Chinook, Magnum and American Fuggle — these are just some of the Pacific Northwest’s many organic hop varieties. But despite rapid growth in organic craft beer production, they’re hardly flying off the shelves. That’s because, until recently, USDA rules allowed organic brewers to use much cheaper conventional hops. In 2007, the National Organic Standards Board […]
All hopped up
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
A visit to a ghost town in San Francisco Bay
The course of time and tide
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
A contaminated history unearthed
Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People BetrayedJudy Pasternak336 pages, hardcover: $26.Free Press, 2010. In 2006, the L.A. Times ran an exposé by reporter Judy Pasternak on the effects of uranium mining in the Navajo homeland. The articles had a remarkable impact, inspiring congressional hearings and Superfund cleanups. But Pasternak […]
Posted inRange
Weighing the costs of unobtainium
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House As this year comes to a close, anxiety continues to mount on how public and private interests in the US are going to get their hands on enough rare earth elements (REE) to maintain and grow the industries that rely on them. The race is on to strategize […]
Posted inArticles
Our forest
This video accompanies the story: The supposedly-protected Wyoming Range faces new energy development. Please wait while the player loads. Note: you must have Javascript enabled and the Adobe Flash Player installed. Learn more about the pending natural gas development at the Wyoming Range website. The Forest Service’s environmental analysis will be posted for public […]
Posted inArticles
Mixing oil and water in California
This video accompanies the story, “Oil and Water Mix in California.” Please wait while the player loads. Note: you must have Javascript enabled and the Adobe Flash Player installed. Produced in association with This American Land.
Posted inWotr
The Great Plains is the latest new frontier
Local entrepeneurs could revive a dying region
Posted inBlog
Pondering palm oil
On the surface, it seems that environmental justice should be one of those no-brainer, win-win concepts that everyone can support. Look a little deeper, however, and enacting environmental justice can become impossibly complicated and divisive. Few things exemplify this paradox more than the case of palm oil. In recent years this seemingly innocuous, rather boring-sounding […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
The color-shifting skink
COLORADO Thanks to Colorado Outdoors, the magazine of the state’s Department of Natural Resources, we have a new favorite wild animal — the color-shifting skink. It resembles a stocky snake with lizard-like legs. And like many lizards, it has the wonderful ability to discard and then regenerate its tail any time a predator pounces on […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2010: Hardrock Showdown
Housing keeps getting tighter all the time
Moab resident feels development squeeze
Posted inWotr
The EPA takes a small step toward curbing greenhouse gases
Let’s get one thing straight: The EPA’s plan to limit greenhouse-gas emissions from standing sources is nothing radical. States may sue, a bipartisan swarm of senators may politick to stop it, and energy lobbyists may fret about jobs and the economy, but no matter what the alarmists say, the rule won’t shut anyone down. It […]
Posted inBlog
Drill the parks
Flanked by fast food joints on its south side, the St. Vrain River on its north, residential development on the west and Interstate 25 on the east, St. Vrain State Park isn’t a reason for tourists to make a trip to Colorado. Its flat fields and cluster of ponds offer residents of Denver and its […]
Posted inSupport
Bill McKibben on High Country News
A message from the award-winning author, educator and environmentalist
Posted inRange
HCN reader photo – Desert cathedral
From HCN Flickr group contributor John Mumaw of Cortez, Colo., who writes: “The only cottonwood tree for miles around is nurtured and protected from a harsh environment by the cool, moist soil found in this unique, teardrop shaped sandstone alcove on the Utah/Arizona border. The hours I spent in here waiting for the light were […]
Posted inGoat
Fun with factory farms!
Mooooove over, Wisconsin. You’re quickly losing your dairy state cred to the West. Unfortunately for those of us who live beyond the 100th meridian, though, the usurped title of America’s Dairyland comes at a price. As factory-sized dairies colonize the West, they have significant effects on water and air quality, as well as quality of […]
Posted inBlog
What’s old is new again
Two stories about mining projects in California that crossed my path last week remind me that some narratives just don’t seem to go away. Whether it’s taking advantage of gold’s record high prices or carving away at river-side hills for rock and stone, it seems a given that economic boons obscure questions about associated environmental […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2010: Hardrock Showdown
A divine business
Montanan claims uncanny ability to locate water — and just about anything else
Posted inBlog
Cobell, settled at last
Federal government finally accounts for money mismanagement of tribal nations.
Posted inWotr
Living with wolves takes some practice
I paddle to a favorite meadow with my friend, Solan. It’s late summer in southeast Alaska, when the tall grasses are turning yellow and the mountaintops are lost in clouds. Coming ashore, we step over dead salmon dragged from the stream by bears. Walking toward the stream, I talk about the time I watched a […]