Rural electric co-ops make a slow push back toward community energy
Growing Away from Big Coal
Posted inGoat
Off-road clampdown in the West
We all know that irresponsible off-road vehicle use causes major damage to public lands. The June 8 HCN contained a story about Western states passing laws to more strongly regulate offroaders (“States rev up ORV rules“). KUNC’s Kirk Siegler recently interviewed associate editor Jodi Peterson about that story, focusing on the new laws and the […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Soused in the saddle
A police sergeant in Arvada, Colo., said that in his 15 years in law enforcement, he’d never charged a guy on a horse with drunk driving. But when the tipsy rider ambled into a busy strip mall on his horse, you couldn’t help but notice that he was falling out of the saddle, reported 9news.com. […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
We’re Listening
Below are some of the comments you sent us on the most recent reader survey. Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think. We’ll be mulling over your responses during the coming weeks, and using them to help chart our course. Keep the mag as it is with stories like “My […]
Posted inGoat
Beaver and restoration – the rest of the story
The June 8th HCN edition included an excellent article on the potential for beaver to restore western watersheds and, in the process, improve water supplies. The piece, however, omitted a few important caveats: The movement to make a partnership with the Beaver People in order to restore western watersheds is welcome. But it is not […]
Posted inGoat
Airports killing wildlife to prevent accidents
Today reports from two far-flung airports illustrate the ongoing conflict between modern human culture and animals simply doing what they do. In New York City — five months after Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger safely landed a US Airways jet in the Hudson River after hitting a flock of geese — some 2,000 Canadian geese living around […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
Modern-day La Mancha
Are environmentalists re-enacting Don Quixote’s crusade against windmills — while ignoring the real monster of climate change?
Posted inGoat
What dreams shale come
Yesterday I read, “What every westerner should know about oil shale,” a report published last week by the University of Colorado’s Center of the American West. It left my ears ringing with a sort of dull reverberation that, while it lasted, actually seemed to be getting louder. I think that ringing sound had something to […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Houseboaters beware
During the West’s last nine years of drought, the level of Lake Mead, which backs up behind Hoover Dam, has plummeted 100 vertical feet, causing unexpected and peculiar things to happen. Where there used to be flat water with no pizzazz on the reservoir’s edge 120 miles east of Las Vegas, a dangerous rapid has […]
Posted inJune 1, 2009: Voyage of the Dammed
Visitors from underground
VISITORS FROM UNDERGROUNDPat Jablonsky and Bill Yett of nearby Delta stopped in to our Paonia, Colo., office to renew their subscription and tell us about their recent trip to New Mexico’s Fort Stanton-Snowy River Cave National Conservation Area. They showed us astonishing photos of the Snowy River passage, named for the miles-long formation of bright […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
Let’s Get Small
Can ‘hamster power’ help save the West’s landscapes — and the world?
Posted inGoat
Going it alone
It’s fairly common knowledge that the poor, though they’ve released far less than their share of the world’s greenhouse gasses, will feel the nastiest effects of climate change. Usually, we take “the poor,” in this case, to mean residents of Tuvalu, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea or other developing states whose governments lack the resources or […]
Posted inWotr
The lands less traveled are a treat
After a late-February snowstorm left western Colorado frosted with white, I decided to check out the cross-country skiing at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. It turned out to be an experience I can only call “manicured.” I drove to the visitor center on a paved road, then skied along a well marked trail […]
Posted inGoat
An end to the “Snow War”?
Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, Arizona skiers may soon be spared the inconvenience of living in one of the Union’s warmest and driest states. Last week the high court removed the final legal hurdle blocking Arizona Snowbowl from making artificial snow with reclaimed sewage effluent on the San Francisco Peaks—a plan which 13 southwestern tribes […]
Posted inGoat
Landscapes of power
A few miles north of Rock Springs, Wyoming, a big interpretive sign is titled, Landscapes of Power. Yes, the landscapes are powerful: The massive piece of earth that seems just to have awakened and violently ripped itself out of the land up the Green River from Vernal, Utah; or the cloud enveloped Wind River range, […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
The other Trail of Tears
Selling Your Father’s Bones: America’s 140-Year War Against the Nez Perce TribeBrian Schofield 368 pages, hardcover: $26.00.Simon & Schuster, 2009. A white 30-something British guy might not seem like the obvious source to turn to for a definitive history of the persecution and flight of the Nez Perce — one of the most complex, tragic […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
See you in July
This will be the last issue you receive for a month; we skip an issue four times a year. Look for the next HCN to hit your mailbox around July 20, and in the meantime, visit hcn.org for fresh blog posts, new Writers on the Range columns and other exciting content. VISITORSOn her only day […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
And you think times are tough
At a yard sale, I bought several boxes containing nearly a half-century’s worth of American Heritage magazines, that richly illustrated compendium of the nation’s history through good times and bad, with special attention paid to the droughts, downturns and disasters that tried the souls of our forebears. I paid $10 for more than 600 magazines. […]