Yesterday, the High Country News interns (Ariana Brocious, Cally Carswell and I) trekked to nearby Delta to speak to a journalism class at the local high school. After getting lost in the “big city” (Delta has about 6,500 residents to Paonia’s 1,500) we were greeted by five bright and eager young journalists. Well, sort of. […]
Feels like teen spirit
Posted inDecember 7, 2009: Dueling Claims
Erratic behavior
Giant Rock has inspired extremes of human reverence and abuse
Posted inGoat
Climate change by any other name …
In towns from Pocatello, Idaho, to Las Cruces, N.M., local governments are responding to the West’s changing climate. They’re cutting energy consumption, insulating homes, reducing water usage, and more — but often without ever mentioning “global warming” or “climate change”, loaded terms that can trigger heated debates. Instead, they’re promoting their policies under the auspices […]
Posted inRange
How to Deal with a Deer Invasion
My mother has a tough decision to make. Her recent city newsletter informed her that the deer must die, and it’s up to her to decide how they croak. Bountiful, Utah has a mule deer problem—they’ve invaded. When I visited home this summer, I’d probably see at least one deer every week. They’d dart across […]
Posted inGoat
Desert Rock on hold
The proposed Desert Rock power plant on the Navajo Nation near Farmington, N.M., will need to find a new source of cash after the U.S. Department of Energy denied a $450 million stimulus funding bid for carbon-capture controls last week. The funding would have covered about 43 percent of the cost of those controls. The […]
Posted inGoat
A golden ruling
It’s not often that the world’s largest gold mining company doesn’t get what it wants, especially in the nation’s largest gold-producing state. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that Barrick Gold’s proposal to dig a 2,000-foot deep open pit at the Cortez Hill mine on Mount Tenabo lacks sufficient environmental review. The […]
Posted inDecember 7, 2009: Dueling Claims
When the sacred becomes toxic
In 1680, the Pueblos of New Mexico organized a revolt against the Spaniards who had colonized the region. The uprising, which involved Pueblos from Taos to Zuni, successfully chased the Spaniards back to El Paso, where they would stay and sulk for the next 12 years. The Puebloans had plenty of grievances: The invaders had […]
Posted inGoat
The fight over cap and trade
The carbon emissions trading scheme known as cap-and-trade is on the global table as the United Nations Climate Change conference gets underway this week in Copenhagen. Cap-and-trade is also a feature of the Waxman-Markey bill currently being reshaped by the U.S. Senate after passage in the House in June. Hailed by supporters as “an important […]
Posted inDecember 7, 2009: Dueling Claims
The ghost of Tulare
Reviving an ancient lake may help solve California’s water woes
Posted inRange
Indian Trust, settled at last
By Courtney Lowery, Newwest.net guest blogger, 12-08-09 The Obama Administration today announced that it will settle in the landmark class-action lawsuit against the Interior Department that alleged gross mismanagement of American Indian trust accounts. In a press conference, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Attorney General Eric Holder said the settlement will mean $1.4 billion will […]
Posted inRange
Seek bliss … and work together
What do we want in a health care system? It’s a question Dr. Donald Berwick asked an audience of 5,000-plus people at the Institute for Health Care Improvement’s National Forum in Orlando, Fla. on Tuesday. Such an easy question. I can quickly rattle off answers: I want health care for my family. I want to […]
Posted inArticles
A local business, and old friend, dies
The news came as a shock, but not a surprise. The Gambles store, a mainstay of downtown Salida, Colo., for more than 60 years, was going out of business. At heart it was a hardware store, but it sold nearly everything you could imagine. Every time our local newspaper ran one of those “best of” […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Ski strangeness and caged chickens
FROM THE SKIOCRACY For people in ski country, the months between late September and early December are a sad and desperate time. Gray days, cold nights and nary a flake of snow drive recreationists indoors, wreaking havoc with their circadian rhythms. Everyone with any sort of sense — and a trust fund — flees to […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Fish tales of yore
Before Glen Canyon Dam plugged up the Colorado River in 1963, locals in the Upper Basin states of Utah, Colorado and Wyoming reeled in fish so giant and so good to eat that they still tell stories about them. The fish they caught — squawfish, razorback suckers, humpback chubs and bonytail chubs — are all […]
Posted inWotr
The old ways sink into the earth
The farm equipment graveyard — a row of horse-drawn plows and mowers overgrown with prairie grass — is a common sight at the edge of rural fields in the West. Collapsing hay wagons, disemboweled tractor hulls and other antique machinery sinking into the earth tell a story of farming, past and future. Each item was […]
Posted inWotr
Missing pollution in the crisp, clean air
This cold-weather week, I’ve seen two pickup trucks parked in town, each stacked high with firewood. This may be a sure sign of the coming of winter in rural towns across the nation, but it’s become an uncommon sight in downtown Telluride these days. When I moved to Telluride in the 1980s, almost every house […]
Posted inDecember 7, 2009: Dueling Claims
The unkindness of essays
As a hunter and conservationist, I found your essay “The Kindness of Hunters” insulting, naive and decidedly inappropriate for a publication trying to advance the case of conservation in the West (HCN, 11/9/09). Hunters are somewhat used to being caricatured as a bunch of bloodthirsty bubbas, but this is the first time I recall us […]
Posted inDecember 7, 2009: Dueling Claims
The intolerant West
In the “Editor’s Note” in the Oct. 26 issue, Jonathan Thompson states that “many (refugees) face racism and xenophobia…” in Western cities and towns. One doesn’t need to be a refugee or from another country to face these same issues. Despite being born a U.S. citizen and having 15 years of community service in the […]