WANTED: thrill-seeking gardeners with a love of heights. Experience washing skyscraper windows a plus. Such an ad might appear in Portland, Oreg., by 2013. Thanks to government stimulus funds, the city’s main federal building will be renovated with giant plant-bearing trellises down its western side. These “vegetated fins” will shade the building in summer and […]
Beanstalk 2013
Posted inRange
Wolverines, snowmobilers, and the ESA
Last week, the Idaho Statesman newspaper published an article about recreational vehicle impacts on wolverines in the Payette, Boise, and Sawtooth National Forests. The piece focused on a study investigating questions about the extent to which snowmobilers and Snowmobilers, backcountry skiers, and advocacy groups all have a stake in the outcome of this study. The […]
Posted inWotr
Bear witness to climate change
One thing I love about the West is that so many people know their elevations. I doubt that many citizens of Atlanta take pride in their thousand-foot-high city. But everyone knows that Denver is a mile high, and most of us are well aware of the elevation of whatever high pass we have to cross […]
Posted inGoat
Green energy isn’t always popular
My part of the world gets way too much wind along with plenty of sunshine. It also has some unusual geology which allows the earth’s inner heat to come closer to the surface. Our wind, despite the window-rattling power of its gusts, is too sporadic to attract much commercial interest in developing this […]
Posted inWotr
How to play the gardening game
In his book “Jaguars Ripped my Flesh,” Tim Cahill tells us that he “sits around at home reading wilderness survival books the way some people peruse seed catalogs or accounts of classic chess games.” As a seed-catalog peruser, I took offense at first at being lumped in with the chess nerds. But after giving it […]
Posted inGoat
Is this the nuclear renaissance?
It’s been a big week for nuclear power. First there was the conspicuous nuclear shout-out in the State of the Union last Wednesday, followed by the White House announcement, on Friday, that the Energy Department will explore new solutions for coping with nuclear waste. Then, yesterday, the administration released its budget proposal, with a plan […]
Posted inGoat
Less parking, better air — a la carte
I salivate over wide-open spaces. Bliss, for me, is a sprawling view of distant ranges and crisp horizons—or a free, fortuitous curbside parking spot five minutes before a crowded event. Yet my environmental better half knows that “free parking” isn’t free, and that there are plenty of other types of euphoria to be had, like […]
Posted inBlog
Environmental justice: A vision for change
“The environment for us is where we live, work and play.” Jeanne Gauna, the SouthWest Organizing Project’s co-founder and longtime co-director, crystallized the inspiration and sentiment of the environmental justice movement with this simple yet profound idea. In addition to transforming and reinvigorating the environmental, labor, indigenous and civil rights movements, environmental justice established a […]
Posted inGoat
Cows vs. RATs
The Forest Service and the BLM have just announced the 2010 fee for grazing one cow and calf on public land. Back in 1966, the fee was $1.23 per month. For comparison, here are the prices of some common items in 1966 and today: Item In 1966 Today New car $2,650 $23,000 Gallon […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Catch-and-release at HCN
A new and very talented crop of interns has just joined HCN. They’ll be here for the next six months, learning how a nonprofit media outlet works, and researching, interviewing and writing stories for us. A recipient of the Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, Nicholas Neely arrived in Paonia after six months in a remote Oregon […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Still evolving 40 years later
“The Shame of It!” That was the front-page headline of High Country News on Nov. 24, 1972. It was accompanied by a grim photo of a golden eagle that had been killed by sheep carcasses laced with poison by a rancher who was after coyotes. The stark headline proclaimed HCN founder Tom Bell’s unabashed alliance […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Sticks, stones, and enviros
The term “environmentalist,” or its more derogatory abbreviation “enviros” (HCN, 11/09/09), and — most derogatory of all — “en-varmint-alist” (HCN, 11/23/09) is used far too often in HCN without a counterpoint term for those who would place their own economic gain over the good of all. So I’d like to introduce a term for those […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
How the West was really won
Savages & Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America’s Road to Empire through Indian TerritoryPaul VanDevelder 352 pages, hardcover: $26.Yale University Press, 2009. Paul VanDevelder, author of Coyote Warrior, digs deeper into the rotten core of the American experience in his new book, Savages & Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America’s Road to Empire through Indian […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Fire and brimstone
Can it really be 20 years since Kierán Suckling, Gina Trott, Todd Schulke and Dan Moore descended on Albuquerque like a chapter out of the Old Testament? I remember them showing up, then marching out of, the slow-boat Wolf Coalition meetings. They looked like wild-eyed college kids. But their hastily assembled Wolf Action Group soon […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Finding freedom in Yosemite
GlorylandShelton Johnson278 pages, hardcover: $25.Sierra Club Books, 2009. Like its protagonist, Gloryland is a medley. In a novel that is part memoir, part historical fiction, and part poetry, Shelton Johnson tells the story of Elijah Yancy, a young man with African, Seminole and Cherokee bloodlines. Born in South Carolina on Emancipation Day, 1863, Yancy is […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
Dangerous game
Western game wardens are hindered by huge territories, budget cuts
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
The Shot Heard Round the West
What resulted from activists’ 1990 challenge to the big greens
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
The Group of 10 respond
The big greens grade themselves
Posted inBlog
EPA, Black Caucus announce environmental justice tour
“All environmental protection, like all politics, is quite local,” Environmental Protection Agency director Lisa Jackson told her staff this month. “Very few people come to environmental protection because they wake up one morning and read a book about it. They come to environmental protection because it touches them — the lack of that protection, a […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Odd jobs and animals
THE NATION Attention, unemployed daredevils: Jobs are opening up for athletic non-acrophobics. It helps if you’re the kind of risk-taker who thinks repairing the giant blades of a wind turbine sounds like good clean fun, in a blowy sort of way. The catch: The 122-foot arms don’t lower to the ground for tune-ups; instead, blade […]