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 […]
State trust lands serve public
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
Posted inBlog
The price of green
This holiday, the spouse and I have decided to use some of our days off work to catch up on long-overdue home maintenance projects. For us, as for most other people, money is tighter this year, and we’re looking for ways to save on the supplies we’ll need. However, we’re also hoping to be as […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Missing item
WYOMING Drivers along a section of Highway 22 near Jackson, Wyo., wondered why drug-sniffing dogs and squads of patrol officers, two or three abreast, were walking the road a few weeks ago. Then the story emerged: They were on the trail of a box of drugs. A dog handler from the sheriff’s department had placed […]
Posted inWotr
The lessons of Butte, Montana
During the first half of the 20th century, the mines in Butte, Mont., were the most dangerous in the world. The work was tough, and the immigrants who did the work were even tougher, a quality that served them well underground but wasn’t always the right tool for the job aboveground. Heavy drinking was common. […]
Posted inBlog
A tale of two cities
“The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience,” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once wrote. This can be interpreted to mean that justice is subjective, shaped and reshaped over the years by social norms, by evolving moral priorities and shifting power structures. Even under the rule of law its application differs […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Walking to California
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. If you’ve ever driven I-5 through northern California and up into southern Oregon, you may have seen the memorable bumper sticker that Oregonians use to welcome their California neighbors over the state line: “Welcome […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
Oil and Water Don’t Mix with California Agriculture
KERN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA From the “Petroleum Highway” — a rutted, dusty stretch of California State Route 33 — you can see the jostling armies of two giant industries. To the east, relentless rows of almonds and pistachios march to the horizon. To the west, an armada of oil wells sweeps to the foothills of the […]
Posted inBlog
No place for hate
At Wheatland High and West Elementary schools in eastern Wyoming, banners that declared the schools “no place for hate” raised a stir among parents early this year because the banners were sponsored in part by the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado as part of a national Anti-Defamation League campaign. The Platte County School District […]
Posted inRange
Oh give us a home…
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. […]
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 […]