It’s a federal responsibility — not that of state or local government
Who’s in charge of immigration?
Posted inRange
HCN Reader Photo: Boots
I had to post this reader photo, from Flickr member ben j. It’s a great shot! He took it in Boulder, Utah. Add your photos to the HCN Community Flickr pool; we feature selected photos from the group from time to time on this blog. You can also enter HCN’s many 40th anniversary photo contests […]
Posted inGoat
Natural gas comes on strong
If natural gas was going to try and pick me up at a bar, the encounter would likely go like this: Gas: “I’m low-carbon, cute, and widely available.” Me: “You’re not that cute.” While natural gas keeps getting play as the “bridge fuel” that will help the United States reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it’s no […]
Posted inWotr
The San Francisco Peaks will never be the same
Our mountain is burning in a fire that we hoped would never happen, a fire that has been hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles. The heart of our mountain is blazing in an inferno that grew from 50 acres to 5,000 acres in 24 hours. As I write this, it has torched […]
Posted inGoat
Wile E. wins again
In February, I reported for High Country News on the possible evidence of wolves at the High Lonesome Ranch, an enormous ranch in northwestern Colorado owned by Texas attorney Paul Vahldiek, Jr. During visits over a seven-month period, biologist Cristina Eisenberg, an Oregon State University doctoral student employed by the ranch, had collected scat and seen […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Immersed in the Wild
An ‘open-water’ swimmer finds a risky intimacy with nature.
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Into the wild
African American environmentalist Rue Mapp gets people of color outside
Posted inGoat
A Grand Disappointment
This May, National Geographic Press published Running Dry: A Journey from Source to Sea Down the Colorado River. It’s by Jonathan Waterman, who lives on 20 acres near Carbondale, Colo. As someone who follows water issues, I wanted to like this book. But I couldn’t. That’s because I ran across so many errors at […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
Net losses
Four endangered fish species currently live in the mainstem of the Colorado River. Several other endangered native fishes — including the woundfin, desert pupfish and Gila topminnow — used to live there but now survive only in the river’s tributaries or in man-made habitats. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with […]
Posted inRange
Wolf case highlights need for collaboration
Sometimes no news is good news, so I’ll count last week’s relatively uneventful oral arguments as a boon for continued wolf recovery efforts in the northern Rockies. But the mood both inside and outside the U.S. district courthouse in Missoula shows there’s still much work to be done to ensure sustainable wolf management in the […]
Posted inWotr
Hard to believe, but it’s my 50th high school reunion
A half-century of memories, and a look forward
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Guns — and none
A woman who grew up with guns goes on to a life without them
Posted inHeard Around the West
Clash of the museums
NEVADAThat city of excess, Las Vegas, is outdoing itself by hosting not just one, but two new museums dedicated to the Mafia and the “moral turpitude of organized crime,” reports the New York Times. Is there a little problem of duplication? Not at all, says Las Vegas Mayor Oscar B. Goodman (the city is building […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Fish face-off
A proposal to ban gillnets in Oregon has commercial fishermen up in arms.
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
The land less traveled
Your May 24 cover story “Accidental Wilderness” was for me a catalog of former or current projects I have worked on as an environmental consultant. The map on page 15 showing select Department of Defense and Energy Department sites around the West identified seven facilities where I have worked or visited as a consultant, chief […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Summertime slowdown
We publish 22 times per year, so we’ll be skipping the next issue. Here in western Colorado, we’ll be tending our gardens, celebrating the annual Cherry Days festival and the Fourth of July, and working on great stories for upcoming issues — not necessarily in that order. You’ll see the next edition of HCN in […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
So long, Paonia
Earlier this week, I drove through a stretch of barren landscape about 50 miles from our Paonia home, as I’ve done many times before. It’s an unremarkable part of western Colorado. The sparsely vegetated hills contain radioactive waste, an old bombing range, an experimental chicken farm and a lot of shot-up appliances. Soon, hundreds of […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Rapid runoff
On April 1, it looked like this would be a banner water year for Colorado’s San Luis Valley, which receives just six to eight inches of precipitation annually and relies on snowmelt to fill streams and irrigate crops. Heavy spring storms had bumped the snowpack in the surrounding mountains to 113 percent of the historic […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Ranger danger?
National parks seem like places of refuge, far removed from urban crime and violence. But for at least the last decade, law enforcement rangers in the National Park Service have been among the federal law enforcement officers most likely to be injured or killed by assault. In 2009, descriptions of violent incidents in national parks […]