The West could become a greener place with the help of a policy I call Maximum Trashing Utilization, or MTU. Its fundamental concept is simple: Get the maximum benefit from every disturbance of the environment. If that requires changes in regulations, or perhaps some economic adjustments, let’s just do it. The more benefit we get […]
It’s time for Maximum Trashing Utilization
Posted inRange
Gold dredging conflict heats up
Back in April, HCN managing editor Jodi Peterson wrote about efforts by the State of California to come up with regulations governing suction dredge mining. The regulation rewrite is required by court order. The Karuk Tribe, Klamath Riverkeeper and others won the order by challenging whether the environmental impacts of vacuuming streambeds for gold had […]
Posted inGoat
A Westerner too reasonable for the White House?
Why would a two-term former governor of Utah, the third most conservative state in the Union, be viewed as too liberal for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination? In the state’s legislature, Republicans in the House outnumber Democrats 2-1. Its Senate is even more lopsided, with a 3-1 ratio. Yet despite former governor Jon Huntsman Jr.’s […]
Posted inRange
The past and future of Western dams
The turbines have stilled on the Elwha. Upstream from Port Angeles on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula, we are finally seeing the material effects of a very long campaign to tear down the Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams. These aging structures, which are part of a broader infrastructural crisis around the West, have blocked storied salmon […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
How the gray wolf lost its endangered status — and how enviros helped
Augusta, MontanaIn September of 1995, I worked on a trail-building crew along the edge of Little Blackfoot Meadows, in the Helena National Forest near Elliston, Mont. It was a big piece of roadless country, mostly lodgepole pines over a lush carpet of whortleberry bushes. The meadows were a sunburnt dun color, and the willows along […]
Posted inBlog
Freedom Ride West: Toxic Reality
Editor’s note: James Mills is journeying around the West, exploring issues of diversity in Western national parks. Port Arthur, TX is a long way from Colorado. But when Texas environmental justice advocate Hilton Kelley delivered a message to the Mountain Film Festival in Telluride, he demonstrated an activist power that transcends that distance. The 32nd annual Telluride […]
Posted inWotr
Saving the salmon, saving ourselves
The people of Salmon, Idaho, may have reclaimed their namesake river this spring. It happened during Riverfest 2011, a fund-raising event created to help build a kayak park downtown, where the Salmon River splits into two channels. The event attracted a lot of the 20-something boater crowd of river guides and semi-obsessive kayakers, many of […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
The One-Eyed Squirrel of Ooh-Aah Point
It was a mid-July morning during my fifth summer on Grand Canyon National Park’s trail crew, and I arrived at the worksite on the South Kaibab Trail to find an old woman — memory casts her with doughy white skin and frumpy teal-colored clothes — perched on a rock on the side of the trail. […]
Posted inRange
The kids are not all right (with climate change)
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House A few weeks ago, a band of juvenile activists made headlines around the country when they, with the help of some eager adults, filed lawsuits demanding our nation’s leaders do their part to reduce carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Two 11-year-olds in Boulder signed onto the Colorado suit, […]
Posted inGoat
When is a Jeep trail not a road?
A popular redrock canyon in Southern Utah is the latest proving ground in the undying Western debate over roads on federal public land. Last Friday, a U.S. District Court ruled that an old jeep trail up Salt Creek in Canyonlands National Park is not a “highway,” thereby upholding the park’s 2004 decision to officially close […]
Posted inRange
The diabetes industry
High Country News recently reported on an epidemic of diabetes among Native Americans who have, over the years, switched from traditional diets to mainstream processed food. And I can personally attest that this chronic disease can strike someone of Scotch-Irish-German ancestry — like me. In the fall of 2009, my vision was getting blurry, so […]
Posted inRange
Why Salazar backed down from Wild Lands
By Matthew H. Davis After strong opposition from several Western states and a pending lawsuit, Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is backing down from his controversial “Wild Lands” policy. “I am confirming today that the Bureau of Land Management will not designate land as ‘Wild Lands,’” Salazar said in a memo to Bob […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Back on your feet
NEVADA What helps someone survive an ordeal that would most likely kill anyone else? Rita Chretien, 56, should know. She and her husband, Albert, 59, who own an excavating company, were on their way from British Columbia to a trade show in Las Vegas when they lost their way in the mountains of northeastern Nevada […]
Posted inGoat
New Indian Energy Policy Draft Rewrites Bush-era Law
Several months ago at the State of Indian Nations address in Washington D.C., Jefferson Keel, President of the National Congress of American Indians, implored Congress and the Obama administration to dispose of the hurdles that have kept tribes from tapping their own energy resources. Since then, many more tribal leaders have come before the House […]
Posted inWotr
Local food, local loans
I just loaned $3,000 to a small business in my western Colorado town of Paonia, and I’m looking forward to getting the first installment on the 6 percent interest. I haven’t decided, though, if I want it in the form of a box of fresh-picked veggies or as a gourmet dinner. In six years, provided […]
Posted inGoat
It’s about dam time
Switches will be flipped today on the Elwha River, as generators at two notorious hydroelectric dams — the Elwha and the Glines Canyon — are turned off. It’s a significant first-step in a process that will continue this summer, prepping the dams for their impending destruction. Now, the pieces have finally fallen into place. This […]
Posted inBlog
A slice of life for the average EJ organizer
Many people wonder what keeps a Sierra Club environmental justice organizer busy. We could ask my fellow EJ organizers around the country and most would tell you that the times around and after Earth Day are frequently the busiest. As spring melts the last of the snows (it snowed in Flagstaff just recently), and flowers […]
Posted inMay 30, 2011: Wolf Whiplash
Greening a city … and pushing other colors out
San Francisco, CaliforniaThe Hunters Point Naval Shipyard covers 500 acres on San Francisco’s southeastern flank, jutting out into the bay like the fletching of a giant arrow. Acquired by the U.S. Navy in 1940, it was once one of the West Coast’s largest shipyards, at its World War II peak employing up to 17,000 people, […]
Posted inWotr
Extreme Green
It has taken me decades to be recognized as an environmental extremist. My “attack” on Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young, a National Rifle Association board member, in Sierra magazine fomented a mass exodus from the Outdoor Writers Association of America, including 79 members and 22 supporting organizations. I serve on two foundations that award major […]
Posted inGoat
Ordinary wild
The cougar looks thin, his narrow belly dragging close to the ground as he slinks along. Paws as big as saucers on the oil-spotted concrete. Mouth agape in a terrified pant below wild, shifting eyes. Shifting at cars that whoosh by, shifting at men who flicker at the edge of his vision — they’re clearly […]