Ever since the scraggly mountain-roaming John Muir joined other Californians to found the Sierra Club in 1892, that state has led the country in protecting the environment. California began regulating pesticides back in the horse-and-buggy era. Beginning in the 1950s, it passed comprehensive laws for air and water quality, regulation of toxic substances, tougher emissions […]
Mixed greens
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Welcome, new interns!
Three new interns have arrived for six months of “journalism boot camp” at our Paonia, Colo., office. (For more on the internship program, see hcn.org/about/internships.) Editorial intern Ariana Brocious is thrilled to be embarking on her first full-time journalism job. Last year, she reported on climate change in Argentina for the Arizona Daily Star. A […]
Posted inGoat
End of an exodus?
As the debate rages on over border fence construction and the environmental and population impacts of immigration, a report released yesterday by the Pew Hispanic Center showed a marked decrease in Mexican migrants entering the U.S. Migration rates into the U.S. from Mexico dropped almost 40 percent between 2006 and 2009, while migration back to […]
Posted inGoat
Uranium tangle, two years later
It’s all about the water. More to the point, it’s about Jackie Adolph’s belief that everyone in Colorado has a right to clean water. “Why would we not?” she asked. Since 2007, Adolph and fellow members of Coloradoans Against Resource Destruction, or CARD, have been doggedly defending that right, which they say is endangered by […]
Posted inWotr
Green gearheads? Rev it up!
This idea will probably strike some people as outrageous. But what the hey, progress rarely comes easily. The Wilderness Society, a behemoth in the environmental movement, has been running a help-wanted ad. It’s looking to hire a “Public Lands Recreation Policy Advisor.” Anyone taking that job, which is based in the group’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, […]
Posted inGoat
Twilight bites into Forks
Forks, Wash., just isn’t what it used to be. I have fond memories of the once-sleepy little town. When I was a child, my family would camp out on the Pacific Coast and then make a leisurely stop in Forks to eat and shower. Restaurants like Sully’s Drive-In and the Smokehouse have been around forever. […]
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Wild Turkey, gunfire and big pipelines
Aaron Million’s quest to pipe Wyoming water to urban Colorado
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
The stories we believe
Madewell BrownRick Collignon213 pages, hardcover: $23.95.Unbridled Books, 2009. Madewell Brown is the fourth novel in Rick Collignon’s “Guadalupe” series, which is set in an imaginary village in northern New Mexico. But it reads as a stand-alone, even while spiraling back to explore the fate of a character introduced in Perdido, the second in the series. […]
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Conservation’s First Lady
“Fancy how I trembled.” That was activist Rosalie Edge’s tongue-in-cheek response to an incident in the 1930s, when an Audubon Society attorney accused her of being a “common scold.” A thorn in the conservation organization’s side for decades, Edge badgered board members and directors for bowing to sportsmen’s influence and ignoring dissenting voices. Although her […]
Posted inGoat
Navajo Nation passes green jobs legislation, 62-1
Some 50 Navajos — including elders and youth and those in-between — donned green shirts today and filled the chambers of the Navajo Nation Council to promote legislation designed to transform the reservation’s mineral and fossil fuel-based economy into a sustainable, community-based, green system. The show of support paid off: The Council passed the legislation […]
Posted inGoat
A dismal future for tourism?
Back in 1997, I ventured to Boulder for a conference about tourism put on by the Center of the American West. Easily the most provocative speaker was the late Hal Rothman, professor of history at the University of Las Vegas. It’s easy to bash Vegas as a greedy place of contrived attractions, he […]
Posted inGoat
Fossil Creek fracas
A few hours northeast of the 110-degree concrete jungle of Phoenix, Ariz., a powerful, cool creek courses through a lush oasis, creating blue-green swimming pools and dramatic waterfalls for campers and day-hikers. But lack of funding for a Forest Service management plan has allowed Fossil Creek to become a refuge for drug and alcohol use, […]
Posted inWotr
Great Old Broads celebrate 20 years of hiking and advocacy
Where in Durango, in southern Colorado, can you spot a lavender size-40D bra hanging in an office window? Why, the national office of a group called the Great Old Broads for Wilderness, of course. It’s one sign that this organization, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, is not an ordinary organization. “We’re the junkyard […]
Posted inGoat
WOPR goes down in flames
In a development applauded by environmental interests and even some Oregon politicians, the US Department of Interior announced on July 16th that it would withdraw the proposed Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR) because it “is legally indefensible.” The WOPR was part of a suite of efforts by the Bush Administration to weaken protections for the […]
Posted inRay
A farmer’s wilderness deal
I followed a log truck on a dirt road, breathing the dust it churned up — heading to the RY Timber mill in Townsend, Montana, last Friday. The truck stopped on the scales by the mill to have its load weighed. I kept going only a few more yards to strangest-ever press conference for a […]
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Retooling for the next mission
Some vets think their war was for oil. Now they’re working to help us use less.
Posted inArticles
Colorado Guv cozies up to natural gas
After butting heads with the fossil fuels industry, Gov. Bill Ritter changes his tune
Posted inGoat
A dam marvel
Hundreds of feet above the Black Canyon’s raging Colorado River, the longest concrete arch in the Western Hemisphere is almost complete. In a month workers will finish construction on the arch support of the Hoover Dam Bypass bridge, open to the public in fall 2010. The new 4-lane bridge, on Highway 93, will replace the […]
Posted inArticles
Interior Department tosses controversial logging plan
Bush-era plan favored timber industry, hurt wildlife