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 […]
Ranger danger?
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Life in a doomed dome
Dreaming the Biosphere: The Theater of All PossibilitiesRebecca Reider310 pages, hardcover, $39.95.University of New Mexico Press, 2009. The American West has long been home to grand engineering schemes, with planners and boosters eager to manipulate nature to suit their own purposes. Rebecca Reider’s new book, Dreaming the Biosphere: The Theater of All Possibilities, reveals one […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Li-ber-tar-i-an, n
If Ray Ring (“Going to Extremes”, May 24) is going to write about politics, especially in the hard-to-label West, he needs to watch his flippant labeling. As an Arizonan and a Libertarian, I am very angered by folks who lump my freedom-loving and consistent positions with the often inconsistent stands of the Tea Party. Most […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Learning lessons in Owens Valley
In Kim Todd’s essay “Walking Woman,” she used the re-watering of the lower Owens River as a reason to visit Owens Valley and rhapsodize about Mary Austin (HCN, 5/24/10). In the re-watering, she finds a hopeful lesson that the truism of environmental victories being temporary and defeats being permanent may not always be true. Had […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Finding radical balance
I very much enjoyed David Wolman’s article on the success of wildlife on military land (HCN, 5/24/10). It’s always welcome to hear of nature thriving. But the assertion that these instances represent a balance between “trashing of, or respect for, the planet” doesn’t follow. If anything, it’s David Brower’s dream: an intact landscape left untrammeled […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Eccentricity and wildness
My wife and I once drove from Montana to Seattle for a wedding at a farm that hosts such ceremonies. En route, we found a good place to change into our fancy clothes — a thicket alongside the Snohomish River. OK, we’re a little eccentric. But at the river, we met a guy who was […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Compassionate listening, fierce conversation
Voices of the American WestCorinne Platt and Meredith Ogilby; foreword by William Kittredge280 pages, hardcover: $29.95.Fulcrum Publishing, 2009. A chance conversation at a conference in 2004 launched photographer Meredith Ogilby and writer Corinne Platt on an ambitious journey. They resolved to photograph and speak with 49 “heavy lifters” from across the West, people of […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
A wrinkle in space?
The back-page essay on May 24, “Walking Woman,” had a striking design, but it took some literary license with facts that are obvious to those of us who live in the eastern Sierra. The first sentence grates on grammatical nerves: The Sierra Nevada range is singular, not plural. The Sierras, plural, is correct if you […]
Posted inRange
A new chapter in Klamath River Water Wars
Two years ago High Country News’ cover boldly proclaimed Peace on the Klamath. The reference was to the Klamath River, where a collection of federal and state agencies, irrigators, fishing organizations and environmental groups had announced an agreement which the article claimed would end the river’s water wars and result in a future characterized by […]
Posted inGoat
He who buys the most names wins
It wasn’t a lack of public support that killed the Fair Mining Tax Initiative in Nevada (see our cover story, “Nevada’s Golden Child”): to the end, the measure to impose a 5 percent severance tax on hardrock mining’s gross earnings had the support of 40 percent of the state, with a roughly a quarter still […]
Posted inWotr
Energy exporters: Stay out of the San Luis Valley
Before utility executives and solar-energy prospectors discovered the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, it was mostly known for its potatoes, Buddhist hermitages and scrappy water wars. Now our high-desert rift valley is home to a clash between two competing visions for Colorado’s renewable energy future. As utilities and their regulators argue over who is […]
Posted inGoat
Should Salazar resign?
In the wake of a major disaster like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, resignations like the recent departure of Elizabeth Birnbaum, director of the Minerals Management Service, are a de facto form of political appeasement. Environmental groups aren’t satisfied with Birnbaum’s head, though, and a group of them, led by WildEarth Guardians, are circulating a letter […]
Posted inArticles
Why not fees on Fourteeners?
Proposal might result in fewer tourists — who spend more
Posted inBlog
What about Watt?
Whenever the national media turns its attention to the Interior Department, I can’t help but think of James Watt. Since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig and the ensuing gush of undersea oil, the agency has certainly been in the spotlight. As the Interior Secretary under the Reagan administration, Watt’s brash quips, unabashed partisan […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s not forget the hidden costs of uranium mining
Here in the West, uranium mining continues its wobbly resurgence. In recent years, it has sputtered through the peaks and valleys of pricing to once again climb in importance and output. The graph-line of this revival seems to correspond with the vicissitudes of our love-hate relationship with fossil fuels. In 2003, a time of cheap […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Bloody Mystery Lingers in the Desert
An unsolved murder increases fears along the Mexican border
Posted inWotr
“We’ve seen this movie before”
“The task is great. So is the need. And there is no time to lose,” said Exxon executives in their infamous “White Paper” of 1980. Those bombastic words came at the conclusion of Exxon’s plan to help solve the nation’s energy crisis of the 1970s. Long lines at the pump and oil embargoes had prompted […]
