On an unseasonably cold night in late January, more than 250 Phoenix-area residents packed the Arizona State University Kerr Cultural Center in Scottsdale. There, they found more than just physical warmth: High Country News was sponsoring a heated conversation on the uncertain future of their desert kingdom. Author and moderator Craig Childs posed the central […]
Planning for uncertainty
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
Hold the salt
The largest wetland restoration project on the West Coast shifts into gear
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
Dear friends
WELCOME, NEW HCN INTERNS New winter interns Evelyn Schlatter and Francisco Tharp will be the last set of interns to spend a four-month stint at High Country News. We’ve found that most interns spend the first month or so just figuring out what HCN is all about and where we keep the coffee. So, starting […]
Posted inArticles
Relicensing dams hangs on warm water, endangered fish
Cooler water. And endangered fish. These are two of the hurdles that stand between Idaho Power Co. and new federal licenses to operate the three dams on the Snake River known as the Hells Canyon complex. For more than four years, Idaho Power has been trying to obtain the water-pollution permits it needs for relicensing. […]
Posted inWotr
When dams were young and gardenias a nickel apiece
My mother at 90 prefers the distant past to the present. When she sees the Tournament of Roses parade on television, she recalls coming of age during the Great Depression. When she hears that the nation might be sliding into recession, she tells me what hard times were really like. Her job during the 1930s […]
Posted inWotr
Whatever we do about illegal immigration, somebody suffers
It’s 6:30, and I’m eating breakfast at a café north of Denver with a man I’ll call Bob. Born and raised in Denver, Bob sprays custom finishes on drywall and has owned his own company for 18 years: “At one point we had 12 people running three trucks.” Now, the business is just his wife […]
Posted inWotr
Wyoming hits a green roadblock
Will Wyoming’s vast coal mines be forced to cut back or close down during our lifetimes? When the current energy boom started in the fall of 2002-2003, just five short years ago, several commentators predicted that the state’s energy-based prosperity would stretch out for decades. I was certain of this, too. The prediction was based […]
Posted inWotr
A bad idea hits the gas pumps
A quiet invasion is under way near my home in Colorado. Inconspicuous black stickers are appearing on gas pumps announcing the arrival of a new molecule looking to occupy gas tanks. It goes by the name of C2H5OH — ethanol. Typically, my consumption of ethanol is strictly oral, in the form of alcoholic beverages. But […]
Posted inWotr
An octopus wants to eat the West
What’s 3,500 feet wide, 6,055 miles long and 2.9 million acres big? That’s wider than Hoover Dam, bigger than Yellowstone National Park and almost three times as long as the Mississippi River. This behemoth goes by the name of the West-Wide Energy Corridor, and if you live in the West it could soon devour a […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s reform the 1872 Mining Law – finally
Like many Westerners, I grew up with the luxury of unlimited adventure outdoors. I could wander around, fishing rod in hand, looking for the next hidden pond near my family’s cabin in northern Colorado. That was before I began working in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado as a mountain guide for a kids’ […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Heard Around the West
CALIFORNIA Snap your fans for the late Beverly Allen, a petite woman just over 5 feet tall who became a high-kicking, feather-bedecked showgirl at the age of 80 with the Fabulous Palm Springs Follies. This is a group you have to be at least 55 years old to join, and Allen, reports the Los Angeles […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Madame Merian and her passion for metamorphosis
In Chrysalis, Montana writer Kim Todd travels to Amsterdam and Surinam and brings back the story of a pioneering field scientist, one whose intellectual descendants still wander the modern West. Todd traces the 17th-century life of Maria Sibylla Merian, the daughter of a German printer, who defied convention to become one of the most diligent […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
New West, Next West
The New West is one of the easiest default settings for contemporary American fiction. Start with a dissolute or desperate main character and throw him down in an urbanized, or, better still, suburbanized landscape. Add a little Western scenery – mountains and rivers, just out of reach – but focus on the housing developments and […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Where do you draw the line?
As a journalist, I’ve watched many forms of civil disobedience in the West. I’ve known EarthFirst! tree-spikers and interviewed armed, tax-evading Freemen. I’ve seen “green” grandmothers lie down before bulldozers to stop the blazing of new logging roads across public land, viewed the carcasses of dead grizzly bears and wolves shot down by opponents of […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
The wrongs of property rights
Ray Ring’s examination of so-called “property rights” lawyers’ legacy missed two key points (HCN, 12/10/07). First, while Mr. Ring hinted at the edges, the article never directly confronted the fundamental contradictions in the “property rights” ideology. By opposing a rancher selling grazing permits to a conservation trust or a farmer selling land for ecosystem restoration, […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
It’s back to the tofurkey
As a conservation biologist, I find the subject matter and tone of the marmot-cooking essay reprehensible and unethical (HCN, 12/24/07). HCN is a nonprofit media organization whose mission is to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the West’s lands. One of the key themes underlying land-management issues in the West is our […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Playing cowboy at the wolf’s expense
Let me see if I have this straight: In Catron County, N.M., a place notorious for its anti-federal government and anti-environmental stance, we’re shooting and trapping wolves that have been fraudulently set up to violate the “three strikes” rule by the lackey of a wealthy foreigner who ranches for pleasure and not need (HCN, 12/24/07). […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Take this wolf and shove it
I lived in the city most of my life and like the rest of the city folks heard and believed most of the lies handed to us by the “enviroMENTALists” (HCN, 12/24/07). I now live among the ranchers of Catron County, N.M., and have horses. I moved here to enjoy this beautiful countryside while riding […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Uh, no bag of gold here …
John Dougherty’s story about the Mexican wolf program left out important facts on the impact of documented wolf incidents on our children and rural families, the psychological trauma, and habituated wolves seeking out humans and human use areas (HCN, 12/24/07). The Miller family had the Durango pack documented at their home 21 times; where is […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Treehuggers and treecutters unite
Small foresters in Washington get a break that might just keep them in business