Cuts to energy, transportation and the environment
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
Federal budget deal slashes key community water funds
Steven Meade doesn’t hide his frustration. As treasurer of the Atlanta Water Association in Atlanta, Idaho, he has the unenviable task of coming up with money to fix his community’s water-quality problems. And Atlanta has had its share. A century of gold mining that ended in 1963 leached heavy metals into the nearby Boise River. […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
An epic tale of the Northwest: A review of West of Here
West of HereJonathan Evison496 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Algonquin Books, 2011. Once home to the Siwash and Klallam tribes, then to frontiersmen and a Utopian community, the fictional town of Port Bonita, Wash., provides a fertile backdrop for Jonathan Evison’s second novel, West of Here. Alternating between the late 19th century and the year 2006, Evison reveals […]
Posted inBlog
EJ activist Ed Abbey?
Spring semester is winding down, and the students in my course Rhetoric of the Environmental Movement are reading Edward Abbey’s 1968 memoir, Desert Solitaire. After having duly investigated news reports, scientific studies, websites, and environmental impact statements, they appreciate Abbey’s lively and eccentric voice and his vivid descriptions of the landscape of Arches National Park. […]
Posted inWotr
Privatization threatens an Arizona national forest
Once upon a time, the Western public lands — places like our national forests and parks — were supported with American tax dollars. In return, we were welcome to use them. Undeveloped areas required no money to enter, and developed facilities were basic but affordable. Land managers were public servants whose mission was stewardship – […]
Posted inGoat
The Visual West
I like how our local cemetery, nestled in the shoulder of a small hill above town, is shaped by both natural and human forces. Among the varied stones and markers of the dead and a scattering of native juniper trees and planted arborvitae, I will usually spot a small herd of mule deer and loose […]
Posted inRange
Moving Washington beyond coal
By Jennifer Langston, Sightline.org A deal to wean Washington off coal power is a hair’s breadth away from becoming law. Both houses of the Legislature have approved a bill to close the state’s largest single source of greenhouse gas, mercury, and nitrogen oxide pollution over the next decade and a half. And with the addition […]
Posted inGoat
Clearing the way for renewables
On public lands, mining claims are staked for more than just the riches hidden underground. Some are made simply to wrest cash from competing users — namely possibly renewable energy developers, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Speculators can could grab up mining claims in areas considered for wind and solar energy development […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Empty nests
IDAHO When the real estate market went bananas in the middle of the last decade, Teton County, Idaho, couldn’t approve new subdivisions fast enough. In fact, the Idaho valley, which is located just over the pass from pricey Jackson, Wyo., was named one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States. But when the housing […]
Posted inWotr
Remember the mines before China buys them all
In 1911, Thomas Edison received an odd gift from some Western mining executives: a cubic foot of solid copper. The aging inventor joked that the 486-pound cube might make a nice paperweight. He kept it on display at his New Jersey laboratory, a shiny reminder that the light bulb that made him rich and famous […]
Posted inGoat
Sucking up gold
Gold has hit $1500 an ounce — and that’s got would-be miners casting a covetous eye at Western streams and rivers. The Gold Rush may have ended more than a century ago, but there’s still gold to be gleaned, if you’ve got a pickup, a wetsuit or waders, and a suction dredge (see our 2006 […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Today’s garden plants can be tomorrow’s invasives
On a misty summer morning, ecologist Christy Brigham sinks down to the sand at Point Mugu State Park, part of the patchwork of federal, state and private lands in Los Angeles County’s Santa Monica Mountains. She watches a darkling beetle forage among rare dune plants — lacy, lavender sand verbenas and beach primroses, which resemble […]
Posted inGoat
More desert tortoises found at Mojave solar project
On Friday, April 15, the Bureau of Land Management issued a notice ordering the “immediate temporary suspension of activities” for part of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station construction site in the Mojave Desert (see HCN story “High Noon,” May 9, 2009). The reason: More desert tortoises, a federally threatened species, have been found in […]
Posted inRange
American Indians suffer from high gas prices
A few weeks ago Bloomberg News reported that Saudia Arabia is investing $100 billion in renewable energy sources. In other words the country with the largest known reserves of oil is spending its profits building power plants fueled by nuclear energy, wind, geothermal and solar power. What does Saudia Arabia know that the rest of […]
Posted inWotr
The West’s dams share a dirty secret
Soon after I moved to Colorado from the humid Midwest 20 years ago, I learned that a reservoir is not a lake. My family and I were eager to test our new canoe on the local reservoir, which I’d driven by a month earlier. Its dark waters lapped against a thick conifer forest. I couldn’t […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
The “ribbit” heard ’round the world
Your piece on the Pacific chorus frog was a nice tribute to this amphibian survivor and its champions (HCN, 3/21/2011). Mention of its “ribbits” — only males call — deserves amplification. In 1951, Stanford University professor George Myers published an article in which he noted how the movie industry had spread the call of this […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
Quit yer whinin’
This letter is in response to an online-only piece from our community blog, the Range, entitled: Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? In all the years that this hysteria against wolves has gone on and escalated, it’s impossible not to conclude that it comes from some really scary (and scared) pathology, an atavistic enmity […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
Gone wolf-crazy
This letter is in response to an online-only piece from our community blog, the Range, entitled: Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? As an ecologist, it’s frustrating to see so many folks so wolf-crazy. Don’t get me wrong: I like wolves. I remember all the times I’ve seen wolves fondly. But, as Smith says, […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
A textbook recovery
This letter is in response to an online-only piece from our community blog, the Range, entitled: Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? You’d be hard-pressed to find a biologist who would characterize the Northern Rockies wolf population as anything other than recovered. This is a textbook case of how recovery is supposed to work. […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
Profile: Bethany Cotton, Center for Biological Diversity
A crowd of several dozen lawyers met in a recent D.C. federal court hearing to consider the question: Should the government limit carbon emissions to slow climate change and save sea-ice habitat for polar bears? Some represented the Obama administration, while others were there on behalf of Alaska’s government, the oil industry or environmental groups. […]