For 14 years, I’ve been a wilderness ranger in a remote corner of southeast Alaska. What started as a summer job, something to fund my Western travel adventures, somehow turned into a career. Just as unexpectedly, I’ve learned about the powerful bond that can form between people and a place. This wilderness I’ve come to […]
Finding place
Posted inRange
Learning from a book on California’s ag-emperor Boswell
Editor’s note: David Zetland, a Western water economist, offers an insider’s perspective into water politics and economics. We will be cross-posting occasional posts and content from his blog, Aguanomics, here on the Range. In this book, Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman illustrate the fascinating details behind a family that combined hard work, farming wisdom and […]
Posted inGoat
Superfund sludges on
Superfund. The word, at least for me, conjures up images an empty warehouse filled with metal drums leaking toxic sludge, dirt barely covering a hazardous waste sites, maybe some illegal dumping. This Tuesday, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added 10 sites to its “Superfund” priority cleanup list, and proposed 15 more for consideration. One of the […]
Posted inGoat
Tumbling along
What smashes into cars on the highway, spreads wildfire and causes painful weltering scratches? It’s Russian thistle Salsola spp., more commonly known as tumbleweed, a hard-to-control invasive species that grows in disturbed soil and spreads quickly when the thorny plants break off from the ground and roll along dispersing seeds and piling up along fences […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Forestry + genetics = a blister rust solution?
In 1926, the U.S. Forest Service first found blister rust, a deadly fungus, on high-elevation whitebark pines in Montana. Since then, the Asian invader has spread through several species of five-needled pines in the West; it was first discovered in Arizona in 2009. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service is now considering whether whitebark pines, […]
Posted inGoat
The cute calamity
First, the cuteness, because I know everyone spends at least some portion of their day watching Youtube videos of cute animals doing droolingly hypnotic cute things (cat riding a Roomba, anyone? Or how about a slow loris with a very tiny umbrella?) See? This is a pika — a diminutive rabbit-relative which makes its home […]
Posted inGoat
The Visual West — Image 8
This male American Kestrel took off before I could take a decent shot — but I love the blurred movement anyway. It reminds me of how mercurial a March day can be, when a sunny morning gives way to afternoon snow showers, which clears to a star-studded night. The birds and other wildlife are as […]
Posted inRange
Does natural gas drilling make people sick?
By David Frey, 3-08-2011 Residents of Battlement Mesa, a sprawling housing development in western Colorado, are used to seeing the golf course from their windows, not gas rigs. But when an energy company announced plans to start drilling inside the subdivision, residents became concerned not just about the noise and the traffic, but the health […]
Posted inRange
Deflation Nation
Finally the economy seems to be creating jobs again. Last week a federal jobs survey showed an increase in 222,000 private sector jobs, a full year of growth that added 1.5 million jobs at companies and small businesses. As Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers put it in his White House blog: […]
Posted inGoat
Wrestling with wolves
The U.S. Senate last Friday proposed a 350-page budget bill with one particularly furry paragraph: Section 1709. Before the end of the 60-day period beginning on the date of enactment of this division, the Secretary of the Interior shall reissue the final rule published on April 2, 2009 (74 Fed. Reg. 15123 et seq.) without […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Regaining identity through restoration
Charles Wilkinson’s new book describes how a tribe “terminated” by the federal government fought to regain its identity.
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Thirteen ways of looking at a mushroom cloud
Friendly Fallout 1953Ann Ronald248 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of Nevada Press, 2010.Friendly Fallout 1953, Nevada writer Ann Ronald’s latest exploration of place, is itself an experiment in fission — the literary kind. Set at Nevada’s Proving Ground, the book splits the telling of history among 12 fictional characters — plus Ronald herself — who witness the […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Petroleum High: good or evil?
I appreciated the HCN article on the Taft Oil Technology Academy, even though the tone seemed to “warn” of indoctrination rather than celebrate a creative and effective educational strategy (HCN, 2/7/11). As a past elementary and high school teacher and school counselor, I know of many reliable sources and studies that indicate that the majority […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Life after lava
Biological diversity thrives around Mount St. Helens
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Grant received, grant given
The Fund for Investigative Journalism recently awarded a $5,000 grant to HCN Contributing Editor Matt Jenkins, to support a reporting project over the next several months. Since 1969, the Fund has given out more than $1.5 million in grants to freelance reporters, book authors and small publications. They say ’tis better to give than to […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Crowdsourcing helps tackle environmental injustice in California’s Imperial Valley
The border city of Calexico, Calif. — population 27,000; 95 percent Latino; 25 percent poverty rate — is the kind of place where environmental laws are enforced last, if at all. But a local task force of residents, academics, and environment and health officials hope to change that. Last year, they launched the Imperial Visions […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Bigger isn’t always better
The Bureau of Land Management’s Ray Brady says “there is no way a state like California is going to meet its goal of generating 33 percent of its electricity from renewable sources without utility-scale projects (HCN, 2/7/2011).” From my experience, this just isn’t true, and I’m getting tired of seeing it become a mantra. Since […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Domestic violence on the rez
Radmilla Cody and Geraldine Laughter discuss domestic violence and the challenges for enforcement and victim support services on the Navajo Nation. Last year, President Obama signed the Tribal Law and Order Act, which could help improve enforcement and support for domestic violence victims on reservations around the country.
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
An Unusual Miss Navajo
Grand Falls, ArizonaRadmilla Cody knows the way home. It’s not an easy journey. The dirt roads are canoe-shaped and gouged by rain. They curl around hills and plunge into deep draws, finally bringing us to the family homestead near Grand Falls, on the Navajo Reservation. Cody grew up on these lonesome sage flats. Her Navajo […]