Consider this from a White House memo: “While there have been improvements in health status of Indians in the past 15 years, a loss of momentum can further slow the already sluggish rate of approach to parity. Increased momentum in health delivery and sanitation as insured by this bill speed the rate of closing the […]
Measuring progress in Native health
Posted inBlog
Psssst…everyone… jobs in North Dakota.
It’s a common theme here in the West — during boom times, more workers flood into towns than can be housed. Workers loaded with cash they’ve made in the oil and gas fields or uranium mines can’t find an apartment to rent, while hotels are booked for months, even years in advance. Many end up […]
Posted inWotr
Walking through the din of a coastal maelstrom
The five of us walk slowly along the spongy Pacific Coast trail, showing flashes of color in the green and brown, mossy forest: My daughter’s polka-dot rain jacket, my son’s electric-blue backpack. We have gotten by the sections that require low tide to cross. The path climbs into the rainforest while storm squalls canter overhead. […]
Posted inGoat
Oh vaulted ancestors!
The Granite Mountain Record Vault is a veritable temple, a slightly more natural- and secure-looking version of the one in Salt Lake City, not far away. A spiritual glow even radiates from the arched entrance to its tunnels (at least in this promotional photo). But this vault holds way more folks than the spired House […]
Posted inRange
Meditational rant on the word “pristine”
This morning my local radio station aired an ad which referred to the natural environments of California’s North Coast. It was for an outdoor store; listeners were encouraged to enjoy our regions river, beaches and pristine mountain tops. This really gets my goat. I’ve been on most of those mountain tops over the past 35 […]
Posted inWotr
Removing four dams is worth some compromise
Most days, I move ahead with a strong conviction that supporting the settlement to remove four dams in Oregon and California and shift the balance of flows in the Klamath River basin is the right thing to do. The science supports it, and in the big picture, it makes sense, because in spite of our […]
Posted inRange
The 2012 Farm Bill dance begins in DC
Last week the Agricultural Committee of the US House of Representatives began work on the 2012 Farm Bill with a kick-off hearing. I happened to be in DC at the time and I stood in line with lobbyists for farm groups waiting to get a good seat in the wood paneled hearing room. I was […]
Posted inRange
New West, New Dust Bowl?
By Courtney White. Originally posted on NewWest.net, 4-28-2010 The apparent declining interest in the environment among Americans was much on my mind as I attended the 21st Annual Southern Plains conference in Lubbock, Texas, recently. Organized by the nonprofit Ogallala Commons, the event focused on a famous date in environmental history. No, it wasn’t the […]
Posted inBlog
Sovereignty versus stewardship
Last month, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) released the draft of a bill intended to “unlock the potential of Indian energy resources.” The bill would amend the Energy Policy Act of 1992 to ease restrictions on extractive industry’s activities on tribal lands, including the elimination of federal drilling fees, the reduction of federal environmental oversight, and […]
Posted inRange
HCN Reader Photo: Wrangler and Little Cowboy
This week’s featured reader photo is one of the entries to our current photo contest, The People of the West. You can enter your photos that capture the West’s people to this contest until May 9, 2010. Check out our contests page for more information on this and other writing and photography contests celebrating HCN’s […]
Posted inGoat
It’s a skunk-eat-pelican-eat-trout world out there
Each spring, on the shores of Nevada’s Pyramid Lake, fishermen in waders stand 50 feet out in the water, on stepladders, casting long, narrow loops for huge Lahontan trout. They look a little like Kodiak bears lined up on an Alaskan river. But, these men aren’t the only fishers around. American white pelicans glide long, […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Grasshoppered!
“A metabolic wildfire”: That’s how entomologist-nature writer Jeffrey Lockwood of the University of Wyoming describes a grasshopper outbreak. At high densities — say 30 per square yard — a swarm can obliterate rangeland vegetation like “a maniac on a riding mower.” And with last year’s bumper crop of grasshoppers and the potential for a warm, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
“The gas of life”
UTAHSome parents in Utah County are pressing their school district to stop spreading “false educational ideas,” reports the Salt Lake Tribune. What might a false educational idea be? The notion that the word “democracy” defines our system of government. To parents who belong to a group called “Utah’s Republic,” which advocates a strict interpretation of […]
Posted inGoat
Myths about myths
You’ll probably soon hear about the “five myths about green energy,” if you haven’t already. They’re the talking points of a book to be published this week, Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future by Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He wrote […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
From Alaska to Paonia
Paonia, Colo., was a planned rest stop for visitors Helen Pohlig and Marilyn Rudolph, who were driving from Arizona to Helen’s home in St. Paul, Minn. “We purposefully chose a route that would take us through here,” said Helen, a lawyer and longtime subscriber. On their tour of HCN headquarters, she brought her dog Annie, […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
A Western state of mind
Best of the West 2009: New Stories from the Wide Side of the MissouriEdited by James Thomas and D. Seth Horton286 pages, softcover: $19.95.University of Texas Press, 2009. This impressive anthology of contemporary short fiction grounded in the American West showcases 18 stories from emerging writers and literary stars, selected from publications as diverse as […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Wilderness by committee
Federal land protection is all about dealmaking
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Viva la Archives!
Budget cuts threaten California water’s institutional memory
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Skeptical of Calera
I have read several positive reports (including the one in HCN on March 15) about Calera Corporation’s presumed process that uses seawater or brine to sequester carbon dioxide, particularly from coal-fired power plants. Calera claims to produce a mixture of calcium and magnesium carbonates (limestone, dolomite, etc.) that can be used as a substitute for […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Size matters?
I’m still laughing at one of the photos in “Mobile Nation” (HCN, 3/15/10)! Was that a bit of editorializing in the photo of the gentleman in his land-yacht watching the “male enhancement” commercial? Was the author trying to make some sort of Freudian connection between the size of a guy’s RV and his, uh … […]