It is clear to me that it is time for HCN to do a meaningful update on the wild horses and burros (HCN, 4/12/10). There is solid science that supports wild equids as having evolved on this continent and nowhere else. On Feb. 12, 2009, Jay F. Kirkpatrick, Ph.D., and Patricia M. Fazio, Ph.D., testified […]
Scapegoats on the range
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
One Way to Save the Wolf? Hunt It.
Montana wildlife managers deem the first wolf season a success, for both hunters and hunted
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
No more horseplay
I’d like to see HCN correct the grave misinformation in “Eligible Mustangs” and treat the subject with the accuracy and respect it deserves (HCN, 4/12/10). First and foremost, the Bureau of Land Management sets the “Appropriate Management Level” for wild horses on our ranges and decides when to call horses “excess.” However, this is based […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
It takes a district: Utah landowners control groundwater use
Escalante Valley citizens plan to save their declining aquifer
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Fair trade?
As a native-born Nevadan living in Humboldt County, Nev., I have seen firsthand both sides of the mining issue (HCN, 4/26/10). Twenty years from now, we will be asking what we have to show for all the mountains of tailing piles, open pits with poisoned water, miles of roads cut into the landscape for test […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Eggstraction
Meet 317 and 318, a young couple in California’s Pinnacles National Monument. They are two of only 91 California condors flying free in the state – and only 349 left on Earth. This spring, the birds had no sooner laid an egg in their nest than National Park Service biologist Gavin Emmons rappelled down and […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Changing of the editorial guard
A couple of issues back, you may have noticed that High Country News was advertising for a new editor in chief. Jonathan Thompson has decided to leave HCN and Paonia in June and head out on a new adventure with his family, leaving the Four Corners region in which he has spent his first 40 […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
A California Bestiary: Beauty of the beasts
A California BestiaryRebecca Solnit and Mona Caron64 pages, hardcover: $12.95.Heyday Books, 2010. In the tradition of illuminated medieval manuscripts, A California Bestiary presents 12 literary and visual portraits of fauna native to that state, from the extinct (California grizzly), to the emblematic (California condor), the ubiquitous (California ground squirrel), and the preciously obscure (mission blue […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Goodbye, Rocky Mountain News; hello, Mrs. Li
How one journalist coped with a great Western paper’s demise
Posted inWotr
What it took to win one small victory
We won. The tiny town of Conway, Wash., will not have a cell tower looming over its one street. Thanks to hours of work and thousands of dollars, we won. But it shouldn’t have been that hard. The 150-foot tower was to have been located behind the post office, where it would have dwarfed even […]
Posted inGoat
That old-time separation
Today is the first Thursday in May, which makes it the National Day of Prayer, established by the U.S. Congress in 1952. A federal judge in Wisconsin has found it an unconstitutional establishment of religion by the federal government, but the decision is under appeal and so the events will go forward. It […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
True or false?
WYOMINGWhen it comes to the Cowboy State, comedian Jeff Foxworthy gets it, or so say some locals who’ve been e-mailing around some of his spot-on observations. He says that if “you’ve ever refused to buy something because it’s ‘too spendy’,” if “you’ve worn shorts and a parka at the same time,” if “your town has […]
Posted inGoat
Refinery blues
The Sinclair Wyoming Refinery’s clumsy environmental record continues to stumble: Last week, some 80 dead birds, most of them western grebes, were found in a wastewater pond laced with oil spilled from an undetermined source in the refinery. The accident is the latest in a spate of spills (see our story, “Sinclair flare up“) at […]
Posted inRange
HCN Reader Photo: Prisoner plantings
This week’s reader photo is another photo contest submission. It shows the hands of inmates propogating plants to be used in restoration projects in Washington State. Check out this photo and many others at our contest site, and enter your photos of Western people into the contest before the deadline – May 9.
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Urban habitat
Building an inner-city base hasn’t been easy for the Audubon Society
Posted inGoat
A water hog, redeemed
“A big tamarisk can suck 73,000 gallons of river water a year. For $2.88 a day, plus water bounty, Lolo rips tamarisk all winter long.” So begins Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Tamarisk Hunter,” a short story set in a dystopic future when humans must fight tamarisk for every drop of water. The story might be made […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
Culture of the Canyon
A Grand Canyon river trip is a revelation
Posted inHeard Around the West
Talk about dedication
MONTANASometimes you have to look a little silly to get the job done. It’s a risk Mark Renner, an avid bowhunter, was willing to take when he designed a hat to fool pronghorn antelope. The wily animals were always quick to flee once they spotted Renner standing up to shoot, so he tried outfitting a […]
Posted inMay 10, 2010: The Secret Lives of River Guides
The Secret Lives of River Guides
Grand Canyon boatman culture converges at “spring training”