A broken system leaves immigrant workers invisible — and in danger.
The dark side of dairies
Posted inRange
It’s a great job (except for the benefits)
I’m reading a job announcement for a great gig. It pays $15 an hour. Flexible hours. Important work – and it’s classified as “long-term temporary.” That’s another way of saying: no benefits. In a country that has opted for an “employer-based” health care system this should be the smoking gun; primary evidence that it’s a […]
Posted inRange
Huge Chunks of Land, Changing Hands
The collapse of the housing industry hasn’t been good to log prices. According to a report (pdf) published in June by Northwest Farm Credit Services, log prices are as low as they were in the 1980s and can barely cover the cost of logging. Across the Northwest, timber companies are delaying harvests and mills have […]
Posted inGoat
“Don’t lie for the other guy”
Sponsored by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, a new campaign aims to slow the flow of guns bought in Arizona and smuggled into Mexico. “Don’t lie for the other guy” is currently emblazoned on 92 […]
Posted inRange
This Week’s HCN Reader Photo
This week’s reader photo comes from Flickr contributor T. R. Baker, and features Nevada, in black and white. You can add your photos to HCN’s Flickr photo pool. We’ll pick one to feature each week on our Web site. Don’t forget to tag them “highcountrynews.” You can also check out last week’s selected reader photo […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Cuddle-fish?
California is so broke, it’s closing 219 state parks. But wait, a nonprofit group best-known for its in-your-face advertising has offered to ride to the rescue, money in hand, to save one of them. PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, says it will pay to keep Pescadero State Beach open. There is a […]
Posted inRange
Birdwatching in the desert
Lightning flares in the bruised afternoon sky over the Arizona-New Mexico line. Wind scrapes across the grey-green flats from the west, flinging a fistful of gray birds through the air. Purple rags of cloud stream ahead of the storm. A chill strikes the desert. Thunder claps. I take cover under the overhung cut bank of […]
Posted inGoat
Friends of the Forest
What do sixty volunteers, the U.S. Forest Service, Trout Unlimited and MillerCoors have in common? They’re all participating, in one way or another, in the Clear Creek restoration project at the Arapaho National Forest this Saturday, as part of the National Forest Foundation’s third annual Friends of the Forest Day. Other partners include the National […]
Posted inRange
Seeing the Forest for the… Wildlife?
While Americans love animals—half the nation are pet owners and billions of dollars are spent on wildlife and bird watching each year — our animal affinity seems to wear a little thin when it comes to nitty-gritty policy debate. But policy is what allows forests to be clear cut and hazardous mining runoff to end […]
Posted inRange
The health care debate comes home
If you pay attention at all to the network news, you’re no doubt aware of controversy surrounding August Recess town hall meetings which Members of Congress have been conducting in their districts. The news reports I’ve seen show folks making angry accusations and claiming that aspects of health care bills which have been moving forward […]
Posted inWotr
Cow-free at last
Deep in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument of southern Oregon lies my favorite wildflower meadow. This summer I need to step carefully, to avoid the lush clumps of Jacob’s Ladder blossoms and the delicate columbines, their blooms nodding in the breeze. I breathe in the scents of the wild: the spice of the conifers, the earthy […]
Posted inGoat
Rural renaissance redux
It wasn’t really my intention, but I was part of the “rural renaissance” of the 1970s when, for the first time in generations, many rural areas starting gaining population. In 1974, my wife and I, both Baby Boomers, moved from the civilized Front Range piedmont of Colorado to a rather remote rural area — […]
Posted inGoat
Clash along the Columbia
Ten simple words. For the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in western Oregon, ten words introduced into an existing law would restore their relationship with the land upon which their ancestors lived. Other tribes, however, consider the move risky. Last month, Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR) introduced a bill in Congress that would add the Grand […]
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
Brushed aside
Washington’s floral greens industry falters as beleaguered harvesters leave
Posted inGoat
Why West?
In an attempt to clear the craziness clouding the health care debate and drum up support for a public option, President Obama parachuted into unfriendly territory last Saturday—and not for the first time. It was his second visit to Grand Junction, Colo., in conservative Mesa County, where John McCain spanked him last year, 64 to […]
Posted inWotr
Off the road again
Jack Kerouac wrote his entire novel “On the Road” in just three weeks. He used a continuous roll of teletype paper, as if pausing to put in a new sheet of paper would have caused a pile-up on his imagination’s highway. Lawrence Ferlinghetti said that Kerouac provided us with “a vision of America seen from […]
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
Affirmative actions
Homer Lee Wilkes. Ignacia Moreno. Hilary Tompkins. Each is a member of a racial or ethnic minority. Each has been nominated by Barack Obama — the first black president — to a high position with power over environmental issues in the West. And each has faced skepticism from environmentalists. On May 5, Obama picked Wilkes […]
Posted inWotr
A sucker punch to the stomach: When trees turn red
Colorado’s bark beetle epidemic is unlike anything in the state’s still-brief recorded history. Foresters say 95 percent of our lodgepole pines will be dead within just a few more years, with beetles likely to burrow next into the ponderosa pine along the urbanized Front Range corridor. To some people, this has been like a sucker […]
Posted inRange
Clearcutting and climate change
Late last week the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in California challenging approval of 400 acres of clearcuts in Northern California’s Sierra Mountains. In the press release announcing the lawsuit, the Center claims that approval of the clearcutting by California’s Board of Forestry violated California law which requires that state agencies analyze […]