Imagine a water conference focused not on fluvial geomorphology, hydraulics, creek restoration, riparian grazing management, stream bank erosion, non-point source pollution, cumulative water resource impact assessment and the like, but instead on water as a mysterious, magical, extraordinary substance. That’s what former Hopi chairman Vernon Masayevsa had in mind when he conceived “Braiding Through Water: […]
Water world
Posted inWotr
To fight fire, fight forest development
Spring is here, and the forest fire season will soon be upon us. Every year,the cost of fighting forest fires increases so that now, firefighting accounts for close to half the Forest Service’s budget. The cost to tax payers has risen to the billions of dollars. How do federal agencies handle this burden? The Forest […]
Posted inGoat
Desert disappearances
In mid-April, writer Laura Paskus told us of a dozen murdered women whose remains were found in the New Mexico desert. This week, the desert has given up additional bodies — one an explorer who disappeared 75 years ago, the other a hiker missing only since November. Everett Ruess, artist, poet and aesthete, was 20 […]
Posted inRay
Watch falcons nesting high in downtown Boise
This is a cool window into the wild — make that, the downtown wild. Two peregrine falcons are trying to hatch four eggs on the 14th story of a bank building in downtown Boise. The Peregrine Fund and Fiberpipe have set up a webcam so we can all watch the falcons. The camera provides a […]
Posted inWotr
Garbage grows well on the border
Another couple of steps, and it would have hit the jogger in the head. A thick nylon rope sailed over the wall separating Arizona from Mexico as if it had wings. A white lifeline with a knot at the end, it hung from the top and dangled to within three feet of the ground. I […]
Posted inGoat
Camelina, Montana’s wonder crop?
Just last September, the FDA granted permission to include two percent camelina meal — a byproduct of producing the fuel — in the mix given to feedlot beef cattle and swine. The meal has protein levels of 40 percent or more, and is also high in Omega-3 fatty acids. Camelina is well suited to Montana […]
Posted inArticles
Wind River revelations
To listen to the audio interview you need to have the Adobe Flash Player installed and Javascript enabled. Lisa Jones talks about Northern Arapaho horse whisperer and healer Stanford Addison, the subject of her book, Broken.
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
Got warriors?
A quadriplegic horse gentler helps reservation boys through their dangerous teens
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
A conflict of values
Yellowstone and the Snowmobile: Locking Horns over National Park UseMichael J. Yochim328 pages, hardcover: $34.95.University Press of Kansas, 2009. Even as another winter recedes, Mike Yochim’s new book on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park will remain in season. It’s an instant classic — the first comprehensive examination of a notorious nationwide controversy, packed with facts […]
Posted inGoat
Despite vandalism, road stays closed
Back in mid-March, I wrote about a wonderful development on one of my favorite local dog-walking routes. The federal Bureau of Land Management had blocked motor vehicles from this half-mile stretch of old bad road along the Arkansas River just east of Salida. I predicted that the closure sign would get knocked down, the blocking […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
The collected Sierra Nevada
Meteorologist Hal Klieforth has spent his life exploring and documenting California’s ‘Range of Light’
Posted inWotr
Suffering and solace
“He died just like that. He didn’t suffer,” the woman said, speaking of a deceased pet. “Not like your cat.” I was stunned by her words: cruel, thoughtless and dead wrong. But she wasn’t the only one to make such a pronouncement. In the months my husband and I provided hospice for our tabby cat […]
Posted inGoat
When it blows, the snow goes
Last night, I flew home to Colorado to find that my car had changed color. During my weekend away, a wild dust-and-rain storm had rolled over Grand Junction, covering my car — and the rest of town, it seemed — with bright orange splotches of desert dirt. “Yep, half of Utah blew through here,” said […]
Posted inRay
Idaho-style reality TV
Just a quick grin here. Rocky Barker, a veteran Idaho Statesman writer and friend of mine, plays with this news: … The Idaho Department of Commerce is planning on picking a Seattle family for an all-expense-paid trip to Idaho for fishing, rafting, hiking, horseback riding and the like — in exchange for (the family) starring […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
It’s the economy — and growth and the environment — stupid!
Just over a year ago, I traveled around Arizona’s copper country, talking to folks about the new mining boom. I learned that, thanks to soaring copper prices, the gaping pit mines were bound to get even bigger and deeper, along with their attendant environmental costs. Not everyone was pleased, but most saw it as inevitable: […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
A Paonia love story
In March, we hired a new senior advertising representative, David Anderson. With 20 years of experience in marketing and sales and an upbeat personality, he helps fill our advertising pages, which contribute an essential chunk to our annual budget. David enjoys golf, live music, and spending time with wife Stevi and young son Skylar. The […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
The vitality of language
My husband and I have volunteered at a raptor rehabilitation center for years, and when we decided to adopt a toddler, the center’s staff threw us a baby shower on the lawn outside the kestrel’s cage. They presented our new daughter, Maia, with bird-embossed T-shirts and a stuffed toy turkey vulture. We ourselves received a […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
Renewing a battered land
Rewilding the West: Restoration in a Prairie LandscapeRichard Manning 238 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of California Press, 2009. In 1874, when most of the West was still held in common, a simple invention — barbed wire — pushed the region toward a long-held national ideal: privatization. With amazing swiftness, ranchers began to enclose their lands and […]