Sixty-three bison sit in limbo just outside Yellowstone National Park, waiting for a new place to call home. The Yellowstone bison are some of the only genetically pure bison remaining in the United States, a small remnant of the historic herds that thundered across the Great Plains by the millions just a few centuries ago. […]
Oh give us a home…
Posted inGoat
“Warranted, but precluded”
Polar bears. Walrus. Ringed and bearded seals. And now wolverines have joined the list of northern animals threatened by warming winters and shrinking snow and ice packs. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the bear in 2008 and is considering adding the walrus and the seals. This week, the agency announced that while listing […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Carl Sagan is rolling in his grave
Just what we need: HCN endorsing pseudoscience (HCN, 11/22/10). Sam Western exhibits a pathetic lack of critical reasoning in his puff piece about Vern Bandy’s supposed dowsing abilities. Bandy’s claim to have accurately dowsed thousands of wells is apparently supported only by his own records. As the son of a well-driller, it is hardly surprising […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Seeing is believing
My husband, Ron, has the same kind of dowsing ability described in your profile of Vern Bandy (HCN, 11/22/10). His grandfather “witched” with a fork from a peach tree. Ron purchased a metal rod and has used it a number of times. He was project manager on the remodel of the senior center in Lake […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
An uncomfortable truth
Jen Jackson’s report describes a society that wants service industry workers and others to provide us with services we wouldn’t dream of living without (HCN, 11/22/10). But when those workers’ low-wage jobs don’t allow them to purchase or rent “acceptable” or “conventional” housing, we shun them as neighbors. We don’t want to be confronted with […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Reclamation reality check
The artist’s rendering of the post-reclamation Rosemont Copper Mine shows a striking difference in landforms between the graded mine-waste pile and the surrounding undisturbed terrain (HCN, 11/22/10). Particularly noticeable is the difference in what geomorphologists call drainage density, or the total length of drainage channels per acre. The unvarying slopes and rock rundowns in the […]
Posted inGoat
Compromise in the Wyoming Range
Three days after my recent story about a proposed energy development in the Wyoming Range’s Noble Basin rolled off the presses, the Forest Service released their much-anticipated draft environmental impact statement for the project. The Forest Service’s “preferred alternative” would let Plains Exploration and Production (or PXP) develop the necessary roads and infrastructure to drill […]
Posted inBlog
Hope for a cleaner energy future
In my work with the tough coal and environmental justice issues in the Southwest and the tougher, diverse communities I am honored to work with here, I see at key moments a hope for the future that can’t be snuffed out. In the past few months, there have been historical and landmark events that continue […]
Posted inRange
A loss to our heritage
As a history buff, I enjoyed reading the HCN article about the preservation of old missions in Arizona — until I got to the end, where I read that Don Garate had died on Sept. 21. I knew Don, though not well, thanks to our shared interest in Juan Bautista de Anza, a Spanish soldier […]
Posted inRange
Rediscovering the known
This may seem a “Shaggy Dog” story, and for that I apologize, but there’s no way to make my scholarly point without digressing into my past. The proximate reason is an announcement this week by the British Columbia Supreme Court requiring an investigative committee to release all information on sea lice infestations and disease outbreaks […]
Posted inGoat
New Mexico caps again
A New Mexico regulatory board took another stand against climate change last week, approving its second set of greenhouse gas rules in just over a month. The first round, OK’d by the state’s Environmental Improvement Board in November, laid the groundwork for New Mexico’s participation in the Western Climate Initiative, a regional cap-and-trade program, and […]
Posted inGoat
Solar setbacks
On Thursday morning, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), finally sunk a shovel into the ground for the transmission project every enviro loves to hate: The 100-mile, $1.9 billion, 500-kilovolt Sunrise Powerlink, slated to skim across desert-and-forest wilderness as it carries power to the hamlet sprawl along California’s southernmost coast. Arnold Schwarzenegger, ever more flamboyantly […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
Farming’s Toxic Legacy
Banned ag chemicals linger in neighborhoods that swallowed up former farms and orchards
Posted inGoat
Would you like some DDT with that organic cucumber?
Consumers might assume that buying organic means the produce they purchase lacks chemical residues and the farmers and farm workers growing organic crops aren’t exposed to toxic chemicals. This may not always be the case. Organic farmers across the nation must contend with the possibility that the land they farm has some of the very […]
Posted inArticles
High Country Views: Anticline deer decline
The 300-square-mile Pinedale Anticline in western Wyoming has been called America’s Serengeti. It’s crucial winter range for mule deer and pronghorn antelope, and is a sage grouse stronghold. But it’s got riches below ground too – the third largest natural gas reserve in the United States. Development of the gas reserve has been underway for […]
Posted inWotr
Tips for tapping into your wild marketer
Now that it’s harder than ever to make a living in the rural West, we locals have to tap into our inner entrepreneur to survive. Hard work is still important, but creativity and judicious copying help a lot, too. Just use your imagination…. For example, Samantha Fox of Twisp, Wash., grew up in a deer-hunting […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
Debating Preservation in the Southwest’s Spanish Missions
TUCSON, ARIZONA The temperature drops dramatically as you step through tall church doors into the cavernous interior. The ancient five-foot-thick walls have the dignity of living ruins. Where plaster is missing, you can see graying adobe bricks, and the painted decorations on the whitewashed walls have faded. Yet the Tumacácori mission still seems to breathe, […]
Posted inRange
HCN reader photo – New Mexico moon
This week’s reader photo is simple, still, and lovely. It comes from HCN Flickr community contributor Justin Morris. Add your photo to our Flickr group too!
Posted inHeard Around the West
Cheaters and cheatgrass
THE WEST Everybody hates cheatgrass, though it must be admitted that the fluttery plant with the prickly seeds succeeds on sagebrush lands like nobody’s business. A Eurasian invader, it pops up in the spring before native plants do, spreads like wildfire — and burns like wildfire, too. As Wyoming Wildlife magazine put it, cheatgrass “simply […]