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 […]
Foal control
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 […]
Posted inGoat
The Visual West – Image 10
As temperatures climb in late March, the heavy snowpack on Colorado’s Western Slope start its inexorable journey to the sea, carrying with it a heavy load of silt. This shot of the aptly named Muddy Creek was taken just above Paonia Reservoir. Just below the dam, these waters join the much clearer flows of Anthracite […]
Posted inGoat
This Week in Toxics
Despite recent wrangling over the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, agency officials and congressmen are crowding the political aisle this week to agree on one particular thing: pollutants that threaten human health should be regulated, or at the very least, disclosed. Pinning health problems on specific chemicals like the ones EPA […]
Posted inRange
Conscience and the constitution
One Colorado county might be gearing up for a confrontation with the federal government over road closures on public land. Montezuma County — its seat is Cortez — sits in the southwest corner of the state, and its sheriff, Dennis Spruell, told the Denver Post last week that he is pondering certain matters of conscience. […]
Posted inGoat
Strawberry scrutiny
Methyl iodide is a chemical used to create cancer cells in the laboratory. It’s also a substance that California farmers hope to use to grow those big and beautiful supermarket strawberries. By killing most everything in the soil to clear the way for food crops, the pesticide helps fragile strawberries thrive. But methyl iodide’s toxicity […]
Posted inRange
Indians await health care funding
Just over a year ago President Barack Obama signed the health care reform bill into law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That measure, of course, also includes the permanent authorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. So what has happened since the president signed the bill into law on March 23, 2010? […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Rural Oregon timber county seeks economic revival through renewables
Lakeview, Ore., sounds like a sleepy place. When four of five local lumber mills closed in the late ’80s and early ’90s, wiping out more than 800 jobs, it shrank by a fourth, to 2,750 people. Stranded in southern Oregon’s desert, the town lacks traffic lights and fast-food outlets. Western-style storefronts line its narrow main […]
Posted inRange
BLM Wild Lands policy deserves praise
By Joel Webster If a misleading statement is repeated often enough, some people will begin to believe it. That appears to be the strategy of those working to overturn the Bureau of Land Management “wild lands” policy that was introduced in December by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Beyond the misleading rhetoric are some hard facts: […]
Posted inGoat
Megaload Magnetism
Last spring, when I saw my first megaload, I thought July 4th had come early. Football dads flipped burgers in the lot where the rig had parked. Hundreds of people crowded the ditches and dangled off guardrails to get a look at the machine. Newspapermen snapped cameras from the center of the road, and sheriffs, […]
Posted inWotr
Walking the dog in a changed community
“Leash your dog, Wilke.” The phone message was innocuous enough. The only problem being I didn’t know the man’s name or phone number, and five minutes earlier he’d threatened to kill my dog. Our first encounter was last spring. I walked my dog, Ricky, through the block of condo subdivisions west of my home, as […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Oregon sculptor turns beach trash into meaningful art
South of Bandon, Ore., along Highway 101, there perches a 12-foot-tall bird with wings made of flip-flop soles and a belly of plastic lids. Its fishing-float feet are held in place by knotted plastic fishing line. The bird, which resembles the love child of an albatross, an eagle and a seagull, is just one of […]
Posted inGoat
The incredible growing shrinking ski resort!
Do you remember those little packets of gel-cap pills? The ones that would, when submerged in water, swell to become little sponge dinosaurs? Only the little sponge dinosaurs were tiny and flat and lame and never came close to the awesomeness promised by the full-sized dinosaurs rampaging across the label? Seems that could be the […]