Closing budget gaps and cutting spending — often steeply and painfully — dominated most Western legislative sessions, except in Wyoming, which is bolstered by oil, gas and mineral taxes. Colorado merged its parks and wildlife agencies; Nevada’s new public employees won’t enjoy health insurance in retirement; and Washington universities will hike tuition by more than […]
Significant — and nutty — quotable moments in the state legislatures
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
See you in July
This will be the last issue you receive for a month; we skip an issue four times a year. Look for the next HCN to hit your mailbox around July 25, and in the meantime, visit our website, hcn.org, for fresh blog posts, new Writers on the Range columns and other exciting content. Summer visitorsBen […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
River Town
I came to Flagstaff, Ariz., to run her river. The river. Flagstaff is a river town, although you’d never know it at first glance. The closest stream that flows year-round is Oak Creek, 30 miles to the south near Sedona. As the crow flies, Flagstaff is 75 miles and 5,000 vertical feet from the Colorado […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure: A review of Permanent Vacation
Permanent Vacation: Twenty Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks Volume 1: The WestEdited by Kim Wyatt and Erin Bechtol 205 pages, softcover: $15.Bona Fide Books, 2011. In Permanent Vacation, editors Kim Wyatt and Erin Bechtol have assembled an eclectic collection of essays by cooks, river guides, maids, backcountry rangers and horse wranglers […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
Abrahm Lustgarten on fracking
Since 2008, Abrahm Lustgarten has reported for ProPublica on the environmental threats posed by gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing in communities nationwide. He won the George Polk Award for his coverage in 2010, one of the most prestigious prizes in environmental journalism. In this episode of High Country Views, Cally Carswell talks with Lustgarten about […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
Hydrofracked: One man’s quest for answers about natural gas drilling
Pavillion, Wyoming There are few things a family needs more than fresh drinking water. And Louis Meeks, a burly Vietnam War veteran with deep roots in the central Wyoming grasslands, had abundant water on his 40-acre alfalfa farm, which is speckled with apple and plum trees, on a rural dirt road five miles from the […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
A lonely crusade
In many ways, it’s a sad story: The groundwater a Wyoming couple relies on to sustain their little farm suddenly turns foul. So Louis Meeks embarks on a six-year crusade to discover how it happened, suspecting that nearby natural gas wells are somehow involved. He battles corporations and governments and alienates many of his neighbors, […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
A land of subtle beauty: A review of Llano Estacado
Llano Estacado: An Island in the SkyEdited by Stephen Bogener and William Tydeman192 pages, hardcover: $45. Texas Tech University Press, 2011. The Llano Estacado is a featureless plain, punctuated by canyons, that covers much of west Texas and eastern New Mexico. In the early 19th century, this sea of grass supported millions of bison, and […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Encountering a California condor takes one writer back in time
“There they are!” shouts one of my hiking companions on this perfect January day, unseasonably warm even for California. I squint toward the horizon, past the crooked ginger-tinted rock spires and slouching gray pines, but see only sky, awash in the glare of the midday sun. Finally, I spot a dozen or so tiny black […]
Posted inGoat
Spotties get a new plan
The gigantic Wallow fire now searing Arizona and New Mexico has burned a lot of things, including several thousand acres of habitat for the threatened Mexican spotted owl (not to be confused with its more notorious cousin, the Northern spotted owl, once blamed for the demise of logging in the Northwest). Now, the U.S. Fish […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Abreast of the West
THE WEST We may be intelligent, but we’re hardly in the same league as the Clark’s nutcracker, a member of the keen Corvidae family. They cache “up to 100,000 nuts in dozens of different spots at the end of spring, and can find them all again up to nine months later,” says scienceblogs.com. And the […]
Posted inRange
To Drill or Not to Drill is Not the Only Question
By Anne Fahey, Sightline.org This post is part of the research project: Word on the Street A while back I wrote about how public opinion data are informed in great part by how survey questions are framed. Nothing shocking there. I used the American public’s increasing support for offshore drilling as an example. It turned out […]
Posted inWotr
ORV riding needs on-the-ground enforcement
Not long ago, the Glamis off-road recreation area in Southern California was notorious for two things: It had become a place where ORV drivers could have a lot of fun and cause a lot of problems. Glamis, whose official name is the Imperial Dunes Recreation Area, came to define what happens when illegal activity on […]
Posted inRange
Portland’s water managers need to grow up
Editor’s note: David Zetland, is a senior water economist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who trained in California. We cross-post occasional content from his blog, Aguanomics, here on the Range. “Apparently the “End of Abundance” hasn’t hit Portland yet,” says HG in the email that brought me this story: For the administrator of the […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
States work conservation into trust lands management
There’s just one place where Washington’s Cascade Mountains reach the sea. Rising steeply from Puget Sound, the Chuckanut Range commands sweeping views of the San Juan Islands. Hikers and bikers wander Blanchard Mountain — the range’s high point — while hang gliders launch from its cliffs. Century-old forests host abundant wildlife, including the marbled murrelet, […]
Posted inRange
How Bark-Beetle Infestations Could Intensify Spring Runoff
By Matthew H. Davis As the spring runoff leaves behind a trail of destruction in parts of the the northern Rockies, a new University of Colorado study points to how beetle-infested trees—which have affected more than 4 million acres in Colorado and southern Wyoming alone—could lead to deeper snowpack and speed up snowmelt in the […]
Posted inWotr
Monster wildfires have become the new normal
The wildfire historian Stephen Pyne calls Arizona’s Wallow Fire a “monster.” “Burning along the trajectory that every major fire in the region has followed, it will burn until the rains come,”he predicts. In 2002, the 500,000-acre Biscuit Fire in Oregon was a similar monster. Burning largely in the wild, it torched thinned and unthinned timber, […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
Thank the lawyers, Part II
In Hal Herring’s reconstruction, the lawsuits environmental groups filed are the prime cause of anti-wolf sentiments (HCN, 5/30/11). I’m skeptical. Herring implies that if the “hard-line” groups had gone along with the Obama administration, Old West folks would have accepted the wolf. I count as friends many Old West farmers, ranchers and loggers. Their visceral […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
Thank the lawyers, Part I
Hal Herring’s wolf article is most welcome (HCN, 5/30/11). Western land-use reform was only a remote hope before lawsuits leveled the playing field. Those of you thinking nice collaborations are the way to go now have militant lawyers to thank if you succeed. You had better hope they continue, albeit with a bit more prudence. […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
Not just wolf whiplash
I, a former advocate for wolf re-introduction, am suffering a severe case of wolf whiplash (HCN, 5/30/11). It’s sad, considering how much time, money and effort I have invested in wildlife and habitat conservation. I have lost all trust in those who live by the courts, and have no tolerance for groups who know lawyers […]