The biggest message in Western elections yesterday was California’s Proposition 14 — the ballot measure that aims to reduce the power of hardliners in both political parties. More than 54 percent of the California voters — fed up with extremists who cause gridlock — approved the reform. From now on, if the reform isn’t stalled […]
California voters OK reform of primary system
Posted inRange
Joshua Tree instructs students about climate change
When Joshua Tree National Park Ranger Caryn Davidson announced, “We cannot do much to change the course of climate change,” 30 students moved to the corner of the Black Rock Visitor’s Center under a large paper sign with the words “strongly disagree” written in black magic marker. “Mankind has the intelligence to destroy the world […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
Nature illiteracy
Pine grosbeak? How about just seeing a bird as a bird.
Posted inWotr
Boots on the trail ought to pay up
My first introduction to Colorado’s 14,421-foot Mount Massive was, quite literally, a pile of crap. Several piles, actually, just off the trailhead where I’d wandered to pee. Some were flagged with toilet paper; others disguised with a thin sprinkling of pine needles. I walked with care. It was a skill that I would have to […]
Posted inBlog
The summer the dam almost didn’t
“We could as well have been sticking two chewing gum companies together, or merging an anti-vivisection group with a professional society of biology teachers,” wrote the new staff in the Sept. 5, 1983 issue of High Country News, the first published from its new home in Colorado. Click for larger version Ed and Betsy Marston, […]
Posted inRange
Do you need to see a doctor? Queue up.
Part one in a two-part series “I need to see a doctor.” These six words have been written into our programming as modern humans. We wait in line at the clinic. We make an appointment. We know instinctively that this is the one person to see who can check out our health, fix us up […]
Posted inBlog
A Culture of Failure
[O]ur investigation revealed an organizational culture lacking acceptance of government ethical standards, inappropriate personal behaviors, and a program without the necessary internal controls in place to prevent future unethical or unlawful behavior. – Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Interior, Investigative Report, MMS Oil Marketing Group, Aug. 19, 2008 As if you needed a […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Taking matters into their own hands
OREGONWhy would you bring pepper spray to a cooking contest for local chefs in Portland? Well, let’s just say that it was not employed to spice up one of the entrees. Instead, it was used by police to halt what Willamette Week Online described as a brawl featuring “drunken head-butts, chefs being ejected from a […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
One Tough Sucker
The razorback sucker evolved in a wild Colorado River. Now, humans are its biggest problem — and its only hope.
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
Stories from the shadow sides
Boys and Girls Like You and MeAryn Kyle225 pages, hardcover: $24.Scribner, 2010. Writer Aryn Kyle, who was raised in Grand Junction, Colo., examines the frontier between childhood and adulthood in 11 stories threaded by themes of solitude and unrest. The characters — precocious girls, a middle-school boy, women caught in adulterous or unstable relationships — […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
Pika positives
Molly Samuel’s article “Pika politics” highlights the difficulties and nuances in determining whether species should be listed under the Endangered Species Act (HCN, 4/26/10). It’s very apparent that species in peril will have difficulty getting listed in the current fiscal and political climate around the ESA. While some lament the pika not being listed for […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
Notes from a Wyoming sheepwagon
Claiming GroundLaura Bell256 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. A pretty minister’s daughter from Kentucky might not be the kind of person you’d expect to find herding sheep in the lonesome expanse of Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin. But when Laura Bell graduated from college in 1977, she felt drawn to the nomadic life she’d glimpsed […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
Making mining pay
Kudos to Judith Lewis for her insightful and balanced report on Nevada’s bondage to the mining industry (HCN, 4/26/10). As one who lives within 20 miles of a Barrick behemoth, I am deeply distressed at how megacorporations like Kinross-Barrick ravage Nevada’s unspoilt wilderness areas to satisfy their quest for profit. As the leach pads pile […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
It’s a thin line between law and hate
My May 10 issue arrived with two references to the recent Arizona bill signed into law regarding enforcement of federal immigration laws. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon’s quote about the authors of the bill not representing Arizona is simply not true. Fact: Over 70 percent of Arizonans supported the bill. Apparently both Phil Gordon and the […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
HCN’s key numbers: 3, 170, 20
To save some money during these tight times, the High Country News Board of Directors held its late spring meeting over the phone and Internet on May 20. Thanks to the marvels of technology, including the tiny cameras in most of our computers, the experience wasn’t half bad. Board president Florence Williams of Boulder, Colo., […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
Everyone benefits from Indian education
When Lenna Little Plume started second grade at Lewis and Clark Elementary in Missoula, Mont., in 2006, statistics suggested that she might have a bleak future. Montana’s American Indian families earn 25 percent less than the average family — an economic reality that can put Indian children at a disadvantage from their very first day […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
Dust in the wind and the water
One morning last week, I woke up and couldn’t see the mountains. Was it snowing? No, it was dusting … again. The wind, which had howled all day and night, had finally died down, but the dry and loose soils it had borrowed from Arizona and Utah were still precipitating all over our Colorado cars, […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
Did you get your cow?
Your article on wolf hunting in Montana was certainly written from a hunter’s perspective (given that the writer is a Field & Stream contributing editor), and I respected his take on the issue, complete with those hunter magazine close-ups of people “bagging” a wolf (HCN, 5/10/10). I did find the article wanting from two other […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
A boring diagram
Lake Mead — Las Vegas’ primary water supply — has been drawing down like a leaky tub over the past decade, thanks to prolonged drought in the Colorado River Basin. The reservoir’s now at 43 percent of capacity and about 100 feet below full — just 45 feet above one of two main water intakes. […]
