Ever noticed how the loudest, most enraged environmental critics (you know, the ones with the tumescent neck vein that throbs angrily at the slightest mention of endangered species or roadless areas) are usually the people who know the least about environmental issues? “Global warming? That’s BS! Our state had record snowfall this year.” “Green energy? […]
Ignorance is blissless
Posted inWotr
Ice matters
“Now I know a glacier,” said Leon, a playwright from New York. We sat across from each other in front of a small driftwood fire, the cool Alaskan evening wrapping us in darkness. Leon had just spent five days with me as an artist-in-residence in the wilderness area where I work. Each day, our near […]
Posted inGoat
A civil disobedient for the modern era?
Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them?Or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded?Or shall we transgress them at once? In 1849, Henry David Thoreau posed these questions in his essay, “Civil Disobedience.” Yesterday, a civil insurgent from the climate-change generation, Tim DeChristopher, was sentenced to […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Milestone in Cobell Indian trust case
In a crowded federal courtroom near the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on June 20, the first person to testify was Elouise Pepion Cobell, a member of Montana’s Blackfeet Tribe. Cobell, 65, exemplifies persistence. She grew up in a house without utilities and has worked as a banker and the treasurer of her tribe. Testifying […]
Posted inGoat
Bad bills on the rise
Two bills being considered in the House continue Republican-led efforts to weaken environmental protections. HR. 1581, the Wilderness and Roadless Area Release Act, would drop protections on at least 43 million acres of public land. Roadless national forest lands and wilderness study areas would be “released” for unfettered access to off-highway vehicles, oil and gas […]
Posted inRange
Naming the wind
Living in the West means living with the wind. Some of our winds even have names like chinook, dust devil, black roller and blue norther. Many of us learned of another name this July, when a “haboob” struck Phoenix. It’s a blinding dust storm, provoked by strong gusts from a thunderstorm. The National Weather Service […]
Posted inExtreme green
Suckling responds: Cashing in? Nope, just saving species every day
Note: This is a response to a Writers on the Range column by Ted Williams, headlined “Extreme Green.” Industry-funded zealots are angling to prevent nonprofits from protecting veterans, children, workers and the environment. With the absurd argument that nonprofits are getting rich by making the government follow its own laws, they want to ensure that […]
Posted inRange
Dental boot camp brings services to Alaska natives
BETHEL, Alaska — Conan Murat has a tough schedule. About every other week he packs up a portable dental office, checks his groceries, sleeping bags and other supplies, then he flies to one of his 13 assigned remote villages in the Yukon-Kushkokwin Delta. Then remote is a relative word: Murat’s base is Aniak, some 90 […]
Posted inGoat
A wild week in Washington
In a remote alpine valley in 1968, Rocky Wilson shot the last grizzly bear to be killed in the North Cascades. Since then, biologists have longed for proof that any grizzlies remain; some wondered if they were all gone. But with the click of a camera, hiker Joe Sebille brought the North Cascades grizzly bear […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
The return of the Lords of Yesterday
A couple of decades ago, the West’s conservationists dreamed a lovely dream: The region’s traditional extractive industry base, which had taken such a huge environmental toll, would soon make way for a kinder, gentler economy based on protecting the land for recreation and tourism. And the dream seemed on the verge of coming true; during […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
When the locals don’t want your coal, sell it overseas
The world’s largest surface coal mine complex is a landscape unto itself. Six 200-foot-high draglines tear open the earth and scoop the black coal into gigantic dump trucks that make school buses look like playthings. Two dozen loaded-down trains, each a mile long, slide out of the mine complex every day, headed for power plants […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Global Players in the West’s Extraction Economy
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Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Boom or bust for the West’s fossil fuel economy?
How big will the American West’s current fossil-fuel boom become, and how long will it last? Any answer involves as much art as science, but according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), which each year calculate outlooks for future energy production in the United States and around the […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
The Global West: how foreign investment fuels resource extraction in Western states
Douglas, Wyo., population 5,000 and home of the legendary jackalope, lies in an almost puritanical landscape — beautiful, yet shy about that beauty, concealing it modestly under a beige blanket of grass and shrubs. A collection of low-slung stone and brick buildings sits at the town’s center, with tree-shaded residential neighborhoods radiating out from it. […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
The fight over a much-needed pesticide: methyl iodide
In May, on a farm outside of Sanger, Calif., a man in a white hazmat suit and a gas mask drove a hulking tractor over bare ground, injecting toxic gas 12 inches deep in the soil. Behind the machine, plastic tarps unrolled like Saran Wrap over the land to contain the chemical. In the next […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
HCN enters the digital world
On a beautiful blue-skied June weekend, the High Country News Board of Directors gathered at our headquarters in Paonia, Colo., to discuss everything from how the editorial staff develops story ideas to the ongoing evolution of digital technology. A presentation by staff on plans to roll out HCN content for mobile phones, tablet computers and […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Can YOU carry a concealed weapon in Wyoming? A guide
When President Obama took office, state lawmakers started loosening firearms restrictions, fearing the administration would try to toughen gun laws. It hasn’t, but states continue to relax their own. On July 1, Wyoming became one of four states to allow residents to carry concealed weapons without a permit. (Arizona, Alaska and Vermont are the others.) […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2011: The Global West
Building a bridge to love: A review of Randy Lopez Goes Home
Randy Lopez Goes Home: A NovelRudolfo Anaya168 pages, hardcover: $19.95.University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. No one in the village of Agua Bendita, N.M., remembers Randy Lopez when he returns — not even his own godparents. Did he stay away too long, seeking wisdom among the gringos? Has he lost his identity? Is Sofia, his true […]