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 […]
Southern California’s Briny Beast
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 […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
“Meet a black guy”
The weekly Farmer’s Market in Corvallis, Ore., has an unlikely hit on its hands. It’s the “Meet a black guy” booth, where white folks can chat about race relations with two young men skilled at improvisational comedy, reports the Corvallis Gazette-Times. Jeff Oliver, who is black, and Sean Brown, who is white, say they “just […]
Posted inWotr
Believe it or not: Ranching has something to teach us
As the 21st century unfolds, it’s becoming clear that we need more family farmers and ranchers on the land, not fewer. We need them not only for the food they provide, but also for a lesson in how to live on the land. It’s an ironic turn of events. For decades, livestock grazing in the […]
Posted inArticles
War of Fog
Fighting the West Nile Virus and a culture war in a small Colorado town
Posted inWotr
The end of an affair
I hate to say it, but it’s true: I’m in love with my lawn. My love affair began romantically in the promising early days of spring, as regular rain showers turned my backyard in Wyoming into something very Southampton-like. My lawn was worthy of a respectable English cricket game: A cushy playground for bare feet. […]
Posted inGoat
On Truth, Fiction and White Guilt
It was good to see HCN publish two long letters commenting on Matt Jenkin’s “Peace on the Klamath” feature in the 6/23 edition. As a Klamath River activist since 1986 I was deeply disturbed by Jenkin’s piece which omits complex Klamath realities in favor of the West’s Holy Grail – “Peace” between cowboys (agriculture) and […]
Posted inGoat
Hula in the high country
On the surface, not much remains of Iosepa, a Polynesian settlement of Mormon converts that briefly flourished in Utah’s Skull Valley. A few gravestones and a fire hydrant linger in the desert where once more than 200 Hawaiians, Samoans and other Pacific Islanders settled to be closer to the mother church in the late 19th […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Paper busts buyers of bogus degrees
The Spokesman-Review has begun outing people who bought bogus degrees from a diploma mill based in Spokane, Wash. The Justice Department, meanwhile, refuses to release the list of almost 10,000 buyers to the public. A source familiar with the list says, “There are people in high places with these degrees, and only one of them […]