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, […]
States work conservation into trust lands management
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 […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
‘Armchair naysayers’
HCN has once again provided Hal Herring with a forum to promote his personal views on conservation (HCN, 5/30/11). Though little emphasized by Herring, the complete lack of cooperation by Wyoming to support recovery, along with the embryonic wolf populations in Oregon and Washington, has created a difficult situation for legal and balanced application of […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
A long and studied road
By focusing on the controversy of the Clinton, Bush and Obama years, Hal Herring allows us to forget that Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act in ’73 (HCN, 5/30/11). The Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Team worked through Jimmy Carter’s term. Ronald Reagan was in office when the Recovery Plan was signed. George H.W. […]
Posted inGoat
Subsidized crop insurance: the next ag boondoggle?
Over the past few weeks, the House of Representatives has been hacking away at the budget for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The dollars cut and kept in these negotiations set a baseline for the spending in the 2012 Farm Bill debate, and since the farm bill is the primary way agriculture policy is determined […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Western papers drop D.C. reporters
The Washington, D.C., office of the Salt Lake Tribune‘s Thomas Burr and Matt Canham resembles most newsrooms. A few pieces of art cling haphazardly to the walls; piles of paper spill from one reporter’s cubicle. It feels busy, even if it’s not nearly as lively as it was a few years ago, when 14 correspondents […]
Posted inGoat
Reclaiming TSCA, One Chemical at a Time
In 1976, when the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) passed Congress and grandfathered-in some 60,000 untested chemicals, any regulatory hold the EPA could have had on manufacturers slipped quickly from their fingers. Simply by the sheer volume of substances already used in the United States, the agency fell far behind on reviewing the chemical inventory […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Spring-cleaning the acequia: A photo essay
On an April morning in northern New Mexico’s upper Pecos Valley, before the sun lit the packed dirt streets of El Cerrito, Ricardo Patricio Quintana walked the irrigation ditch. He began above the first compuerta, a scrap-wood gate that lets water into one family’s field. Every six feet, he scuffed a mark in the dry […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Not as bad as it seems
IDAHO Whiny, weak and what you might call wussy are adjectives that characterize too many people in Idaho today, complains the Idaho Mountain Express, and even some elected officials admit they’re living in fear. What fills folks with such anxiety? Wolves — which, according to one legislator, are loitering at the mailbox, holding innocent women […]
Posted inGoat
Here comes Huntsman
Updated 6-21-11 Courtesy Twitter and the Huffington Post, we’d already heard former Utah governor, ambassador to China, fluent Mandarin speaker, businessman, climate change moderate and Mormon extraordinaire Jon Huntsman Jr. was going to throw his hat in the Republican presidential ring. And on Tuesday he did just that. Slate has the story on how the […]
Posted inRange
Montana has West’s least-populated counties
Recently I had occasion to write about a proposed 65th county for Colorado, and observed that California, with seven times as many people and half again as much area, manages with a mere 58 counties. I also speculated that Iowa might be America’s leader in “counties per capita,” since it had 99 counties for about […]
Posted inWotr
Princess for a Day
Once a year, A Family for Every Child, an Oregon-based nonprofit that works to place foster children in permanent homes, hosts its Princess for a Day fundraiser. For $50, participants get pampered and primped, glittered and gifted with goody bags and gowns and an elegant tea followed by ice cream sundaes and a dance with […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Lucy the Desert Cat
Among my most sulfurous and vitriolic Rants–those far too profane to grace this page–are those inspired by my family’s housecat, Lucy. Those of you who follow these Rants know that I live in wild country, at high elevation, with terrible weather, and surrounded by a spate of voracious predators of every stripe. This is hardly […]
Posted inGoat
The pulse of the river
For a journalist, sitting through last week’s conference on the Colorado River, hosted by the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado, was a great way to take the river’s pulse — to get a sense of how the river’s water czars, academic wonks, scientists and other minders are thinking about the basin’s […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Fire fight: Forest Service explores chemical retardant hazards
What’s worse for the forest: wildfires or the chemicals dropped from planes to stop them? The U.S. Forest Service tackles this question in its 370-page study of fire-retardants’ ecological impacts, released May 13. It’s a dilemma: Retardants kill fish, contaminate aquifers and fertilize noxious weeds, but unchecked fires destroy homes, wreck some habitats, ruin views […]
Posted inRange
Peak and Ecological Flows in Oregon
As western states face proposals to divert and allocate the last available surface water – winter and wet season water – a debate is raging over how much of that water must be left instream to keep our rivers and their tributaries ecologically dynamic and alive. The recognition that rivers need “peak flows” is a […]