If the American Farm Bureau Federation has its way, the issue of whether herbicide spraying over water requires a Clean Water Act permit will be heard by the Supreme Court. A coalition of agricultural groups led by the Federation has petitioned the nation’s highest court to reverse an appellate court decision which found that such […]
The Pesticide Wars
Posted inRange
The Pesticide Wars
If the American Farm Bureau Federation has its way, the issue of whether herbicide spraying over water requires a Clean Water Act permit will be heard by the Supreme Court. A coalition of agricultural groups led by the Federation has petitioned the nation’s highest court to reverse an appellate court decision which found that such […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A ride on the Big Love bus
What with sensational court cases about forced marriage and the Big Love television series, it was probably only a matter of time before locals cashed in on the fascination with “polygs.” Now you can pay a fee to take “The Polygamy Experience Tour” with guides who once lived under the thumb of Warren Jeffs, the […]
Posted inRange
Reader Photo – Cowboy Up
This week’s reader photo is a classic Western image from a great photographer who’s shared a bunch of neat shots up on HCN’s Flickr Pool. Check them out and add yours!
Posted inGoat
The law of necessity
Tim DeChristopher won’t be allowed to put global warming on trial when he’s on trial. DeChristopher majors in economics at the University of Utah. Last fall, he went into a BLM auction and successfully bid on 13 drilling leases, also driving up prices for other successful bidders. But he didn’t have the $1.7 […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Stallion valet needed
Every bar should have a hitching post; that’s just common sense, right? Or so reasoned a ranch hand in Worland, Wyo., who was cited for allowing his horse to wander through town while he hung out in a bar. According to the Billings Gazette, an indignant William Schellinger told police that “they should spend their […]
Posted inRange
Wyoming – the Uranium State?
They’re calling it a “uranium renaissance.” Wyoming is prepping itself for what is slated to be another boom in uranium mining for the fourth time in 60 years. Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West are all too familiar with energy boom and bust cycles. Just ask all the people who lost jobs in the oil […]
Posted inGoat
Spectrum of sexuality
On the night of June 16, 2001, Fred Martinez, Jr. was walking home from a party when he was chased into a rocky canyon on the outskirts of Cortez, Colo. The 16-year-old Navajo was cornered in the chasm’s nightmarish shadows and bludgeoned to death. Police found his body five days later. The crime shocked the […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
A cleaner coal?
Energy companies hope to turn coal into gas — by burning it underground
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
How wild is a managed wolf?
Another wolf made the news last month: SW266M received capital punishment in Wyoming for the crime of eating woolly domestic mammals. His “name” means he was the 266th male wolf captured and tagged in southwestern Montana. His record yielded the further information that he was born in May 2007 on the east side of the […]
Posted inWotr
Stopping by apples in the land of condos
My chicken-filled backyard in Bozeman, Mont., butts up against a square block of condominiums. The green fence between us is like a Berlin wall, separating noisy, itinerant college kids from our more stable neighborhood of families. It separates the mostly paved, over-parked, garbage-strewn and under-aged drinking zone that police call “Bourbon Street” from our homes. […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Bruins’ “Car of the year”
As everyone knows, bears are quick learners, and thanks to a scholarly article in the Journal of Mammalogy, we now know what vehicles in Yosemite National Park they prefer to rip and rend in their search for fast food. “The bears seem to base their decision on ‘fuel efficiency,’ ” writes Rocky Barker — “that […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
Frack 2, Scene 1
In 2006, in the midst of the Rocky Mountain energy boom, Grand Junction and Palisade, Colo., lost a long battle to keep natural gas drilling off the forested mesa that supplies the two communities’ drinking water. Now, the drilling boom has moved out East, and the political landscape of the oil and gas fight appears […]
Posted inRange
Saving Tortoises one Student at a Time
“When I saw the night sky for the first time in the Mojave National Preserve I felt like a layer of film had been peeled away from my eyes,” says David Lamfrom, the Barstow based field coordinator for the National Parks Conservation Association. “I want the kids who live in the high desert to realize […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
The Lost Art of Listening
Can the Northern Arapaho save their language?
Posted inRange
A Western Town, Contaminated
Bryce Andrews of the Clark Fork River Coalition, reports from a Superfund Meeting at the Opportunity, Mont., Community Center I drove in just before 7 pm, down a little spur road that headed west a few miles after Warm Springs. Ahead of me the Anaconda Stack, lit up by amber lights around its base, slipped […]
Posted inRange
Reader Photo – Red Aspen Leaves
I pondered featuring this reader photo a couple weeks ago, but ended up with a different choice. Today, though, the sparkling vermilion of these aspen leaves, now blanketing forest floors across the West, brought me a bright remembrance of Colorado’s autumn moments, which I wanted to share with you. Across most of the West it’s […]
Posted inWotr
Advice from the Loser School of Hunting
The less successful a hunter you are, the more practice you’re going to get, because failure means you have to go back out there again and again. If you bagged your beast early, then evidently you didn’t need any extra practice. Otherwise, consider yourself enrolled in the Loser School of Hunting. Many factors must come […]