In early August, retired English professor Al Schneider was in the foothills of Lone Mesa State Park, surveying rare native plants in the inhospitable Mancos shale barrens for the Colorado Natural Heritage Program. He was on his belly photographing the recently discovered species Physaria Pulvinata when he realized he was crushing another lovely plant. The flower was “delicate, […]
Sitting on a whole new species
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
Who’s an Indian?
On a frosty February morning in 2004, I joined a small caravan headed to the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona. Our group was led by the well-known Colorado peace activist Chuck Worley, who had befriended several Hopi during World War II, when they were imprisoned together as conscientious objectors. He’d kept in touch with the […]
Posted inGoat
Budget crisis stalls conservation
If you squinted hard at the brief and fuzzy “State of the State” address California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered Thursday morning you might have detected a glimmer of good news for environmentalists: A controversial water conveyance project the governor has been pushing for – a canal that would suck water from the Sacramento River to […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
Notes from the (water) underground
Gordon Grant’s pioneering work on the northwest’s hydrologic sponge
Posted inGoat
Waking up to coal’s other mess
Raymond “Squeak” Hunt is not one to be ignored. He’s not afraid to speak his mind (even if it means building a giant billboard to do so). More often than not, he’s holding a large, sharp knife (he butchers sheep for a living). And he’s prone to spouting aphorisms which, though they don’t always make […]
Posted inGoat
Western legislators stake out nuclear positions
President-elect Barack Obama says he favors nuclear energy, and yesterday his Energy secretary nominee Steven Chu said he intends to fast-track the construction of new domestic nuclear plants. At the same time, Obama is against the proposed high-level nuclear storage facility at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. With just days remaining before Obama takes office, Western politicians […]
Posted inWotr
Wherever you go, there you are
I lived alone in Paris for six months when I was 20. Technically, I had a roommate, an 80-year-old Frenchwoman who’d helped her father smuggle Jews out of the city during the Nazi occupation. She took in boarders to help pay the rent on her Latin Quarter apartment, and I was just one in a […]
Posted inGoat
A pack of problems for wolves
This past year, the West’s wolves have had an even rougher time of it than usual. In the Northern Rockies, they’ve been bounced on and off the endangered species list, and in Yellowstone, more than usual have died. In the Southwest, it’s back to the drawing board after reintroduction plans failed miserably. After the Fish […]
Posted inWotr
Fire and ancient forests belong together
The first time I walked through the burned part of western Montana’s Lolo National Forest, smoke was still rising from its deep duff layer. It was a crisp bluebird October day in 2003, and I was leading a student monitoring team to document how the fire behaved as it raced through two different areas: the […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
The fine art of bureaucracy
Artists helped further a government agenda
Posted inGoat
Renewable energy v. renewable energy
Setbacks are an ongoing theme for NGOs and renewable energy companies that are promoting the use of sustainable resources. Now wind farms are hearing about another setback – a physical one, that is, and for justifiable reasons. The funny thing is, they’re hearing it from other renewable energy advocates. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports […]
Posted inGoat
Unnatural selection indeed
Twenty years ago, I remember my grandpa complaining that the white-tail bucks he shot each fall were smaller than the monster deer he’d taken as a young man. The trophy heads in the basement of his South Dakota farmhouse all looked about the same to me, and I chalked up his grousing to nostalgia and […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
Bass-o-matic
Regarding your story “Ultimate Solution?”, it has been observed that history repeats itself because people don’t learn (HCN 11/21/08). To some extent that may be true. What is certainly true is that history repeats itself because untruths repeated often enough take on the trappings of truth. This came to mind when I read the article. […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
Water wishes, part II
The observation by the mayor of Carlsbad, Calif., that stopping population growth is not enough to solve the city’s water problem was astute (HCN, 11/21/08). According to the U.S Geological Survey, California is below the national average in per capita use of freshwater of 1,280 gallons per day. This estimate includes all water use, which […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
“Stop the madness”
I am tired of people like Patty Limerick, chair of the Center of the American West, University of Colorado-Boulder, making uninformed statements about environmentalists (HCN, 12/22/08). Criticizing environmentalists with a broad brush by saying “the whole-line-in-the-sand, Alamo type-of-thing again” when referring to environmental issues is just plain wrong. If anything, environmentalists should be praised for […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
Water wishes
I admired the foresight of many of your Western “Wishers” for Obama. However, none of them mentioned water (HCN, 12/22/08). Great Basin Water Network seeks an end to giant water pipelines, the ones that take water from the West’s magnificent landscapes, wildlife, livestock and crops and send that water to unsustainable urban sprawl. The environmental, […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
A mean lean — to the left
As one of your Republican subscribers, I must take issue with your Dec. 22 cover illustration and the strong general tone of the editorial content therein (HCN, 12/22/08). If broader reach and credibility are your goals, you need to curb your frothing hatred of George W. Bush, which sometimes gets in the way of straightforward, […]
Posted inGoat
Shell game
Shell Oil has filed a claim on about an eighth of the spring flow in Colorado’s Yampa River. The company hopes to divert the water to an as-yet-nonexistent reservoir near the town of Maybell in the northwest corner of the state. From the 45,000-acre foot lake, the water would flow to oil shale operations and be […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
Blood Quantum
A complicated system that determines tribal membership threatens the future of American Indians