Within the Currents offerings in the April 26th edition Matt Jenkins provide readers with a description (for subscribers only) of one of the West’s most important archives – The Water Resources Center Archive at the University of California in Berkeley. Matt tells us that historian Donald Worster was among those who did research at the […]
Archives and legal precedents
Posted inHeard Around the West
NBIMBY
COLORADO AND UTAHMesa State College on Colorado’s Western Slope displayed a bit of insensitivity to its Grand Junction neighbors recently, announcing that it was planning to create a “body farm” in one of the city’s fastest-growing residential areas. A body farm is a place where criminal justice students study the slow process of decay in […]
Posted inGoat
The Spirit of Mt. St. Helens
Thirty years (and one day) ago, Mount St. Helens blew its top. Or rather, its side. After months of heightened seismic activity, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake caused the flank of the mountain to suddenly fall away. The landslide — the largest ever recorded — slammed into Spirit Lake at the foot of the volcano. A […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Last rites in salmon country?
As California’s water war grinds on, salmon fishermen gear up for a risky season
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Clean air, hazy politics
Colorado air quality law pits coal against gas, rural against urban greens
Posted inBlog
Grand Canyon uranium threatens tribal water
Last week, a delegation of leaders from Arizona’s Havasupai Tribe traveled to Washington D.C., to advocate for the protection of the Grand Canyon region from a potential onslaught of uranium extraction activities. These four women – tribal council members and traditional elders – voiced their concern for the safety of the land, the purity of […]
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
For wilderness, look to a wasteland
Select DOD and DOE sites in the West
Posted inMay 24, 2010: Accidental Wilderness
Accidental Wilderness
Hanford, White Sands and other ‘wastelands’ are good for bombs—and biodiversity.
Posted inHeard Around the West
Doggone it
THE WORLDEveryone loves dogs, right? Don’t be so sure. In its spring issue, Earth Island Journal reviewed the book Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, by New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale. The Vales found that the carbon impact of a dog is double that of an SUV, that a […]
Posted inWotr
Springtime is whine-time
Spring is the cruelest month in the mountain West. Yes, I know that spring technically occupies three months as one-quarter of the four annual seasons. But here in northeastern Utah, it really only lasts a month. And it doesn’t even last a distinct month; what I’m saying is that you get about 31 days of […]
Posted inGoat
Happy birthday, Glacier NP
When I was younger, I was lucky to visit Glacier National Park in Northern Montana, which today becomes a centenarian. By now, my memories of my family’s visit are few, but distinct: Gliding on a boat over the glassine reflections of glacier-shouldered crags; walking a trail past incredibly docile, shaggy mountain goats; seeing an black […]
Posted inGoat
An Arizona Solution
Having lived in Colorado for all of my 59 years, I’ve certainly suffered from immigration. It’s cost me a job or two because immigrants from New York or Pennsylvania went to better schools and boasted more impressive resumés. I’ve had to compete against well-heeled California immigrants for housing. After these immigrants settle in, they assault […]
Posted inGoat
Air fungus
Each year, in early May, a pilot and a researcher fly low, long hours over the Oregon coast range, sweeping back and forth in transects two miles apart. Below the small aircraft, a rugged, uneven carpet of mature and regenerating forest unrolls: a landscape scarred by logging, but still dominated by Douglas fir. They’re in […]
Posted inGoat
Utah Republicans dump incumbent senator
It’s almost certain that Utah will have a new U.S. Senator next year. Three-term incumbent Robert Bennett sought a fourth term, but despite his generally conservative voting record and endorsementa from Mitt Romney and the National Rifle Association, he didn’t get enough votes at the state Republican convention to get on the primary […]
Posted inWotr
Black Sunday won’t ever happen again
Twenty-eight years ago this month, on the first Sunday in May, Exxon, the largest corporation in the world, pulled the plug on its massive western Colorado oil shale project. Overnight, 2,600 people lost their jobs. Overnight, small towns learned painful lessons about the speed of the corporate guillotine. Overnight, county commissioners and town planners learned […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Little doses of danger
Parenthood scares a fearless outdoorswoman
Posted inBlog
Water thieves or water saviors?
If you missed Paul VanDevelder’s essay “This house of thieves” in the March 1st HCN go to your recycling stash now, reclaim that issue – it’s the one with the machine gunner on the cover – and read the essay. Or you can read it online. In the article VanDevelder explores the settlement agreement that […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Don’t have a cow
CALIFORNIAThe folks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium named their new exhibit about climate change “Hot Pink Flamingos: Stories of Hope in a Changing Sea.” With the help of humor, a hopeful tone and charismatic animals such as penguins and jellyfish, exhibit planners hoped to get visitors talking about the contentious topic of how too much […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Ghosts of Wyoming: A haunted past and present
Ghosts of WyomingAlyson Hagy170 pages, softcover: $15.Graywolf Press, 2010. Reading Alyson Hagy’s new collection of short stories, Ghosts of Wyoming, is a bit like poring over a stranger’s photo album, some pictures grayed and dusty, the images gone faint, others recent and still vivid. Each deft vignette contains its own bounded narrative, but taken together, […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Wanted: horse sense
Some radical wild horse advocates just keep repeating the same lies over and over, hoping people start to take their lies as truth (HCN, 4/26/10). The biggest lie is that horses are native to North America. The EPA defines introduced species as “species that have become able to survive and reproduce outside the habitats where […]