During one of my all-time favorite reporting trips, in the summer of 2005, I hiked through a chilly Yosemite rainstorm to meet up with University of California-Berkeley mammalogist Jim Patton. Patton — a veteran field biologist with more shipwreck stories than any one person should have — was retracing the century-old steps of Joseph Grinnell, […]
On the move in Yosemite
Posted inWotr
Three Cups of Tea, the sequel
One of the speakers at last year’s Telluride Mountainfilm Festival in western Colorado was convicted this March of federal felonies. But Tim DeChristopher will be back again this year to talk about his disruption of federal gas leasing at an auction in Utah. Not so Greg Mortenson, the embattled former mountain climber who has been […]
Posted inWotr
Big Sky country, bigger abuse
We seem to have a morbid fascination with news stories and photographs of dead, dying or distressed animals — something Montana has provided plenty of in the past two years. The number of animals involved has been staggering, the evidence of abuse extreme. The first news of abuse on a grand scale came last February, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Plans foiled
CALIFORNIA Never at a loss for novel ideas, the animal rights folks at PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, want the mayor of San Francisco and other city leaders to change the name of the city’s Tenderloin District to the “Tempeh District.” Tempeh, for those who prefer hamburgers and are unfamiliar with it, […]
Posted inGoat
New Mexico governor continues anti-green push
For the past few months, New Mexico’s new governor Susana Martinez has been sending a message about her priorities and how she’s going to run the state. And it’s not one enviros like. Last week, the governor pushed her influence one level deeper into the state’s Environment Department, reassigning some of the Departments’ bureau chiefs […]
Posted inWotr
Disaster traveling is my specialty
People who know me refuse to travel with me. I don’t understand this. I think I am the perfect travel companion — curious, unflappable, knowledgeable, cheerful, seasoned, undemanding, prepared. But friends claim that I don’t go on vacations; I go on disasters. People travel for a lot of reasons — to lounge around and do […]
Posted inBlog
Welcome to Shingle Mountain, Colorado
So, where does one hide a pile of old roofing shingles that can cover a football field and towers some 30 feet in height? If you are Denver-based Shingles 4 Recycling, you don’t have to hide such a mountain––not when you can place it in the north Denver, working-class neighborhood of Elyria. Now, the recycling […]
Posted inGoat
An endangered species truce
The Jemez Mountains salamander: 28 years. The New Mexico meadow jumping mouse: 26 years. The lesser prairie chicken: 13 years. That’s how long these three species have been awaiting potential listing under the Endangered Species Act; there are 248 other species in the Act’s virtual antechamber too, and half have been languishing there for more […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
Bridging American Indian students’ scientific achievement gap
Michael Ceballos’ grandfather dropped out of school at 13 to help support his family. He worked for the Santa Fe Railroad, first laying track, then as a foreman. When he retired, his grandchildren thought he might spend his pension and bonus on a new car. Instead, he enrolled in college. Today, his grandson, a genial […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Partisan missteps
Sierra Club lobbyist Debbie Sease laments the lack of Theodore Roosevelt-style conservationist Republicans in the current Congress (HCN, 5/2/11). As one cause for that deficiency, she need look no further than her own organization. Protection of the environment is historically a nonpartisan issue. All citizens want to breathe clean air and drink clean water. Unfortunately, […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
Invasive ignorance
It’s so hard to get the public to take invasive plants seriously and to avoid using and spreading them (HCN, 4/18/11). I’m disappointed with the scarcity of native plants and the availability of invasives at many nurseries. It’s just like grocery stores selling seafood that’s on the Red List of Threatened Species. However, there has […]
Posted inMay 16, 2011: Ripple Effects
In praise of prose
Just wanted to send a note of appreciation for Craig Childs’ article “Unstoppable River” (HCN, 4/18/11). Childs’ writing evokes the same feelings I get when reading Thoreau or Abbey, and he is a master of the “show me, don’t tell me” style. Why have I not heard of Childs until now? Must be this rock […]
Posted inGoat
Fun with (census) numbers
I was over in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley this weekend, drinking a beer and soaking up the spring sunshine, when I noticed a headline — front page, above the fold — blaring from a newspaper box on the sidewalk: HISPANIC POPULATION GROWS. Oh c’mon, I thought, is this really news? No, it isn’t. But then […]
Posted inRange
What’s in a code name?
Although we’ve seen ample news coverage of the American raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, one question persists. Did the code name “Geronimo” refer to the overall operation or just to bin Laden? Discussing the exact meaning of a military code name might seem like an arcane pursuit, but the use of “Geronimo” […]
Posted inGoat
Clean up your Act
In a High Country News story that ran last August, Pat Parenteau, a legal expert in watersheds and wetlands at the Vermont Law School said, “Sooner or later the Obama administration has got to come in and ask, ‘What the hell are we going to do with the Clean Water Act?’ Because right now, water […]
Posted inRange
Tribes need foreign policies
Nobel winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is trying to change the national debate about the deficit, the role of government and the impact of those policies on the day-to-day economy. “There are principled ways of cutting the deficit … putting Americans back to work,” the Columbia University professor recently said in a speech, as quoted in […]
Posted inRange
A future of jellyfish?
Consumers and scholars alike find themselves adrift in a sea of contested claims about the state of oceans, fisheries, and fish. It is a symptom of an era in which we are overwhelmed by the pace and scope of change. We are utterly reliant on complex systems to supply both the commodities that sustain our […]
Posted inGoat
Blocking solar power … with national monuments?
If you follow basic media coverage of debates over whether to protect various bits and chunks of public land from development, you’re probably painfully familiar with the following archetypal stances. We’ll call them Merle and Becky. Merle, a hardscrabble, hardworking local resident who may be involved in local government or small business and is eager […]
Posted inWotr
When all else fails, go to court
The national environmental movement is spinning its wheels in Congress and accomplishing very little. The big groups lobbied like crazy in 2008 and 2009 on the crucial issue of limiting the fossil fuels that cause climate change, but couldn’t get the Senate to approve even a moderate move to curb carbon emissions with a “cap-and-trade” […]
Posted inRange
Water truce in Colorado
About 80 percent of Colorado’s population lives on the east side of the Great Divide, and about 80 percent of the state’s precipitation falls on the west side. Moving the water to the people has been an expensive and contentious process for the past century or so. As the saying goes, “Whiskey is for drinkin’, […]