Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson, father of sociobiology and a relentless biodiversity advocate, once estimated that human gluttony helps exterminate species at the rate of one every 20 minutes. The Dire Elegies laments the plight of North America’s endangered wildlife in poetic detail — but this is more than a disgruntled ode to dying species […]
Endangered Species 101 — in poetry
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Heard around the West
OREGON Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne recently visited a factory that makes luxury recreational vehicles, those behemoths that look like city buses and sport monikers like Inspire, Allure and Intrigue. In a press release, Country Coach Inc. president Jay Howard said he was pleased with the secretary’s support for his company’s high-end mobile homes, and added […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Underworld
It was August 1997, and I stood beside a manhole cover at Ninth Avenue and F Street in the border town of Douglas, Ariz., with a small gathering of police detectives, firefighters, and city workers. Cones diverted traffic around us. Frank Garcia, a hazardous-materials technician, knelt and ran a tube through one of the silver-dollar-sized […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
The green Republican: back from the dead?
WASHINGTON, D.C. — It looks as though the Endangered Species Act is not going to be eviscerated this year. Neither will the National Environmental Policy Act. On second thought, the government will not sell off millions of acres of the public domain for as little as a thousand dollars an acre. For the nonce, at […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Waste disposal the industry’s Achilles’ heel
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Retooling a Leviathan.” The first nuclear reactor in the United States went online at Shippingport, Pa., in 1956. Since then, the nation’s nuclear power industry has generated at least a few hundred tons of spent fuel per year. The highly radioactive waste […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Retooling a Leviathan
The challenges of keeping an aging nuclear infrastructure alive
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
The Hot West
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “The Fourth Wave,” in a special issue about the West’s resurgent uranium economy. THE NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE MINING AND MILLING In 1983, mining ceased at Kennecott Energy’s Sweetwater open-pit uranium mine (at right) near Rawlins, Wyo. Uranium ore from traditional open-pit or […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Navajo Windfall
Uranium companies anticipate tomorrow’s profits, while yesterday’s workers await compensation
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
The Fourth Wave
Can the West’s uranium towns rise once more?
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
The rural West’s pragmatic booster
Name Larry Swanson Vocation Economist and demographer Age 55 Home Base Center for the Rocky Mountain West, Missoula, Mont. Known for Hair-raising presentations about dramatic shifts in Mountain West demography and economics. He says “We can’t successfully adapt to change without a fuller understanding of it. Good people with good information make good decisions.” Larry […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
States crack down on illegal immigrants
Congress punts until after the elections; states turn ‘nativist’
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Anti-government attack has many fronts
Out-of-state activists mastermind assault on government spending and judiciary
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
When can the BLM say ‘no’?
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “The anatomy of an energy lease.” If a BLM or Forest Service management plan OKs an area for leasing, BLM officials say they have little power to prevent drilling. “The bar (for withholding land from leasing) is […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
The anatomy of an energy lease
How a city’s watershed was opened for natural gas development
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Two weeks in the West
“They’ve had so many C’s I can’t keep track anymore.” — John Kostyack of the National Wildlife Federation, commenting to Greenwire on the Interior Department’s announcement that it will add “community” to the “Four C’s” touted by former Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Environmentalists have widely criticized Norton for making a mockery of the original four: […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Dear friends
BIKERS, FILMMAKERS, ENGINEERS, CHEESEMAKERS Billie Stanton, editorial writer for the Tucson Citizen, left a business card in our door on a recent weekend: “I was here; you were gone. But keep up the good work.” Sorry we missed you, Billie. Filmmaker Dave Gardner and his daughter, Stephanie, of Colorado Springs, Colo., stopped by as part […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
HCN’s secret past
In the interest of full disclosure, I must make a confession: High Country News owes its existence, in part, to the nuclear industry. I learned of this a couple of years ago at a High Country News board meeting in Jackson, Wyo. I was sharing a rustic cabin at the Murie Center with Tom Bell, […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Reborn
The West casts a wary eye on the latest nuclear craze
Posted inWotr
Will I ever become a local?
I’m still what people call a newcomer, but it seems to me that most people who live in the mountains fall into one of three categories: Second home owner, transplant from somewhere else — usually a city, like me — or native, though I meet very few natives who are older than 10. I’ve lived […]
Posted inWotr
Utah legislation endangers lands we hold dear
There’s a bill before Congress that would have far-reaching impacts for my backyard in Utah and could also set a precedent for where you live, especially if you — like me — love the public lands that make the West unique. The legislation is called the Washington County Growth and Conservation Act, sponsored by Utah […]