“I can attest to the fact that (the Department of Interior) gets in your blood, but I can also say that it does not necessarily turn it green.” — Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary of the Interior, announcing his resignation this week. Hoffman, who got his post thanks to Vice President Dick Cheney, regularly […]
Not a moment too soon
Posted inHeard Around the West
Just a tad intrusive?
Homeowners in Englewood, a suburb of Denver, now have to scoop the poop in their own backyards, reports the Denver Post. A task force that met for over a year came up with the new law that gives people 72 hours to remove dog-door face fines from $50 to $999. The town got tough on […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A chicken named Thelma, R.I.P.
A chicken named Thelma laid a gigantic egg that might have set a record,reports Capital Press. It was eight inches in circumference and the size of a small ostrich egg. “’Ouch’ was my first reaction,” said the chicken’s owner, Margaret Hamstra. Unfortunately, Thelma died a few days later, which, as Hamstra sadly noted, “kind of […]
Posted inApril 14, 2008: Taking to the Trees
The leasing protest game
Conservationists’ gritty strategy yields small fruit
Posted inWotr
My dad and the quail he loved
Theirs is the call heard in the background of every Grade B western ever filmed, no matter the supposed location of the good guy vs. bad guy confrontation. It’s still a surprise to me, though, when I hear the California quail below my house on a blustery day that passes for spring in Montana. The […]
Posted inGoat
Owl be seeing you, too
Many thanks to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll, for his piece about High Country News titled Owl be seeing you. Carroll praises Kim Todd’s story on the spotted and barred owls — Hostile Takeover, published in our August 4 issue — and waxes eloquent as he recaps the main points of Todd’s feature. He […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Crash of the cottonwoods
Iconic trees decline on the West’s overtaxed rivers
Posted inGoat
Southern California’s Briny Beast
The long-suffering Salton Sea, notorious for its massive bird and fish die-offs, is finally to be put on an intravenous drip. A key committee in California’s state Assembly approved a bill last week that would provide $47 million to begin restoring the salty sink to some semblance of health. The full Assembly is expected to […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Low-speed “vehicular eluding”
The Durango Herald called it a “car chase,” but for it definitely wasn’t a high-speed one: For 25 minutes, Samuel Luna, 62, drove a less than speedy 3-to-5 miles per hour while trying to escape police. The pursuit in southern Colorado’s Montezuma County began when Luna refused to leave his car even though he was […]
Posted inWotr
What Westerners would love to ask the candidates
For a Westerner, this year’s presidential campaign has been both exciting and disappointing. There was excitement when Sen. Barack Obama and the entire Clinton family fought for support in Wyoming; who could ever have imagined that Democratic presidential candidates would be battling for delegates in a state that no Democrat has carried in 44 years? […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Obama’s Western ace in the hole
Jim Messina is the presidential campaign’s chief of staff
Posted inGoat
Owl tales
Kim Todd’s feature – Conservation quandary in the August 4th edition – zeros in on key ethical questions which arise within the context of endangered species management in general and northern spotted owl (NSO) management in particular. But readers who are not familiar with the conflicts over forest management in the Pacific Northwest and northern […]
Posted inGoat
Learning from tourists
My idea of a perfect vacation is one that does not involve my driving a car, and I managed that on a couple of earlier trips to Oregon with planes, trains, and my daughters’ cars — one lives in Eugene and the other lives in Bend. This time around, starting nearly a fortnight ago, I […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
“Big iron” at Sun Valley
When 90 corporate jets crowded into Sun Valley’s airport recently during a pow wow of business bigwigs, the value of all the “big iron” on the ground — as pilots call it — was estimated at $2 billion, reports the Idaho Mountain Gazette. Airport manager Rick Baird said that more than half the planes covering […]
Posted inGoat
What the frac’ is in those fluids
In the gas industry’s “frac’ing” process, approximately a million gallons of fluid, under extremely high pressure, is injected underground, and, with explosives, creates fractures in the strata, freeing natural gas from its underground chambers. Manufacturers of frac’ing fluids are allowed to keep their formulas proprietary, but they are required by the Occupational Safety and Health […]
Posted inGoat
Fate of four Klamath River dams under negotiation
PacifiCorp – the Buffett-Berkshire Hathaway company which owns and operates the Klamath Hydroelectric Project – is in confidential negotiations with the federal Department of Interior and the States of California and Oregon concerning the fate of the Project and its five dams. Word has come from inside the talks that an “agreement in principle” to […]
Posted inWotr
Death to cheeseburgers? Maybe not
If you’re concerned about the effect your food choices have on the environment, you might want to reconsider cheeseburgers. A recent study shows that beef and milk products are the world’s most polluting foods, thanks to the greenhouse gases released by cows. Meanwhile, in what has to be awkward news for locavores, the study, reported […]
Posted inArticles
Roan on the auction block
BLM set to open Colorado plateau to gas drilling despite broad opposition
Posted inGoat
Does Tom Udall put families before fish? NO!
Front and center are two peace-seeking, fish-loving, tax-hiking, tree-hugging, jewelry-wearing, long haired hippies. The brains behind the Pearce campaign seem to think that connecting Udall to 1960’s and 70’s-style environmentalism will be enough to discredit him. Whether or not this will be a successful strategy amid the West’s shifting political winds remains to be seen. […]
Posted inGoat
Truth – the newest Klamath casualty
Klamath Riverkeeper’s letter in the 7/21 edition portrays PacifiCorp (owner/operator of the Klamath Hydroelectric Project) as an example of “multinational corporations perpetrating underpublicized acts of environmental injustice against rural communities.” Wow! Maybe so; but I am struck by the fact that this is precisely the way many “rural communities” portray Klamath Riverkeeper and other “environmental […]