Unregulated wells strain short water supplies in Washington’s Yakima Basin and throughout the West
Death by a thousand wells
Posted inOctober 26, 2009: The newest Westerners
Indians vs. Greens?
“Environmental activists and organizations are among the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty.” So said Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. in late September, shortly after he joined northern Arizona’s Hopi tribal council in “unwelcoming” environmental groups from those tribes’ lands, which sprawl across portions of three Southwestern states. The national press regurgitated the story with […]
Posted inGoat
Resilience, not sustainability
The annual Headwaters Conference at Western State College in Gunnison often presents some concepts worth chewing on, and this year’s gathering (held Oct. 16-18) was no exception. Headwaters, as I’ve come to understand it after 20 years of attending, is something of an idea fair for little mountain towns. For some time I’ve […]
Posted inGoat
Clean(er) coal?
In Alaska and Wyoming, two energy companies just announced plans to burn coal underground to create natural gas, then use the waste carbon dioxide to enhance oilfield production. The process, called “underground coal gasification”, has never been done in the U.S., but is used in Australia and other countries. The Anchorage Daily News reports: As […]
Posted inGoat
The high risk of leaving home
Last week, federal agents shot a sheep-killing wolf in Wyoming. That male (266M), from a Montana litter born in 2007, was the sibling of a female wolf (341F) that wandered across Wyoming, Idaho and Utah last fall. This past March, she was found dead near the northern Colorado town of Rifle. Sadly, the littermates’ fates […]
Posted inOctober 12, 2009: Silenced Springs?
A guide to the past — and the future
A 1930s Montana guidebook contains lessons for today
Posted inGoat
Can salmon save themselves?
The Northwest’s Columbia River Basin stocks of iconic salmon have been the subject of a heated and expensive court battle for the past decade. Thirteen out of 16 stocks are listed as threatened or endangered thanks to a combination of factors including mining, farming, urban development and most significantly, lots of hydropower dams along the […]
Posted inGoat
Tepid statistics as the planet burns
Mired firmly in denial, we seem to be stuck in the first step of Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s five stages of grief about the death of life as we know it on Planet Earth. Adam D. Sacks has an excellent piece on Grist about our lack of urgency about global climate change — and from the […]
Posted inRange
Native voting rights and the West
Of the many findings presented in a recent American Civil Liberties Union report, which concludes that many Indians face discriminatory policies and actions that deny them their constitutional right to vote, poor circumstances facing western tribal citizens tend to stand out. One of the most shocking cases of disenfranchisement highlighted in the report, titled “Voting Rights […]
Posted inWotr
Aldo Leopold might call it the new agrarianism
One hundred years ago, a great American conservationist began a job in the Southwest as a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service. Over the course of an influential career, Aldo Leopold advocated a variety of conservation methods, including wilderness protection, sustainable agriculture, wildlife research, ecological restoration, environmental education, land health, erosion control and watershed management. […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
World’s largest sand trap
Where is a golf-ball-collecting fox when you need one? Although it might take more than one to round up the 3,000 or so golf balls that a 57-year-old man has scattered around Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. Since 2007, Douglas Jones has been “just tossing them out of his vehicle,” a park spokesman […]
Posted inOctober 12, 2009: Silenced Springs?
Water across the Divide
How the failure of an aged ditch got in the way of Wilderness
Posted inRange
Reader Photo: Angel Peak
We’re loving the variety and beauty of the many photos HCN readers are posting up on our Flickr group. This week’s selection was tough, since there are so many amazing images. But the old-timey feel of this image makes it an instant classic – it seems like a snapshot you’d find in an old shoebox […]
Posted inArticles
Slideshow: The tiny creatures of the Great Basin
Springsnails, up close and personal
Posted inRange
New Pew database tracks government subsidies
The Pew Charitable Trust has launched a new effort and website which “aims to raise public awareness about the role of federal subsidies in the economy. Subsidyscope should be useful to Westerners who want to know the details of where federal subsidies are distributed around our region. it has long been observed that – while […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Foxy golfer
Why would a red fox collect golf balls? Nobody knows, but then again, nobody really knows why grown men walk around with sticks trying to wallop them. The fox in question lives in Steamboat Springs where it has become obsessed by Tom Houk’s backyard putting green. Houk, who likes to practice a few putts every […]
Posted inRange
Time for the cows to come home
On October 1st, we trailed 136 cow/calf pairs down Dry Cottonwood Creek and settled them in a stubble field near the Clark Fork River. This cattle drive marked the end of the 2009 grazing season and the beginning of our shift toward winter management of the ranch and herd. Now, with the days getting […]
Posted inOctober 12, 2009: Silenced Springs?
Parties ‘R’ Some Of Us
Even as many Westerners struggle with layoffs, pay cuts, medical bills and other economic troubles, wealthy people in resort towns are whooping it up. That’s the report from the companies that supply banquet tables and chairs, enormous tents, portable dance floors, sound and lighting systems, antler chandeliers, artificial trees, eruptions of flowers and other party-throwing […]
Posted inOctober 12, 2009: Silenced Springs?
Audubon feathers fly in Arizona
Huge mine proposal deepens schism between state’s green groups