NORTHERN ROCKIES There are some photos you really don’t want to take. One is an extreme close-up of a quiescent Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park — the kind of photo you’d get by standing as close as possible and pointing your camera down at its small pool of water — just before the geyser […]
Upholding the right to take naps
Posted inGoat
Eminent domain expands
In early May, a business-supported eminent domain measure became law in Montana. It allows privately-held utilities to condemn private property for transmission lines and other “public good” projects if they cannot reach agreement with landowners. That means that two major new transmission lines slated to cross Montana can go forward. The lines were put on […]
Posted inRange
Same Old Song and Dance Over CA Parks
By Laura HugginsOnce again California is threatening to close state parks. Seventy (out of 270) parks are on the chopping block this time around (see an interactive map of the planned closures). The plan is to place the parks in “caretaker status,” which means gates would be closed and people would not be allowed to enter. What a dismal idea […]
Posted inBlog
Biomass energy production in the Interior West
In November I wrote a post exploring reasons many western political elites are gung ho for biomass energy production. This follow-up post explores the push for biomass energy projects where it is strongest – in the Interior West – and profiles developments in SE Oregon’s Klamath County. A wood chip truck is unloaded at a […]
Posted inWotr
We’re not all Right in Idaho
A March Gallup poll probably surprised no one when it determined that Idaho, Utah and Wyoming rank among the five most conservative states in America. The trio came in second, fourth and fifth, respectively, putting them in the archetypal company of Mississippi, which was first, and Alabama, third. Being a conservative in a blue state […]
Posted inGoat
Game on in the Wyoming Range
The future of gas leasing in the Wyoming Range is being batted around like a tetherball on a playground as energy companies and conservation groups each take swings. If conservationists win, the gas leases will be scaled back or retired and the mountains protected from development under the 2009 Wyoming Range Legacy Act. If energy […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Wild lands by any other name
The quarter-billion acres of mostly arid territory overseen by the federal Bureau of Land Management have become an unlikely battleground in the war over wilderness. Last December, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ordered the BLM to identify any “lands with wilderness characteristics,” and, when appropriate, protect them as designated “wild lands.” Salazar’s order in full is […]
Posted inGoat
Mountain of … bluster
President Barack Obama’s decision to put the kibosh on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository has been a favorite punching bag for House Republicans in recent weeks, thanks in part to the debacle at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant stoking fears over the safety of nuclear waste stored at more than 100 temporary sites around […]
Posted inRange
To shoot, or not to shoot, at Rocky Mountain NP
By Larry Keller, 05-17-2011 The elk of Rocky Mountain National Park are wildlife’s couch potatoes. Rather than roam widely throughout the 415-square-mile park and the land outside it, they are content to laze around in meadows, eating, sleeping and mating. With no predators, they can afford to be slackers. Many of them saunter into the […]
Posted inWotr
Me and my SUV
I love my purple 4Runner. She’s a 1998 stick-shift with 177,000 miles on the odometer, and her name is Jesse. She’s been all over the West, camping on dirt roads and shuttling for river trips. Once, in the high desert of central Oregon, I hit a patch of ice going fast on a cold, bluebird […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: A visit from the Mary Kay lady
I find it unfortunate that we English speakers have so few words for “mud,” a substance that varies so greatly by location and conditions that it would be handier to have a hundred terms for it, as the indigenous Nordic Sami people do for “snow.” If a useless neologism like “ginormous” can make the Oxford […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Yellowstone bison get more room to roam
Updated 5/13/11 Two extra-wide, ankle-busting, road-blocking cattle-guards; 900 feet of jackleg fencing tied into rock outcroppings and other natural obstacles; a handful of heavy-duty gates: All to ensure that Yellowstone’s renowned wild bison can roam more freely than they have in years. Starting in full next winter, the animals will be permitted on 75,000 acres […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Viva la independent press!
High Country News was just nominated for two of the 22nd Annual Utne Independent Press awards. Utne, which curates the best of the alternative and independent press in its bimonthly magazine and website, has put us in the running in the General Excellence and Environmental Coverage categories. The awards, notes Utne‘s press release, are “designed […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
The Garrison Dam: a history
Author Paul VanDevelder, who penned the book Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes, and the Trial that Forged a Nation, a history of the three tribes flooded by the Garrison Dam, speaks on the U.S. government’s plan to dam the Missouri River and flood native lands. VanDevelder is also the author of Savages and Scoundrels: […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
The year in water
La Niña ruled the West’s weather this winter, and states now sitting on lavish snowpacks couldn’t be happier. Cooler surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are responsible for the high precipitation rates in California, the Northwest and Intermountain West. Those snowpacks are expected to melt at a leisurely rate, buoying streamflows throughout the summer. The […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
The painful beauty of love
In This Light: New and Selected StoriesMelanie Rae Thon256 pages, softcover: $15.Graywolf Press, 2011. Utah author Melanie Rae Thon maintains a seat beside fellow literary powerhouses Annie Proulx and Maile Meloy as she paints a portrait of a West that is at once desolate and tender. Written in fierce and unflinching prose, the stories in […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Thanks, Michael!
I have had the unique opportunity to work under Dr. Michael Ceballos at the Native American Research lab at the University of Montana for three years (HCN, 5/2/11). I am half Puerto Rican and half Native American (enrolled). I grew up very much immersed in both of my cultural backgrounds. Being Native American is more […]