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 […]
Poison plants, attack of the mountain goats
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 […]
Posted inGoat
California desal plant irks enviros
Updated 8/26/2011, 4 p.m. The Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit group that works to protect oceans and beaches, just renewed its longstanding fight against a southern California desalination plant. The group has long contended the plant would kill marine animals on account of how it uptakes ocean water. But in June, the San Diego Superior Court […]
Posted inRange
10 years post September 11: Keeping America free and open
Almost 10 years ago, just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, my wife and I back-packed from near our home in Kalispell, Montana to Waterton Lakes National Park, in Alberta, Canada. For documentation, we carried our driver’s licenses, although I don’t recall anyone asked for much of a look. We just returned from another Waterton vacation. […]
Posted inRange
Attracting attention
By some accounts, the eyes of the world were on my little mountain town on Aug. 23. That’s because Salida, Colo., was the starting point for the first stage of the week-long USA Pro Cycling Challenge race that wends through the Colorado mountains. Competitors come from all over the globe, and so do the TV […]
Posted inWotr
The real side effect of medical marijuana
My father died from an addiction to a dangerous drug when I was 13. The pushers who sold it to him remain in business, and the federal and state governments seem to like that fact. I’m not bitter, but whenever I hear the arguments against medical marijuana in Western states, I’m struck by the hypocrisy. […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
River rafting — no car required
One reason I live in the West is that taking a car or plane to enjoy nature always struck me as paradoxical. How can a hiker, biker, skier or camper claim to “leave no trace” when his or her carbon footprint exceeds Bigfoot’s by several orders of magnitude? No, I said, let the Sherpas summit […]
Posted inGoat
The Perils of Playing Favorites
When it comes to imperiled species that get the shaft, invertebrates — in all their backboneless-glory — often top the list. And of those invertebrates, insects, with exception of the ever-adored butterfly and economically-key bee, have a particularly tough time garnering societal sympathy. People tend to be suspicious of or “grossed out” by insects or […]
Posted inRange
Why Washington’s only coal-fired power plant is having a bad year
By Clark Williams Derry, Sightline.org While I was looking for some other information, I ran across the most recent coal consumption stats from the US Energy Information Administration. And from all indications it’s been a very strange, very bad year for the Transalta coal-fired power plant in Centralia, WA. Take a look: The bars represent consumption […]
Posted inWotr
Great hope, great fear
Last month, three little girls, ages 8, 5 and 2, and their mother, were killed in a Wyoming flash flood that washed away their van. It was the kind of torrential downpour climatologists predict will increase as the planet warms. Their father survived. He alone can speak of the horror of trying to save his […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Bear-fighting poodles and Muslim dust storms
WASHINGTON Size mattered not a whit during a backyard encounter in the town of Kirkland, in northwest Washington, that pitted a “yapping teacup poodle” against a 200-pound black bear, reports The Week magazine. The tiny dog acted so ferocious that the bear climbed a tree, leaped into an adjoining yard and hightailed it back to […]
Posted inRange
Some places are as good as gold
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House “Wilderness, wilderness . . . We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.” Ah, nothing like a little […]
Posted inGoat
A shift in the gas debate?
When, at the direction of President Obama, the Department of Energy appointed a panel to come up with recommendations to improve the safety of natural gas development, environmentalists didn’t expect much. Watchdog groups worried the panel was weighted to favor industry. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group called for its chair, John Deutch, to step down […]