Supbar terrain and snow spell death for schussing
Do we really need another ski resort?
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
Catron County confluence
Water unites ranchers and environmentalists in a conservative corner of New Mexico
Posted inGoat
Nuclear Nevada
“Some of you have been inconvenienced by our test operations,” the Atomic Energy Commission wrote to residents living near the Nevada Test Site, in Nye County, in 1955. “At times some of you have been exposed to potential risk from flash, blast, or fall-out. You have accepted the inconvenience or the risk without fuss, without […]
Posted inWotr
Old friends are melting away
I met this glacier nearly 20 years ago. It was remote and unnamed, and I called it the “Raw Glacier” for the primordial way its blue snout bulged through a granite canyon. It was a mile long. I was a young East Coaster, new to southeast Alaska. The glaciers swept up my imagination. They changed […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Don’t pet the animals
Joan Nutt, 63, was visiting family in Florissant, Colo., when she got close to a deer “in an attempt to pet it.” The animal attacked, and though Nutt “grabbed hold of an antler to try to fend it off … it knocked her down before she could get away.” Nutt, who suffered numerous lacerations, was […]
Posted inGoat
Down on copper mine
Plans to move forward with what would be the third- or fourth-largest copper mine in the country have been shelved for another year. The U.S. Forest Service has postponed an environmental impact study for a proposed copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains, 30 miles southeast of Tucson, Ariz., until April 2010 (see our 1997 […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Hot potato hunt
The hunt is on for a new “spud stud” to replace the old reliable Russet Burbank variety long used in McDonald’s French fries. In 2005, reports The Associated Press, a Potato Variety Management Institute was established by Idaho, Oregon and Washington, and though it’s been trying to develop the next hot new potato, no miracle […]
Posted inGoat
Keeping uranium out of the Grand Canyon
Are 21- year-old documents adequate to approve reopening a uranium mine about 15 miles north of the Grand Canyon? The Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Grand Canyon Trust say no, and they’re suing the Bureau of Land Management for giving the go-ahead, claiming the agency is violating multiple federal laws by […]
Posted inRange
Health care reform helps tribes
A generation ago Indian Country wasn’t included in the conversation about health care reform. When Congress enacted Medicaid and Medicare it pretended that the Indian Health Service didn’t exist. It was as if it had never occurred to the government, that it, too, ran a major health care delivery system. Say what you like about […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
After the Floods
Unraveling the mystery behind the Northwest’s channeled scablands
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
Water overdrafts
To address groundwater situations such as that explored in your recent article, “Death By a Thousand Wells,” Congress must increase funding for the U.S. Geological Survey so it can conduct a comprehensive, nationwide groundwater mapping study (HCN, 10/26/09). As a nation, we are highly reliant on our groundwater. It accounts for 40 percent of our […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
Well-grounded fears
While Cally Carswell’s piece might better have been titled “Death by more than a hundred thousand wells,” the issue is not the present number of wells but the potential for the future growth of this phenomenon (HCN, 10/26/09). The exempt or domestic well is increasingly being recognized as the fly in the ointment of prior […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
The wild home of hope
Rock Water Wild: An Alaskan LifeNancy Lord248 pages,hardcover: $24.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Alaska writer laureate Nancy Lord’s infatuation with that state dates back to a fourth-grade school project. Like so many transplants, she moved to the Far North to reinvent herself. Alaska’s remoteness, its low population density, natural wealth and often-harsh living conditions recall […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
The hunt is on
Despite protests, wolf hunts go forward in Idaho and Montana
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
Roadless — for the seventh generation
“Roadless-less” attempts to portray a scandal that never existed in the roadless rule promulgation process (HCN, 11/9/09). The article depicts the series of judicial rulings upholding the roadless rule as merely party-line votes — a view that discredits the federal judiciary and wrongly suggests that the rule’s persistent vitality in the courts says nothing about […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
Give language a chance
In mid-November, about 50 experts on the world’s endangered languages gathered at the University of Utah. They were tasked with beginning an ambitious effort to catalog these languages and produce an online, updatable database where they can be stored. The goal is to keep the languages alive. If that doesn’t work, they hope to at […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
For the love of forests
In response to Ray Ring’s article about the roadless rule, as for the money put into the effort to establish the rule, is this not the pot calling the kettle black (HCN, 11/9/09)? Is there some reason why environmentalists and the left should be too pure to use philanthropic funding and lobbying? Sadly, to my […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
For the birds
In response to your article “Audubon Feathers Fly in Arizona,” I want to make it clear that at no time has Desert Rivers Audubon taken a formal position on the land-swap issues described in the article (HCN, 10/12/09). We share many of the same concerns regarding the issues as the other Audubon groups in Arizona. […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
Changing of the guard
We’d like to recognize the dedication and vision of two long-time board members who recently decided to step down. Both hail from Boulder, Colo. Felix Magowan, who joined in 2001, brought substantial publishing and financial expertise to High Country News; he was the founder of Inside Communications, which published Velo News and other outdoor titles […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
A scientist’s view of change
Of Rock and Rivers: Seeking a Sense of Place in the American WestEllen Wohl267 pages, hardcover, $24.95.University of California Press, 2009. Ellen Wohl shudders when she sees houses built on gently sloping benches at the mouths of mountain clefts. She knows that such sites, with their incredible views, were created by past landslides, and hence […]