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. A few weeks ago, water blogger aquadoc mentioned that the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) was co-publishing a magazine with the […]
National Geographic and water lobbyists release advertorial
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Sportsmen protest New Mexico antelope hunting system
Program gets poor marks from local hunters
Posted inGoat
2010: The year that was
Back when I was a High Country News intern, one of our contributing editors gave me and my comrades this bit of wisdom about our profession: Environmental news doesn’t break, it oozes. Looking back at HCN‘s year-in-stories, this truism resonates. The intractable issues that have defined our region for years — whether people and wolves can peacefully coexist in the […]
Posted inRange
Colorado ski industry wary of wolverine
By David Frey, 12-28-10 In October 1998, the Two Elk ski lodge atop the Vail ski area erupted in flames so big witnesses said it looked like a volcano. In the highly-publicized eco-terrorist attack, the secretive Earth Liberation Front struck against Vail Associates for its plan to expand the ski area into what was considered […]
Posted inWotr
Celebrating the 30th anniversary of protecting huge swaths of land
Alaska conservation act was innovative step
Posted inArticles
High Country Views, Big solar marches on
This fall, the federal government began putting serious muscle behind solar energy development on public land in the Southwest. In the past few months alone, the Interior Department has given the nod to nine large-scale solar farms in California and Nevada. The feds have had good intentions to kick-start renewable energy development on public land […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Coyotes move into Colorado’s Front Range
Residents and coyotes clash in the suburbs.
Posted inGoat
Merry Christmas, small farmers and all eaters
The U.S. Congress gave the American public — and small farmers and ranchers — a bit more than a lump of E. coli-tainted coal this year. Their 2010 stocking stuffer is a freshly-passed food safety bill that gives the Food and Drug Administration additional powers to help keep our food supply safer. One important provision […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Activist brings diversity to green orgs
Marcelo Bonta helps color the environmental movement
Posted inRange
Tribal recognition
When President Obama recently announced that the U.S. would finally endorse the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN DRIP), he was immediately heaped with effusive praise from tribal and human rights groups alike. There have been unrelenting references to the Crow Nation giving Obama the Indian name, “One Who Helps People […]
Posted inGoat
Wilderness creates jobs too!
If you were to submit today’s Department of Interior press conference to a Facebook word ranking game, it would probably look something like this: JOBSECONOMYBILLIONDOLLARSWILDERNESS The conference, which took place at an REI store in Denver, was called to announce that the Bureau of Land Management would once again start taking inventory of lands in […]
Posted inBlog
California’s tribal harvesting imbroglio
Frankie Myers’s tribe, the Yuroks, have gathered and harvested everything from mussels to seaweed on the Northern California coast since “the beginning of time,” as he puts it. The myriad coastal resources are of important cultural value to many Pacific tribes, and recent studies have shown that pre-contact hunter-gatherers were extremely adept at harvesting in […]
Posted inRange
When tumbleweeds quit tumbling
I’ve written before about the access issues of one of my favorite dog-walking routes before, and lately there’s been something new in the way: tumbleweeds. They’re three or four feet deep along about a hundred yards of the path. They arrived about a month ago, seemingly overnight. I’ve been walking the dog down there for […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
States’ rights gone wrong
UTAH We hate to pick on the Beehive State, but sometimes Utah picks on itself. Take the $101 million in federal funds earmarked for the state to spend avoiding teacher layoffs — Utah’s share of a $10 billion package covering all 50 states. But was the Republican Legislature grateful for this windfall from Washington? Not […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
The BLM’s conservation experiment
Salazar directs agency to put conservation first – in some places
Posted inGoat
Snowbound? Take a virtual tour of the West
If you live in the mountains, or near them, or you have to fly over them, you know that the holidays aren’t just about visiting family, stuffing your face, or dropping into a prolonged eggnog coma (IMHO, that must be why the stuff is called “nog” in the first place). They’re also about not being […]
Posted inBlog
A new standard for tribal and U.S. relations
WASHINGTON, D.C. — What’s my take away from the White House Tribal Nations Conference? Easy. This is an administration that actually believes the United States government must represent all of the people, including American Indians and Alaska Natives. Make no mistake: Everything is not perfect between Indian Country and the United States as we close […]
