NEVADA Five years ago, Douglas Hoffman and his wife, Debbie, bought a house in an upscale retirement community outside of Las Vegas. The spectacular neon lights of the Strip at night were what passed for a view, and the just-planted trees were small. But as Sun City Anthem in Henderson grew to 7,000 homes, the […]
Heard Around the West
Posted inDecember 24, 2007: Last chance for the Lobo
A river sacrificed
In Washington, helping one fish has meant harming another
Posted inDecember 24, 2007: Last chance for the Lobo
Dear friends
DECKING OUR HALLS AND TAKING A BREAK Dozens of friends attended our open house on Dec. 12; thanks to all of you who came by. For the last two weeks of December, we won’t be putting out a news magazine; instead, we’ll be catching up around the office and enjoying a bit of holiday cheer. […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2007: Last chance for the Lobo
Last chance for the Lobo
Mexican wolves caught in the crossfire of the battle over public lands.
Posted inWotr
How to feel abundant at Christmas
In recent weeks I repeatedly found myself shopping for gifts and stocking stuffers. More than once I roamed the aisles of discount stores that specialize in out-of-fashion, out-of-date, not-quite top-shelf merchandise. You know, not the Salvation Army, but definitely not Target. I was not alone. The stores were crammed with shoppers looking for bedroom slippers, […]
Posted inWotr
For sustainability, a city beats the country
In 2006, my husband and I moved to a little town in New Mexico called Socorro where he was starting his Ph.D. program. Socorro means help in Spanish. We should have known we were in trouble, but how hard could it be to find an energy-efficient house and a sensible way to live? I was […]
Posted inWotr
You, too, can overcome cynicism at Christmas
Trolling the Web recently, I found Rick Banyan’s site for “kinder, gentler” cynics. I hoped he’d help me get through this season of jingles and fears that we’re not buying enough stuff to make Christmas profitable for retailers. Banyan says sarcastically that we “emerge from the holidays 10 pounds heavier and several hundred dollars lighter.” […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2007: L.A. Bets on the Farm
Don’t give up on us
My subscription had run out on HCN and several other magazines and I found myself drowning in periodicals. I have always been a huge supporter of HCN, but for the last year or so, I was less and less impressed with the journalism. There were fewer and fewer articles about environmental issues, and lower-grade reporting […]
Posted inArticles
Going Native
Raising teepees isn’t the type of engineering one usually expects from the Army Corps of Engineers. But thanks to a novel training program, more than 150 federal employees have learned firsthand how to build the traditional native dwellings. Participants in the Corps’ tribal training course, which is designed to increase cultural and environmental awareness, spend […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2007: Rebels with a Lost Cause
The Sagebrush Rebels ride again — and again
A decade ago, I caught a scene in one of the West’s longest-running political melodramas: The Sagebrush Rebels Ride Again. I was in a dingy hotel room in Denver, surfing the television for something worthwhile to watch, when I stumbled upon C-SPAN. There was my congressman, Republican Scott McInnis, standing on the floor of the […]
Posted inWotr
Searching for flour where the wheat grows
There are three of us driving down a long gravel driveway. We are just outside Shedd, Ore., in a town too small for most maps. The farmer is expecting us, though he doesn’t know we’re on a mission to restore part of the West’s agricultural past. My companions are part of a group called the […]
Posted inWotr
Don’t let stars wink out all over the West
I’m in eastern Nevada at Great Basin National Park, and it’s pitch black except for a startling sky above. Stars as bright as diamonds sparkle across the black cloth of space. The translucent band of the Milky Way arcs across the heavens, and Perseid meteors streak through the darkness, leaving fluorescent yellow tracers in their […]
Posted inWotr
A deadly Western myth rides toward the sunset
I can see it like it was yesterday: Rugged cowboys in dusters on horseback in a downpour, punching cattle panicked into a stampede by lightning. The theme from the movie “The Magnificent Seven” blared from the background. Finally, the herd calmed, and we saw the cowboys sitting around the campfire smoking cigarettes as the sun […]
Posted inWotr
You can’t stop nature
Why does it have to be so complicated? All we ask of nature is to be able to do what we want to do; no more, no less. We like to think of our impact on the world as controlled and businesslike, with only one variable changing at a time. But no matter how hard […]
Posted inWotr
When you’re wrong, you’re wrong
Let’s start by reviewing the stereotypes: ATV’ers are rowdy environment-hating backcountry ramblers who blow exhaust in the faces of mountain bikers as they pass them on the trail. Mountain bikers are self-righteous trail users always working to get backcountry access closed off to all-terrain vehicles, right? If only it were that simple. On a recent […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2007: Rebels with a Lost Cause
A snake in the grass
In Zero at the Bone, Tucson writing instructor Erec Toso describes how his brush with death reveals the poison in our daily lives – complacency. Summer rains wash over the desert; life stirs, and snakes wait for prey. When vacation ends, Toso dreads returning to work at the University of Arizona – the traffic, the […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2007: Rebels with a Lost Cause
The hidden history of a sneeze
In 1966, a severely asthmatic child named Gregg Mitman was one of an estimated 12.6 million allergy sufferers in the United States. Today, allergic asthma and hay fever affect more than 50 million Americans – roughly 20 percent of the population. In Breathing Space, Mitman, now a medical historian, traces the causes and effects of […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2007: Rebels with a Lost Cause
A water racket
Missing from Matt Jenkins’ article about Metropolitan Water District’s “kinder, gentler” approach to acquiring agricultural water is the fact that irrigation districts are profiting by reselling water they got for next to nothing from federal taxpayers (HCN, 11/12/07). An Environmental Working Group investigation found that in 2002 – the same year Jenkins reports that the […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2007: Rebels with a Lost Cause
‘An unwinnable fight to save clueless people’
Christine Hoekenga writes that Neal Hitchcock says that the Forest Service has to “borrow money from other programs to cover emergency costs” (HCN, 11/12/07). That’s not actually true. The 45 percent of budgeted fire suppression and any “budget overruns” are, if you will, stolen from other programs. They do not get repaid, thus starving the […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2007: Rebels with a Lost Cause
Burned again
Decades of fire suppression had nothing to do with Southern California’s wildland fires this past October. I am extremely disappointed that you would ignore the past 20 years of scientific research and instead repeat the same old tired assumptions about wildfires “in general” as being driven by “unnatural” fuel loads and apply them to California […]