The summer after graduating from college, we shared the best job in the world. Armed with a GPS unit, a digital camera and the keys to an electric-blue Dodge Durango, we were charged with tracking down and evaluating the condition of historic structures in Yosemite National Park. Since no map existed of the nearly 700 […]
From the backcountry to the building zoo
Posted inMarch 17, 2008: Seeking the Water Jackpot
Falling off the heat ladder
Or … Daniel Boone never dug a snow cave
Posted inMarch 17, 2008: Seeking the Water Jackpot
Stay in the Hunt
Jim Posewitz believes the hunters’ nose-to-the-ground ethic can save the planet
Posted inMarch 17, 2008: Seeking the Water Jackpot
Dear friends
WELCOME, SARAH GILMAN She’s baaaa-aaa-ck! We’re pleased to welcome former HCN intern Sarah Gilman as our new assistant editor. A Colorado native, Sarah was born and raised in Boulder. She earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and studio art at Whitman College in Washington state in 2004. The pull of the Rocky Mountains was too […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2008: Seeking the Water Jackpot
The elephant that was left out of the room …
When you read Matt Jenkins’ cover story in this issue, there’s a good chance you’ll be a bit surprised and even somewhat outraged. You’ll learn that hundreds of homes on the Navajo Nation are without running water, despite the fact that, no matter how you slice it, the tribe has rights to a substantial piece […]
Posted inArticles
Primer 2: Energy
For more than a century, the Interior West has been the nation’s domestic energy supplier. Factories and power plants across the country have long made use of the abundant, high-quality coal reserves in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado and Utah. After World War II, the fledgling nuclear power industry created a rush for the region’s uranium deposits. […]
Posted inArticles
Guarding Galisteo
As oil and gas companies sink more drills into Western soil, landowners often find themselves at the mercy of corporations and industry-friendly federal law. Citizens of Santa Fe County, N.M., however, are pushing the limits of local control and demanding a seat at the table. In Galisteo Basin, south of tony Santa Fe, ranchers and […]
Posted inArticles
Dems reach out to Native Americans
Women and African-Americans aren’t the only demographics receiving extra attention from Democrats this year. The party has also been reaching out to Native Americans. “In the past, Native American voters have been ignored, or thought of in the last minute,” says Laura Harris of the Comanche Tribe. “What (Democratic National Committee Chairman) Howard Dean has […]
Posted inArticles
From poo to power
Poop. That’s what powers Bartertown, the violent setting of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the 1985 post-apocalyptic movie. Beneath the crime-ridden city, one man controls the seething, stinky pig-manure pit from which electricity is generated — and he can shut off the power at will. Fortunately, that’s not the pattern for biofuel these days. Instead, the […]
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
Two weeks in the West
Spend an hour bare-skinned in the relentless sun and howling winds common along the Rocky Mountain states’ front ranges, and you’ll get a visceral (and likely angry red) understanding of the elements fueling yet another energy boom in the West. Wind and solar development is ramping up across the region, according to two recent industry […]
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
Dear friends
HILLMAN AWARD FOR RAY RING Senior editor Ray Ring has won the prestigious 2008 Sidney Hillman journalism award in the magazine reporting category for his cover story “Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields,”April 2, 2007. Since 1950, the foundation has recognized “journalists, writers and public figures whose work promotes social and economic justice.”Past […]
Posted inWotr
In Wyoming, caucusing gets personal
Participating in politics doesn’t usually seem all that inviting in Wyoming, with its one congressional representative and part-time citizen Legislature. That’s especially true for Democrats in this state that is as red as it is square. Non-Republicans in Wyoming can be akin to a rare species of toad — a curiosity that is easily squashed […]
Posted inWotr
Where’s the remote
You may have heard the news: Fewer Americans are venturing into anything that resembles the outdoors. According to a Nature Conservancy study, the number of visitors to state and national parks is declining, and fewer people are hunting, fishing or going camping. Why are people trading in their hiking boots for slippers? The study’s authors, […]
Posted inWotr
The scandal in Boulder that won’t go away
The scandal that people are still talking about in Boulder, Colo., isn’t the murder of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey; it’s about a rich couple “stealing” land from their neighbors — and getting away with it in court. The latest tidbit involving Dick McLean, a former Boulder Mayor and district court judge, and his wife, […]
Posted inArticles
Slideshow: Crossing the ‘Berlin Wall’ for wildlife
The bridge, now in the design phase, would be Colorado’s first, but construction depends on securing the $4 million-$8 million needed for the project. Photographs courtesy of Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project, Digital Animation Services, Sloan Shoemaker
Posted inArticles
Agency probes wolf-baiting claims
Already stained by the blood of dead wolves and suffering from a variety of other setbacks, the program to reintroduce endangered Mexican gray wolves to the Southwest is now at the center of two criminal investigations. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is formally looking into the disappearance of two wolves in New Mexico and […]
Posted inWotr
Use it up, recycle, and never buy anything new – whew!
We may be running out of landfill space in the West, but not because of me. I’m a packrat. I spent summers in eastern Montana with my grandparents, who lived in an apartment above a department store. I spent the warm days rummaging through trash bins in the alley behind the store, and then I’d […]
Posted inWotr
Toxic bison
Updated March 11, 2008 With bison populations in Yellowstone National Park estimated at a near-record 4,700 animals this snowy winter, buffalo have begun pushing out of the park in earnest, and the usual winter shout-fest is underway. Fine, but the real problem posed by Yellowstone’s brucellosis infection, and the park’s refusal to realistically deal with […]
Posted inWotr
Don’t starve the Forest Service
A whole lot of Rocky Mountain Westerners are concerned about President Bush’s recent proposal to cut the U.S. Forest Service budget. Out our way, the land is not an abstraction. The numbers in the Forest Service budget aren’t abstractions, either. They mean something real to our land and to our lives, and a cut of […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
Heard Around the West
MONTANA Karen Craver might have one of the toughest jobs in the West. For three years, she’s been a rural mail carrier in sparsely populated northern Montana, close to Canada. “Some places up here,” she says, “it’s 10 miles between mailboxes.” Every Tuesday and Thursday, Craver hits the rocky road that takes her north of […]