CALIFORNIA The black bears that call Yosemite National Park home are legendary for their smarts. They’ve honed efficient methods of ripping the doors off minivans, and they can skillfully yank open refrigerators. That’s why campers at the park must remove all food and other bear attractants and put them in “bear-proof” lockers that are so […]
Bear opens bear-proof locker
Posted inWotr
LEDs ought to be leading the way
How many cities does it take for Western utilities to change a light bulb? Federal Department of Energy research shows that light-emitting diode streetlights — called LEDs by just about everybody — can reduce energy use by 12 percent when used in place of conventional high-pressure sodium lighting above high-speed roads. LEDs also can save […]
Posted inRange
Dam removal and salmon science
Pacific salmon face grim times. The plight of Canada’s Fraser River sockeye has fixated fishers, scientists, and the state for decades. Concern has grown since the 1990s as annual runs went from bad to frightening, but then last summer’s run was bafflingly great. The Canadian government federal government in Ottawa formed the Cohen Commission in […]
Posted inGoat
Idaho eases the way for factory farms
Idaho counties have fought hard in the past for the right to regulate mega-animal operations; Gooding County, which has some of the highest concentrations of dairies in the state, won a lawsuit in the Idaho Supreme Court in Feb. 2010 upholding its ability to regulate water and the number of animals per acre. But the […]
Posted inRange
Keeping the wild in National Wildlife Refuges
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House I’ve never thought much about this country’s National Wildlife Refuges (NWR). With the exception of controversial ones like the “drill, baby, drill” Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they’re stealthy public lands that don’t get the airtime our national parks and monuments do. It wasn’t until recently, when I learned […]
Posted inArticles
Peter McBride on photographing the contentious Colorado River
International photographer and Colorado native Peter McBride spent the past three years making images of the Colorado River. His work has been turned into several magazine articles, a book, a museum exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and a short film. Here, he talks about what has become of the Colorado River […]
Posted inGoat
Out like a lion, in like a wildfire
Back in December, when temperatures at HCN-HQ in Paonia plummeted regularly into face-shattering freezingness and the high country softened under pillows, featherbeds, jumpy-castles of snow, it was easy to imagine Colorado’s immediate future rife with moisture. Maybe even a mild spring on the high plains, piled with wildflowers and lushly green around the edges and […]
Posted inWotr
The lesson of earthquake and tsunami: never forget
The most important image from the disaster that rocked Japan last month might be one that was never captured by anyone’s camera. It has to be conjured up from words: The mayor of a town on the Sanriku coast north of Sendai races to the top of the three-story city hall to escape the tsunami […]
Posted inBlog
Using Japan to discuss energy at home
I noticed this week that I’ve been writing and thinking about energy almost constantly. Obviously I’m not the only non-expert who has become obsessed with this subject, but it is interesting to me how something that used to seem so technical and dispassionate now churns the emotions so powerfully. Perhaps it is the very mysteries […]
Posted inGoat
Eagle Mountain: Still Not Safe From Los Angeles Garbage
Environmentalists and activists touted it as a victory last week when the U.S. Supreme Court decided it would not hear Kaiser Eagle Mountain v. National Parks Conservation Association et al, the decades-old legal battle over a landfill slated for a spit of land on the southern boundary of Joshua Tree National Park. But after reading […]
Posted inRange
Agriculture by the numbers
Every five years the US Department of Agriculture publishes the US Census of Agriculture. The most current census is for 2007 and was published in 2009. I have previously written here about one aspect of the census – the first ever survey of native farmers and ranchers. Recently I had occasion to use the Census […]
Posted inGoat
Foal control
Nevada hosts more than half — about 17,700 — of the 33,700 wild horses that roam around federal lands. But Bureau of Land Management rangeland scientists estimate the state can support only 12,700 horses and burros. And if left alone, wild horse herds typically grow 20 percent annually, doubling in size every four years. “We […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
The Tao of Pow: Learning to love winter
Once, in midsummer, I stood in my garage with a buddy. We’d just returned from a hike near northern Utah’s Cache Valley. He saw my snowshoes hanging on the wall and asked, “Where are your tellies?” I thought he was making a “Monty Python” joke — about a skit in which the actors discuss the […]
Posted inWotr
Elite club blocked from logging giant redwoods
For now, at least, the chain saws are off-limits at the Bohemian Grove, the woody retreat of America’s rich and powerful. The Bohemian Club, an all-male bastion synonymous with wealth and influence, had big plans for its private enclave on the Russian River, 75 miles north of San Francisco. Too big, as it turns out. […]
Posted inRange
EPA Reports Massive Drop in US Greenhouse Gas Emissions
By Clark Williams-Derry Great Scott, how did I miss this? Late last month, the EPA released a draft greenhouse gas inventory, showing that net climate warming emissions from the US fell by a whopping 15 percent from 2000 through 2009. A 15 percent decline? Wow. Just wow. But the story gets even more dramatic. Over […]
Posted inGoat
A new brand of trust land?
Over the last 20 years, timberlands around the West have been falling fast to development. In Washington State, one sixth of commercial forests have been converted to other uses in that time, according to the state Department of Natural Resources (WDNR). Some 1.2 million acres of forest are converted to development and other uses each […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Golden anniversary
UTAH We’ve always loved those before-and-after photos of couples about to celebrate a half-century of wedded bliss. In pictures from 50 years ago, the bride usually looks like a teenager with a bad haircut, while the groom strikes a serious air and looks almost gaunt. Fifty years later, each has usually completely filled out, and […]
Posted inWotr
We keep annoying Sheila, our GPS navigator
As a career country gal, I take pride in finding the most efficient — or at least the shortest — route between two points. In our mountain country of Wyoming, that is not always a straight line or even the distance the proverbial crow can fly. And whoever thought that following crows was a good […]
Posted inGoat
Organic farmers prepare to ward off genetic trespassers
In early February, I wrote about the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision to fully deregulate the planting of genetically-modified alfalfa, and partially deregulate the planting of genetically-modified beets. These decisions allowed modified alfalfa to be planted anywhere, without restriction, and modified sugar beets to be planted in many locations, with some restrictions — despite a […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
BLM stays course in Wyoming gas patch despite mule deer decline
Mule deer wintering near Pinedale, Wyo., rely on the sagebrush habitat of the Mesa, a 300-square-mile plateau between the Green and New Fork rivers. Part of the Pinedale Anticline natural gas field, where nearly 2,000 wells have been drilled to tap the nation’s third-largest reserve, it once hosted 5,000 to 6,000 wintering deer. As winter […]