An injured wild turkey shows pluck and spirit in the wild
Right on, Target!
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 […]
Posted inRange
Climate change’s threat to the wolverine
The word “imminent” conjures images of an onrushing tidal wave, something unstoppable and certain, an action or event on the verge of bursting into reality. The Dec. 13 decision that the wolverine was warranted but precluded for protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) hinged on a different definition of this word: to the US […]
Posted inRange
The start of the sesquicentennial
Dec. 20 marks the 150th anniversary of the adoption of the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession, which ignited the Civil War — and so this year, Dec. 20 starts the sesquicentennial observance. There were a few Civil War battles in the West — most notably at Glorietta Pass east of Santa Fe, where an invading […]
Posted inGoat
Super mouse to the rescue
What’s three inches long and can leap tall buildings in a single bound? It’s a bird. It’s a really, really small plane. No! It’s the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse! Well, maybe it can’t leap over a building, but the little rodent can jump a foot and a half up in the air, cover twice that […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
State trust lands serve public
What’s equivalent in area to Washington state, lies mostly west of the Mississippi, and raises well over a billion dollars for public education each year? State trust lands. These unique “public” lands were granted by the federal government to every state that joined the Union, starting with Ohio in 1803, in the belief that townships […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
May your holidays be bright
We’ll see you again around mid-January — we’ll be taking a longer-than-usual publishing hiatus in December, to better align our printing schedule with the holidays, work on exciting stories for the new year, and overdose on eggnog and fudge. In the meantime, be sure to visit us on the Web at www.hcn.org for fresh blog […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Infinite problems, small solutions
The Fate of Nature: Rediscovering Our Ability to Rescue the EarthCharles Wohlforth417 pages, hardcover: $25.99.St. Martin’s Press, 2010. In The Fate of Nature, Alaskan reporter and author Charles Wohlforth argues that the planet’s salvation depends upon our willingness to overcome our innate selfishness. Beginning with the basic question — what makes us human, anyway? — […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Excavating John
The Book of JohnKate Niles225 pages, softcover: $22.85.O Books, 2010. John Gregory Wayne Thompson, the eponymous hero of Kate Niles’ second novel, The Book of John, moves between the southwest Colorado desert and the cold beaches of Washington’s Neah Bay, in the process retracing his personal life and loves. An archaeologist, John is 50 years […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Diving deeper into the Bay Delta
It would have been easy to frame this issue’s cover story from just one viewpoint — that of a dedicated environmentalist, say. It would have gone something like this: Profit-loving California farmers and voracious megacities are so greedy for water that they’re destroying what’s left of the once-sublime Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta ecosystem. Period. […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
California’s Tangled Water Politics
The Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta, formed where the two rivers meet in California’s Central Valley before flowing into San Francisco Bay, is the largest estuary on the entire West Coast of the Americas. But much of the Delta is a remote, labyrinthine wateriness that, for most people, exists only in the mind, wrapped in […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Anatomy of a medusahead invasion
Medusahead, an invasive annual grass, is poised to become a major rangeland menace. “It’s just starting its major advancement,” says Roger Sheley, an Agricultural Research Service ecologist in Oregon. Sheley believes most Western rangelands are vulnerable, especially those already plagued by invasives. “Medusahead represents another step in the decline of these systems.” Devilish and useless: […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
A place to park — and live
I completely sympathize with and understand the problems faced by Jen Jackson (HCN, 11/22/10). Many Western tourist towns have become unaffordable for the ordinary people who are, ironically, indispensable, working in hotels, restaurants and recreational businesses. The towns should find some way to accommodate their trailers or RVs. But in “Heard Around the West,” you […]
Posted inGoat
In the zones
You’ve got to hand it to Ken Salazar: Never before has an Interior Secretary been so methodically driven to make U.S. public lands safe for renewable energy development. Unlike the men and women who have held his position in previous administrations, especially the last one, Salazar has put solar, wind and their attendant transmission needs […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
Ocelots in Arizona?
Recent appearance of the tropical cats spurs update of federal recovery plan