Just as the booming — or busting — West needs her most, the Albuquerque Tribune is no more. The paper published its last edition on Saturday, Feb. 23, after 86 years of rough-and-tumble journalism that included winning a Pulitzer Prize. The paper was owned by the Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co., which decided last August that […]
The West loses a scrappy daily paper
Posted inWotr
A hunter goes lobbying
A few weeks ago, I set out with a small group to lobby Oregon’s Republican Sen. Gordon Smith. The visit was set up by the national Wildlife Federation, and our goal — a long shot — was to convince the senator to sign on as a co-sponsor of the Lieberman-Warner bill to control greenhouse-gas emissions […]
Posted inArticles
Crying ‘fowl’
Over the past 5 years, one of the West’s emblematic birds, the greater sage grouse, has been batted like a shuttlecock between environmentalists and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. At issue is whether the chicken-sized bird, once found in sagebrush plains from Canada to Arizona, should be listed as threatened or endangered. If the […]
Posted inWotr
Gone geese
For the better part of a week, I’ve been driving around with the carcass of a Canada goose in the bed of my pickup. It lies there with the spare tire, the snow, the blue plastic box of emergency clothes, and an assortment of crushed pop and beer cans from last summer. Because of the […]
Posted inWotr
Who will work in the West’s future company towns?
One day last summer, I gave directions to two young Asian women on bicycles who were looking for the grocery store. Further chatting revealed that they weren’t tourists. In scattershot English, they told me that they were from Thailand and had come to Cody, Wyo., on temporary work visas to serve up hamburgers in Wendy’s, […]
Posted inWotr
Why mining reform matters to all of us
With record snows and a robust economy, this has been a season of good fortune for the resort town of Crested Butte in western Colorado. Yet our future hangs in the balance as Congress wrestles with an issue that ought to concern Americans everywhere: reform of the 1872 Mining Law. How Congress proceeds could determine […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Heard Around the West
WYOMING Perhaps in jest, the award-winning Jackson Hole News&Guide wants readers to come up with a new welcome sign for the town. The current greeting at Teton Pass is definitely outmoded: “Howdy, stranger, yonder is Jackson Hole, the last of the Old West.” With the town now urbanized and chock-full of New West bazillionaires, the […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Following the tracks
Walking along the railroad tracks, I never could decide if it was easier to stretch my stride from one tie to the next, or if I should follow my natural rhythm, letting my foot land sometimes in the crushed stone ballast and sometimes on wood. I wanted the walking to be easy, unconscious. It wasn’t. […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Catching a ride in costa rica
It was with extra excitement that I turned to Michelle Nijhuis’ article on hitchhiking, “The Last Ride,” in the Oct. 29, 2007 issue. This means of travel brought me out to explore the American West for the first time 32 years ago, and led to my settling there. I’ve met people, gone places, and done […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Degrees of sacrifice
The degree of one’s patriotism can be measured by what is risked by the individual. Todd Wilkinson’s recent essay said, “Yet how is standing up to battle against landscape destruction any less a patriotic calling than what is being asked of our soldiers in Iraq?” (HCN, 1/21/08) Conservationists rarely risk their lives or even their […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Wake up and smell the newsprint
It seemed as though Todd Wilkinson’s column, “Where do you draw the line?” was really asking, “Where should I draw the line?” (HCN, 1/21/08). I was unable to connect the dots between his reflections upon his own “lame and futile” political agitations of the past to beg the title question for the rest of us. […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Hello, Clinton? Hello, McCain?
Instead of giving us a hypothetical letter, why not call the presidential candidates and ask them where they stand on Western issues, and then tell us (HCN, 1/21/08)? You could have played an important role in informing us about where the candidates stand on the issues. I believe the most important challenge in the West […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Run with it, obama
I thought Ray Ring’s article on a potential national energy policy was excellent (HCN, 1/21/08). It was the sort of piece that made me glad I recently renewed my subscription. Now if only a presidential candidate would take it from here. Robert Fisher Corona, Arizona This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Biofuel won’t do it
BIOFUEL WON’T DO IT Sugar cane’s efficiency in producing ethanol is 800 percent compared with 130 percent for corn, as others have mentioned (HCN, 2/4/08). Currently, our sugar cane lands in Hawaii are fallow or growing eucalyptus trees. But even if we replanted cane to all these lands and also to suitable lands in our […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Power from the underground
The West is just beginning to tap its potential for clean, renewable geothermal energy
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Two weeks in the West
“God gave man the ability to manage wildlife.” — Wayne Wright, an Idaho Fish and Game commissioner, in the Idaho Statesman. The political animals – the kind that walk on two legs and thump their chests while exhaling promises – could fill this page. But hip-deep in the campaign season, you might like a break […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Men with boots
The stories Russ told always ended with a big chunk of uranium ore being dumped on the table, its yellow dust collecting as a thin film on top of my coffee. And they always began with the phrase: “There used to be 10,000 men with boots on in this town.” It was Silverton, Colo., 1996. […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
The short life of Lisbon Valley
August 1995 After four years of collecting environmental data, Summo USA Corp. applies to the Bureau of Land Management for a permit to mine copper in Lisbon Valley, roughly 40 miles southeast of Moab. March 1997 The Moab BLM office approves the mine, but enviros appeal. June 1998 The Interior Board of Land Appeals rules […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Death of a mine
In Utah, a major new copper producer goes belly-up in just two years
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
A Rico renaissance
Post-mining economy threatened by proposed moly mine