“Voyage of the dammed” by Kevin Taylor doesn’t mention one of the negative impacts of beaver — their indirect influence on native plants and animals when non-native species are present (HCN, 6/8/09). For example, beavers strongly prefer native cottonwoods over non-native salt cedar (tamarisk) and Russian olive. This selective foraging gives a substantial additional advantage […]
Unintended castor-quences
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Biomass is where it’s at
I have checked your “Alternative Alternative Energy: An HCN Special Report” issue over carefully, twice now, and it appears that my eyes are not deceiving me — you really did ignore the potential contributions of woody biomass (HCN, 6/22 & 7/6/09). This is shortsighted, to say the least.Forest biomass is plentiful, carbon-neutral and essential to […]
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Wavin’ in Oregon
In your otherwise excellent series of articles on renewable energy in the West, a few gaps were evident (HCN, 6/22 & 7/6/09). Your map on page 16 leaves the impression that Oregon is far behind neighboring states in alternative energy projects (see correction, page 11). In fact, many wind energy sites not noted on the […]
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Bull riders for Jesus
I wish Craig Childs had attended Cowboy Church during his PBR bull riding experience in Billings (HCN, 5/25/09). He might have had a different perspective in his article concerning the “wild life” of bull riders. They are all not drinkers and carousers as implied in his article. Cowboy Church is organized and attended by many […]
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Even hard-liners want to experiment in Arizona
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Taking control of the machine.” “We squashed the timber industry and the Forest Service, and dictated the terms of surrender” in the Southwest, says Kieran Suckling, the director of the Center for Biological Diversity. He’s talking about a war that began in the 1980s, […]
Posted inJuly 20, 2009: Thinking Outside the Timber Box
Taking control of the machine
Environmentalists and timber companies push big experiments in national forests
Posted inGoat
Still stuck in traffic
Los Angeles commuters don’t so much drive to work as creep—slowly, very slowly. So slowly, in fact, that each L.A. driver wasted an average 70 hours stuck in traffic in 2007, which was actually a slight improvement over the 72 hours they squandered in 2006, according to a study released last week by the Texas […]
Posted inGoat
Brewer’s budget battle
A week into the 2010 fiscal year in Arizona, the state’s budget is $2.1 billion in the red, worrying Tucson officials and others about committing money and jobs. In the past six months since Republican Secretary of State Jan Brewer stepped up to fill former Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano’s post, the state has been embroiled […]
Posted inArticles
The Hungry Intern: Dinner
The starving journalist is no longer starving, and he filled up on all local foods
Posted inGoat
An old idea reborn
Sometimes old ideas become new ideas. On July 9, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter announced plans to seek federal funding to study a high-speed rail corridor from Denver south through New Mexico to El Paso, Texas. Take out the “high-speed” part of it, and you’ve got the dream of Gen. William Jackson Palmer […]
Posted inWotr
Birds can only fly so far
The sky is the color of a robin’s egg on the Barker Dam Loop Trail in Joshua Tree National Park, 215 miles southwest of Las Vegas. I’m hiking a section of trail that winds its way through an immense Joshua tree forest when an American kestrel wings over like a fighter plane, chasing a raven. […]
Posted inGoat
Will money talk?
It’s a sweet-voiced, normal-looking middle-aged woman who looks sincerely at the camera and tells us that she’s one of millions of Californians who want to pay taxes on marijuana, legalizing her drug of choice and helping to refill the state’s empty coffers (the taxes could fund 20,000 teacher salaries, she says). This is an ad […]
Posted inGoat
Duwamish not dead
Next week, Cecile Hansen, a direct descendant of Seattle’s namesake Chief Sealth, will travel from one Washington to another. Hansen, the chairwoman of the Duwamish tribe, has been invited to testify in D.C. at an upcoming hearing on H.R. 2678, a bill introduced in the House that would grant the Western Washington tribe the federal […]
Posted inWotr
Riding the rails — upscale
“You been ridin’ the rails?” The man had an old green duffel bag slung over his shoulder. I could tell he’d checked us out as we stood on the lush lawn by the courthouse in Missoula, Mont. On my back I wore a faded red pack, and across my front I’d strapped my 6-month-old son. […]
Posted inGoat
6,000 years without enviro laws
See, we need to mine uranium because there were no environmental laws around 6,000 years ago, when the earth was created. At least I think that’s what Arizona State Sen. Sylvia Allen, R, is saying in this video clip. Huh?
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
Of moose and mandolins
AGE 30HOMETOWN Broadview Heights, OhioOCCUPATION Environmental scientist with the EPAHCN READER SINCE 2002 Elaine Lai stopped by High Country News on a sunny day in early May. She works for the wastewater unit of the Environmental Protection Agency, and had driven over from her Denver office to write a permit for the federal fish hatchery […]
Posted inGoat
Condor quandary
A prominent group of biologists and scientists is strongly criticizing conservation plans for Tejon Ranch, a 270,000-acre property north of LA. The ranch is slated for 30,000 acres of housing, industrial and resort projects — which will sprawl across roughly 20,000 acres of critical habitat for the endangered California condor. Tejon’s developers have asked the […]
Posted inGoat
Roughing it the easy way
Summer is officially upon us and for many that means camping, often in the company of family or friends. This summer is an especially good time to get outside to spend a few nights under the stars, sing off-key by the campfire and roast all manner of food on a stick, because the National Park […]
Posted inWotr
Wyoming continues its state of denial
Packs of hungry wolves are decimating Wyoming’s 35 herds of elk — right? Wrong. And yet that’s what some people continue to claim, even as studies repeatedly disprove the accusation. Nearly three decades of the data displayed in Wyoming’s annual reports show that elk numbers, elk harvests and hunter success rates have steadily increased in […]