Jim Messina — born in Denver, raised in Boise, with a University of Montana bachelor’s degree in political science — will be a deputy chief of staff in Barack Obama’s White House. Messina worked his tail off to get there. He was chief of staff for Obama’s campaign, and his political experience stretches from Alaska […]
Already one Westerner gets job in Obama admin
Posted inGoat
Administration publishes final oil shale regs
The Bush administration has a little more than two months left in office, but those two months promise to be an exciting — and probably distressing — time for those of us interested in federal land policy. The administration hopes to change a number of administrative rules before it rides into the sunset, and none […]
Posted inGoat
Dam deal advances Bush’s Klamath River agenda
This week the Bush Administration, Warren Buffett’s PacifiCorp and the state governments of Oregon and California announced an “Agreement in Principle” to remove four of the five dams on the Klamath River. If all goes according to their plan, removal of four dams would begin in 2020. A fifth dam – Keno in Oregon – […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Welcome to hard times
First, there’s the dark cloud: The economy of the Mountain West is going into the tank for a few years, and there’s not much that anybody — including the Democratic Congress and President Barack Obama — can do about it. But then there’s the silver lining: As our regional economy tanks, the West will become […]
Posted inGoat
Public land for sale?
Given the size of the federal debt, $10 trillion and growing, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are proposals to reduce it. And why go through the pain of raising taxes or reducing spending when the federal government could just sell some public land — abundant in the West — and apply the proceeds […]
Posted inGoat
Move over, chickens!
Wyoming’s industrious animal husbanders – who raise everything from cattle to pigs to yaks – will soon have yet another creature to cultivate. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission is now formulating rules for sage grouse farming. It all began with State Senator Kit Jennings, R-Casper, who initially proposed a $50,000 pilot program for farming […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
The Doc is in
Rural folks find common ground at the vet’s office
Posted inArticles
Slideshow: The unflappable Doc Vincent
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Posted inGoat
Anticlimax
Over the past couple years, it’s looked like the region would see a resurgence in hardrock mining, thanks in large part to China’s booming economy. As recently as late summer, copper prices were well above $3 per pound; molybdenum hovered over $30 per pound. Towns like Leadville, Colo., which was devastated when the Climax molybdenum […]
Posted inWotr
Victory came from the bottom up
By the weekend before the presidential election, I was starting to feel important. People were at my front door. The telephone ran morning, noon and night. The calls came from Ohio, Utah and California. Everybody wanted to know: “Would I vote, and would I vote for Barack Obama?” By Sunday, I had taken to answering […]
Posted inGoat
A grizzly situation
Bad news for grizzly bears, in Montana and Yellowstone. During the past decade, wildlife managers killed 58 of the federally-protected bruins in northwestern Montana. That makes biologists the biggest source of human-caused grizzly deaths in the region, ahead of train or car strikes (46), illegal shooting (34), and self-defense (20). The “management removals” happen when […]
Posted inWotr
Democrats rise again in the Rockies
Election night was a smashing success for Democrats in the Mountain West. But there’s a big difference between the national results and those that came out of the Rockies: Up until now, the Intermountain West was considered home turf for the Republican party. This election, of course, wasn’t the first time Democrats have had success […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
Who’ll clean up when the party’s over?
Land managers and industry are stepping up efforts to reclaim public lands scraped and drilled for oil and gas. Is it too little, too late?
Posted inGoat
Big money used to bring Musgrave down
Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave was the Richard Pombo of the 2008 election, targeted by the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund and others for her anti-environmental votes (the League of Conservation Voters gave her a 15 percent rating this year, in 2006 she had an 8 and in 2005, a zero). The Defenders spent a total of […]
Posted inGoat
Water Banks, the ESA and the Public Trust Doctrine
Matt Jenkin’s article “Liquid assets” in the October 27th edition is a good introduction to Water Banking – a concept which westerners are likely to hear used increasingly if predictions of diminished water supplies resulting from climate change are accurate. But the article only scratches the surface of a subject which West-watchers will want to […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
Let it mellow
One does not expect to learn about conservation via the sight of one’s 85-year- old great-grandmother hunkered down bare-bottomed under the rosebushes, but there it is. In my formative years, “Grandmary” taught me to reduce, reuse and recycle everything from bacon grease to urine. “Pee makes the roses bloom bigger,” she told me when I […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
Heeding history’s lessons
The rollercoaster plight of the northern gray wolf — the subject of this issue’s cover story — is a good metaphor for American ambivalence toward the natural world. For more than a century, wolves were simply enemies that threatened cows, sheep, dogs and children. Determined government agencies channeled this fear into a campaign of poisoning, […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
Still Howling Wolf
Will Westerners finally learn how to live with Canis lupus?
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
Burning issues
Name Tom BonnicksenAge 67Occupation Retired forestry scientistSpent childhood Outdoors sliding down the Indiana Dunes, canoeing the upper Wisconsin River, living at 8,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains.On how he gathers data “I walk through the woods. I know every inch of these places I study. I’m on the ground all the time. And if I’m […]