Any conversation about the West’s dangerous interstate highways might explore why more truckers don’t use I-90 or I-70, instead of Wyoming’s infamous I-80, which stretches across the southern part of the state. Given Interstate 80’s high altitude and snow-prone disposition, plus forecasts that traffic will increase to over 14,000 vehicles a day, everyone should be […]
Truckers or skiers, take your pick
Posted inWotr
How many nuclear bombs do we need?
“When I became conscious, it was a dead city.” The college students in the room are silent as Shigeko Sasamori stands in front of them. It looks as though she wears light pink lipstick. Up close, the scars around her mouth, neck and hands are clearly visible. The morning American pilots dropped an atomic bomb […]
Posted inWotr
Exploring the shrinking marvel of Lake Powell
I grew up thinking of Lake Powell as sacred in the way that a mass grave is sacred. But I’m also a practical person, and I see the lake as a giant highway offering access to some of the most spectacular country in the West. It was the practical side that agreed when my wife […]
Posted inArticles
A watershed proposal
Colorado’s Cache la Poudre River tumbles 80 miles from its high-alpine headwaters in Rocky Mountain National Park down to the South Platte River on the plains below. The upper Poudre is the only designated wild and scenic river in the state – but after it exits Poudre Canyon, 90 percent of its flow is siphoned […]
Posted inArticles
Apache trout swim ‘full stream’ ahead
It is a pre-meditated killing, cold-blooded in every sense. Before night descends, the conspirators make final calculations. The next morning, they return with the lethal poison. Hundreds die, but to one federal agency their deaths are not in vain – the victims are non-native fish, taken out by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Cat Fight on the Border
Will homeland security concerns keep jaguars from returning to their native U.S. range? Maybe.
Posted inWotr
Sometimes the priceless really is priceless
Most of us have seen those credit-card ads that go something like “Fishing license, $40. Fly casting gear, $480. Reeling in a rainbow trout in the wilderness under a 14,000-foot peak: Priceless.” But dollar signs can be associated with these “priceless” activities. Let’s start with the rainbow trout. Rainbows are native to the West Coast, […]
Posted inWotr
The West is always wild to the young
The thing I remember most about winter in the mountains above a town in New Mexico called Las Vegas was the silence. At times, it was so quiet that, as a sheepherder from Montana pointed out, you could hear snowflakes slap against the pines. The sheepherder and I were fellow pilgrims whose lives intersected along […]
Posted inWotr
What’s worse than an unethical hunter?
All-terrain vehicles aren’t good or bad in themselves; it’s all about context. When my son was lost for an entire night in the mountains of northeast Oregon, search and rescue volunteers from Union County showed up on their ATVs and set out to bring him home. I was never so glad to see machinery in […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Bargains with wolves
A common logical error is the “either-or” fallacy. We must either kill wolves or put up with dead and horribly maimed cows. And men so quickly turn to guns. I’m sure there are many solutions in between, one of which is “negotiating” with the wolves. Ann Daum writes about a rancher successfully negotiating with coyotes […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Rhetoric vs. reasonableness
The exchange inspired by Bryce Andrews’ “Living Precariously With Wolves and Cattle,” has revealed a striking contrast in soul and substance on opposite sides of the divide over management of public rangelands in the American West (HCN, 8/20/07). Andrews’ description of killing one wolf and participating, at least indirectly, in the killing of three others […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Medium-rare, with a side of dead trees
Chalk another one up for the cattle industry and beef consumerism (HCN, 8/20/07). Clear mesquite trees to plant buffelgrass for cattle grazing, and clear more trees for mesquite charcoal to cook the cattle. The inverted cycle of life. I seem to have missed where the “good intentions” apply in this story. Was it good intentions […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
The power of pond scum
The article describing the potential use of pumping CO2 underground prompts me to provide an alternative, and perhaps less costly, way of sequestering carbon exhausted from industrial sources (HCN, 9/3/07). I would suggest that the energy producers pump gaseous CO2 through vast transparent vats filled with blue-green algae and nutrients. If the vats were placed […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
So much for that doggie in the window
Over the years, the Classifieds section has greatly expanded. No problem there – I’m sure it represents needed income for HCN, and the advertising has been an extension of HCN’s mission to report news of Western resource issues. However, I was quite dismayed with the Aug. 20 ad for the sale of an AKC female […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
I listened to elders and medicine people from over a dozen tribes give testimony to Forest Service Supervisor Nora Rasure, explaining to her why snowmaking with treated wastewater was blasphemy (HCN, 9/17/07). I watched middle-aged men bow their heads as tears streaked their faces. None of that seemed to move Ms. Rasure. She told the […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Two weeks in the West
The price of that guacamole you love to snack on is probably going to climb. California’s farmers, already struggling with drought, are facing even drier times, and some avocado growers are hacking down trees to save water. California has withered under drought for much of the last decade, and this year could end up being […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Heard Around the West
THE WEST If Glen Canyon Dam were a person, says Shaun McKinnon in the Arizona Republic, “it would surely suffer from low self-esteem.” There are several reasons: Environmentalists want to breach the dam to benefit native fish and bring back beaches, the writer Ed Abbey wrote about blowing it to smithereens in The Monkey Wrench […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
RV Nation
We started the list on Interstate 80, somewhere east of Lovelock but most definitely before the blue-dome skies and dun hills around Dunphy. We passed them, one by one. Dutch Star. The Manor. Wanderer Wagon. The Contessa. The drivers looked down at us while their tailpipes coughed black. Southwind. Four Winds. Trade Winds. Sea Breeze. […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Nothing out there can be a very good thing
“You want to go where? There’s nothing out there, you know.” That’s what my friends from the Midwest said about Wyoming 15 years ago, when I bolted the crowds and moved West. To mark that occasion, I recently spent the anniversary of my escape in a vast desert that even Wyomingites forsake for mountains and […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Salvaging the atmosphere
The Forest Service joins the carbon offsets game