and wildlife belong to everyone. Americans rightfully demand access to this national birthright. Access is like oxygen for hunters and anglers. But beware. Industry barracudas are trying to hoodwink sportsmen into supporting bad legislation by promising “access.” Take HR 1581, the Wilderness and Roadless Release Act. It’s sponsored by […]
Posted inWotr
Just a few moments in Yellowstone
Early this summer, I went into the forest near Slough Creek Campground in Yellowstone National Park. Just out of sight of the last campsite, it felt very secluded. I set my folding chair on some flat ground next to a couple of dried buffalo flops and sat there, alone, for an hour or more. Nothing […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
The casual violence of driving
Slow is not always beautiful, but it’s the best way to experience the West — for better or worse. When I’m cross-country bicycling, I’m out in the air where I can smell everything, including the road surface, petroleum exhaust and carrion, especially deer that have died after being hit by vehicles. Of course, roads are […]
Posted inGoat
Illegal trailblazing as negotiation tool?
If you build it, the federal land agencies will include it. That’s what Montana mountain biking enthusiast Ron Cron counted on when he embarked on a three-day, illegal trail-making frenzy in the Flathead National Forest in May 2009, complete with jumps and other technical features. Illegal trail building is ubiquitous on Western public lands, plaguing […]
Posted inBlog
Extreme weather makes us pay attention to climate
This seems to be one of those times of the year when the weather forces us to pay it some special attention. It’s hurricane season, for one, and as I wrote this Irene was threatening the Caribbean and the U.S. mid-Atlantic region. Here in the low desert of Arizona we’re enduring what is likely to […]
Posted inWotr
Billboard battles don’t help much
About a year ago, in northeast Oregon, someone shot one of the wolves that ran with the Wenaha Pack. A few months later, the poacher had not yet been caught, and the case was getting cold. To revive interest, conservation groups raised $10,000 for a reward and rented space on a billboard just outside of […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Poison plants, attack of the mountain goats
CALIFORNIA “Poodle-dog bush” — what a cute name for a plant! It grows at about 5,000 feet, sports purple flowers and looks a lot like lupine. But beware: This plant has a poisonous bite. If you pick it, walk through it or expose any part of your body to it, poodle-dog raises blisters similar to […]
Posted inGoat
Speculating on solar
When the Bureau of Land Management’s Southern Nevada office sent out a letter last week rejecting Goldman Sachs’ applications to develop renewable energy on public land, you had to wonder: What was an investment bank doing in the Nevada desert? And you wouldn’t be the only one asking. The Associated Press reporter who broke the […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
Toads on high: tracking and photographing boreal toads
On a warm July morning, two biologists and three volunteers scramble up an alpine valley on the Williams Fork of the Colorado River, high in the Colorado Rockies. Their boots, scrubbed with disinfectant at 6 a.m., have become mud-sicles squelching through sucking, oily-sheened bogs. Hordes of mosquitoes pursue with zen-like focus. It’s not exactly Club […]
Posted inRange
Why rural education is failing
By Zach Wilson, The Daily Yonder The greatest challenge in rural education is the utter disregard for place. State and national governments pursue economic growth at the cost of communities, and such disregard is reflected in the way the state approaches public schooling. One of the most ugly and expedient trends in education is the […]
Posted inGoat
A bear of a season
The developed Yellowstone campground where John Wallace set up his tent last Wednesday probably made the national park seem relatively innocuous to the 59-year-old Michigan resident. It’s peak season, after all, and the place was likely humming with human activity, cars, chatter — those signs of weird, woodsy civilization peculiar to the West’s iconic natural […]
Posted inWotr
The light is changing… summer is ending
Suddenly it’s the end of August, and everything is different: The light has started to tilt and deepen, and the landscape has that burnished look, as if it’s been drenched in honey and ripened by sun. The world seems balanced; we stand at the brink of September, at the edge of the turn of the […]
Posted inGoat
Methyl iodide’s toxic saga continues
California’s approval of a dangerous and controversial agricultural chemical, methyl iodide, came further into question last week when new documents showed the fumigant’s registration process was flawed. The documents, which were made public as part of a lawsuit challenging the state’s approval of the chemical, show the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation cut and pasted […]
Posted inGoat
Utahns oppose Las Vegas’ Snake Valley water grab
In August 2009, the state of Utah sacrificed its western flank in return for development opportunities in its southern bounds. At least, that’s the way many residents in Western Utah’s Snake Valley perceive a water agreement the state inked with Nevada. In that deal, Nevada received rights to the majority of available groundwater in the […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
Navajo Monster Slayers: a tribe struggles to fight corruption
Window Rock, Arizona The Navajo Nation Council Chamber is a rounded bit of beauty inspired by the traditional Navajo hogan. It’s set against a natural arch of sandstone that gives Window Rock its name, a wide and frequently dramatic sky, and temporary government-office barracks that have been at their task several decades too long. The […]