Change comes hard to Western water policy. The Prior Appropriation Doctrine, interstate compacts, groundwater law, the “law of the river” — all of these seem set in stone in the minds of the region’s policymakers. Of course, the West’s rivers aren’t bound by such a static existence. Indeed, they are changing in fundamental ways, opening […]
Warning: Water policy faces an age of limits
Posted inBlog
Out of tragedy, High Country News soldiers on
“1978, the year the Senate shortchanged Alaska?,” asked the cover headline of the Sept. 8 High Country News issue that year. The article outlined the Senate “horsetrading” over the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the bill that in 1980 ultimately created or expanded 15 of Alaska’s national parks and preserves. The article contained only […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Reduce, reuse, re … steelhead?
A lunker case of deja vu
Posted inGoat
Next stop: water on tap
This weekend, thousands of Navajos will pile their trucks with 55-gallon drums and drive to the nearest watering station. If they’re lucky, the lines will be short, the coin-operated water pipes will work, and they’ll return home with enough to drink, wash and cook for another week. Hauling water is a common chore in the […]
Posted inWotr
A scrappy community weekly hangs in there
These are challenging times in the newspaper industry, but from where I sit as editor and publisher of the tiny Silverton Standard & the Miner, high in the Colorado Rockies, things don’t seem all that bad. Well, at least not much worse than usual. This is the oldest newspaper in the western part of the […]
Posted inRange
Listing the wolverine
On a sunny day in late March 2010, a young wolverine known as F3 poked her head out of the mouth of a log-box research trap in Montana’s Absaroka Range, looked around, and then, in a blur of snow, surged off into the wilderness. Around her neck was a new GPS collar that we’d fastened […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Balancing act
A look at how Western states are managing the financial crisis
Posted inHeard Around the West
High Country …
We here at High Country News want your money and will sink pretty low to get it. But we have yet to resort to armed robbery. There was some confusion about this in recent months as the FBI doggedly pursued the High Country Bandits. And though the guy in the security camera photos looks remarkably […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Nevada’s Golden Child
Is the state’s hardrock mining industry losing its grip?
Posted inGoat
More than a starter castle
Tom Chapman, the land developer whom just about everybody loves to hate, is at it again. Chapman’s specialty is buying inholdings — private land surrounded by public land — and then either developing them, or threatening to develop them until he gets a good deal. He’s been the subject of many articles in […]
Posted inWotr
Idaho and the new spaghetti Western
President Barack Obama may have won the national health-care battle, but Idaho Gov. Butch Otter is still loaded for bear. He’s proud he was the first governor to sign into law a measure that requires the state attorney general to sue the federal government if it tries to make Idahoans buy health insurance. Idaho has […]
Posted inGoat
No s#%@w
One look at the Oregon landscape, and you wouldn’t suppose “squaw” is a dirty word. Roughly 130 geographic locations in the state are labeled with the S-word. S- creeks, S- mountains, S- lakes and S- peaks — it’s found all over the place (and not just in Oregon, as HCN has reported). This June, however, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
On the river
As spring moves reluctantly into the West, thoughts turn to streams brimming with snowmelt. The Animas River, which winds through Durango, Colo., may be that community’s hottest flashpoint. For years, tension has been building between the river’s inner-tubers – a ragtag fleet of low-budget floaters — and just about everyone else, especially commercial rafters. It’s […]
Posted inWotr
Wildlife fauxtography
Ever wonder how photographers get those stunning action shots of wildlife? Cougars, lynxes, lions, tigers, leopards, bears, wolves, foxes, wolverines, leaping and snarling, fur coifed, every whisker in focus? If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Nature fakery in photography is older than flash powder, but no one goosed it along […]
Posted inGoat
Women writing the West
Over the weekend, I drove to Denver for The Association of Writers and Writing Program’s annual conference, which assumed a bit of a Western theme this year. Poets and writers overran the downtown convention center, sampling from a myriad of readings and panels. One of these focused on the challenges women writing west of the […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
The cyber-gasfield
Maybe you’re one of the millions who’ve discovered Facebook in recent years. You relish the deep connection to long-lost friends, and even neighbors, that only the Internet allows. Maybe you enjoy “friending” ex-lovers who wish you were dead, and high-school jocks who ignored you except to punch you out in the locker room. Or maybe […]
Posted inRange
HCN Reader Photo: Teton Summer
We might be a little premature in posting this photo, in April, since it represents the Tetons in August. But it’s such a lovely picture, and gives us something to look forward to: long summer days with beautiful views. It’s great to live in the West. Add your photos to our Flickr pool; we pick […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
Horses running wild
$118.2 millionBLM wild horse and burro program budget request, 2011 $2.5 millionU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf management budget request, 2011 (Northern Rockies) 26,600Number of wild horses and burros Western public lands can sustain (BLM estimate) 32,000Number of wild horses and burros now held in corrals and pastures (after being removed from public lands), up […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
The marten chronicles
Framing the wrong guy isn’t always a bad thing
Posted inBlog
A model for community environmental participation
“A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both.” – James Madison As any first year medical or law student can probably tell you, a patient facing an invasive medical treatment must first give the doctor her “informed consent” […]