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 […]
New West, Next West
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
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Two weeks in the West
Wide-open spaces and burly, gas-guzzling automobiles go hand in hand in the West. After all, how else can you get to your favorite climbing crag or hiking trail? Perhaps by driving a burly rig that guzzles a lot less gas. Or so California and a handful of other Western states had hoped. But the U.S. […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
An energy oasis in the political desert
The presidential candidate stood on the back of the train in Helper, Utah, and declared: “The fuel for our machine age economy will be absolutely dependent at some time or other upon this great West.” The candidate was Harry Truman; the year, 1948. Besides being prophetic, the speech was significant because it was the last […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
My short tenure with a blind pigeon
There is a blind pigeon – a pigeon born without eyeballs – living in my house, and I’m not very happy about it. It’s my mother’s fault; she has a new habit of adopting these eyeless creatures, which are hatched in the barn rafters at my family’s ranch. When the mama bird is done feeding […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Tackling Utah’s trash
NAME Issa Hamud AGE 48 HOME LIFE Married, eight kids. DRIVES 2004 Ford F-150. HOBBY Four-wheeling with friends. NEXT PROJECT Hamud hopes to build an Environmental Education Center on the site of the current landfill once it closes. It will feature a glass wall exposing a cross section of the landfill to its 30-foot depths, […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Misplaced Jurisdiction
Justice in Indian Country needs an overhaul
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Dear friends
WELCOME, LILY JEAN The latest addition to the HCN family, Lily Jean Massart Isaacson, arrived on Thursday, Dec. 20, to proud parents Denise (our office manager) and her husband, Bob. The 6-pound, 7-ounce girl is doing well; no word on how much sleep mom and dad are getting. GREG HANSCOM SPOTTED … IN MARYLAND? Former […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
A political speech the West needs to hear
“One of our most urgent projects is to develop a national energy policy. The United States is the only major industrial country without a comprehensive, long-range energy policy. Our program will emphasize conservation … solar energy and other renewable energy sources. … We must face the fact that the energy shortage is permanent. There is […]
Posted inArticles
The Appeal Deal
The West’s national forests remain in legal limbo. For four years, the U.S. Forest Service has been trying to overhaul the rules that govern the creation of forest plans, the “blueprints” that describe how each forest will be managed and protected. And for the past two years, the process has been locked in federal court. […]
Posted inArticles
Death in the Delta
Fish populations continue to tank in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, according to figures released last week by the California Department of Fish and Game. After tossing the trawl nets and tallying the numbers, the agency found a record low population of longfin smelt in the Pacific Coast’s largest estuary. Populations of Sacramento splittail, American shad, […]
Posted inArticles
The Year of Ignorance about the West
This was supposed to be “the year of the West” in national politics. States that had been reliably Republican were suddenly competitive. Two Westerners — Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Republican, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat — were credible candidates for the presidency. The Democrats are holding their national convention in Denver […]
Posted inArticles
Of wolves and willows
Updated Jan. 18, 2008 Don Despain and Roy Renkin aren’t the first scientists to notice how the climate is changing in Yellowstone National Park. But they are among the first to examine the link between climate change and the growth of certain plants, such as the willow bush. For the last couple of years, Despain […]
Posted inWotr
Idealism wakes up in America
I am one of the thousands of returned Peace Corps volunteers that Chris Matthews of MSNBC predicted would support Barack Obama after he lit the fuse in Iowa. But I had already been tapped by Harris Wofford, a Kennedy-era warhorse and director of the Peace Corps program in Ethiopia, who is now stumping college campuses […]