One constant in the fierce debate over the public’s access to Mitchell Slough in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley has been the complaint that generous landowners are being vilified despite their considerable efforts to restore the waterway. It’s instructive that one of the arguments used by supporters of the landowners is this “heroic restoration” tack. It’s instructive […]
Water is definitely for fighting in Montana
Posted inWotr
Flying with Cowgirls all over Wyoming
Decibel levels in the arena were so loud the day the University of Wyoming Cowgirls won the Women’s National Basketball Championship, no other sound could be heard in all of Wyoming. House finches couldn’t hear their would-be mates entice them to nests. Antelope couldn’t hear the crunch of truck tires on gravel roads and were […]
Posted inWotr
Why do we keep driving ourselves crazy?
This winter. my family discovered that Oregon’s Mount Hood is known for more than dramatic mountain rescues. Would you believe it could also be called the mother of all traffic jams? Tail lights for as far as the eye could see, gridlock for nearly an hour: That’s what the highway through the Mount Hood National […]
Posted inWotr
Wilderness is the place that can make or break you
Beyond the end of most any road in southern Utah rests the crucible for my soul –? the beauty, ecological abundance and sanctuary of our public lands. With the Bunsen-burner intensity of its noontime sun, desert wilderness burns off the ephemera of my life, and there remains only the essence of emotion — awe that […]
Posted inWotr
They shoot horses, don’t they? Not any more
Imagine a proposal to scatter millions of pounds of poisoned meat around the United States, close to human populations. Much of it would be accessible to scavengers including eagles, hawks, coyotes, foxes and badgers, as well as to dogs and cats. An animal feeding on the poisoned meat would probably die. This scenario is likely, […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Heard Around the West
CALIFORNIA There’s nothing like a bunch of twitchy-tailed rodents to annoy some people. The squirrel population in a Santa Monica park has mushroomed to 1,000, even though the city has tried poison and gassing to knock down the numbers and reduce any risk of the animals spreading disease. But nothing slows the animals’ reproduction rate […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Imagine
Freshmen are staring at a poem. This is a strange and frightening thing. Through the windows, we are painted briefly in changeable light. Late-winter weather swirls up the Columbia Gorge, reminding Portland of its place in this big world. It’s a beautiful moment, somehow poignant. Should be good for poetry. Yet I know that some […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
The hidden costs of our coal habit
Sometimes ignorance feels like bliss. When you’re stowing your breakfast eggs and sausage, you don’t want to think too much about their origins. But ignorance is also dangerous. Take, for example, the electricity that powers the stove and coffeepot behind your morning breakfast. Today, more than half of U.S. electricity comes from burning coal. This […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
You ain’t from around here, are you?
Jim Stiles, the itinerant publisher of Moab’s venerable Canyon Country Zephyr, knows that the rural West is in danger. He also knows who’s to blame: city folk. That’s the gist, anyway, of Brave New West: Morphing Moab at the Speed of Greed. Stiles is obviously a man of character and passion. You want to agree […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Wealthy landowners and locals wade into the ditch
Does a trout know who owns the body of water it lives in? This is not a Buddhist riddle. All a trout, elk or black-footed ferret cares about is whether the water or land can sustain it. Some of us have forgotten that unadorned fact. Motivated by laudable concerns over social change, some Westerners have […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
The enemy is us
It was like suddenly discovering the face or object hidden in a maze, a “find Waldo” sort of experience. Here I was, reading with growing concern and despondency one more article alerting me to yet another assault on the environment, this one posed by an “extraordinarily prolific and costly invasive species” — the quagga mussel. […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Bee Anatomy 101
“The Silence of the Bees” incorporated one tiny error. Hannah Nordhaus writes: “… microscopic tracheal mites that set up shop in a honeybee’s feeding tube and shorten its lifespan.” I’m no honeybee biologist, but I was trained as an entomologist. “Tracheae” are the abdominal tubes that insects use to breathe. So it’s more likely that […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Three decades of BLM inaction
Poor Lynell Schalk: I share her frustration. In 1979, I was a seasonal Grand Gulch ranger when Turkey Pen Ruin was being systematically looted. At the time, nobody knew who was doing it, and my repeated reports to the BLM Monticello office went unheeded, even after I pulled a hidden shovel out of the ruin’s […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Hold the bullet
A recent HCN story describes a major delay in planning or building a bullet train to link California’s major cities. As someone who has been working to restore and conserve wildlife corridors in Southern California for a decade, I am relieved. The bullet train needs a few more years of planning. Although you’d never know […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
The rough lives of roughnecks
Regarding the “Disposable workers of the oil and gas fields” story, I worked as a derrick and floor hand back in 1968 in New Mexico. Drillers are always under pressure to get in and out of a hole, no matter what the cost. If you complain about safety or work conditions, you may find yourself […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Death on the road
As your “Disposable workers of the oil and gas fields” story says, no death should be overlooked or treated as unimportant. However, in comparison to the 89 deaths that occurred in the drilling industry from 2000 to 2006 in the states of Colorado, Utah, Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming, and North Dakota, there were approximately 10,600 […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Two weeks in the West
“We’re not out to destroy the universe. We’re here to make money. And if we can do that with minimal impact, that’s my job.” —New Mexico State Land Office Archaeologist David Eck on a proposal to drill for natural gas just outside Chaco Culture National Historic Park. Down in the Sonoran Desert, the blue-flowered lupines […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Dry to the bone
It was hard to get very excited about global warming this winter. Despite record warm temperatures in the East and a steady diet of dire reports from scientists, here in western Colorado the snow and cold started in October and kept up through February, without so much as a hint of a January thaw. “We […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Montana puts limits on national Trout Unlimited
One of the great things about living in Montana is state law allowing public access to any stream, no matter whose monster home lies alongside it. But just a few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Montana Trout Unlimited saying the national group wanted to back away from involvement in any dispute — and […]
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Bay bags his way to the top
NAME: Brian Bay AGE: 23 VOCATION: Front-end grocery store manager and full-time student WORLD CHAMPION: of grocery bagging HOBBIES: Coin collecting. Goes to work with a pocketful of change and trades it out for interesting coins. FAVORITE MOVIES TO QUOTE FROM: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Princess Bride, Three Amigos and Dumb and Dumber One […]