There’s gold in them thar hills — and tailings in that thar lake. The Army Corps of Engineers confirmed its decision to let a mining company dump millions of tons of mine waste into an Alaskan lake (HCN, 7/25/05: Mining waste dumped in streams — and now lakes). Last fall, environmentalists sued the agency to […]
The Latest Bounce
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Heard around the West
MONTANA Every year, as many as 700 deer collide with cars in Montana’s Ravalli County — so many that the roadsides reek to high heaven. It’s a big problem, made worse by the fact that growing populations of both deer and people have reduced the number of places where deer carcasses can be “discreetly dumped,” […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
A very brief conversation with a Jet Fighter
I used to walk the bombing ranges of southern Arizona. Sometimes I had permission, out doing field research in the deep Sonoran Desert. And sometimes I walked illegally, with no one knowing I was there, avoiding loud booms and bright flashes of light, camping in ragged canyons where nobody ever goes. Drumbeats of bombs sounded […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
In Washington, a broad-based effort aims to kick the oil habit
At a Georgetown theatre one December evening, a special, invitation-only screening of a new movie took place. Unlike most such events, though, the intent was neither to promote the movie nor to raise money, but to make a point. The movie was Syriana, the fast-paced if somewhat hard-to-follow George Clooney-Matt Damon flick about skullduggery from […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
The push is on for ‘clean coal’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Magic Valley Uprising.” Westwide, the power-plant industry has proposed building several dozen new coal-fired plants — the biggest such buildup since the 1980s. But at the same time, the industry is moving toward a new “clean coal” era, nudged by citizen uprisings like the […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Meet Idaho’s Revolutionaries
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Magic Valley Uprising.” Father Hugh Feiss Father Hugh Feiss is one of the 15 Benedictine monks who have vowed to spend their lives at the Monastery of the Ascension, about five miles from the butte where Sempra wanted to build its coal plant. He […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Stargazer aims his scopes at gas industry
Name Perry Walker Vocation Astronomer, engineer Age 61 Home Base 10-acre hilltop near Daniel, Wyoming Known for Keeping an eye on the air pollution caused by natural gas drillers He says “I can talk to these (natural gas) operators about their technology. I can understand just about anything they throw at me. And I find […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Hobby miners flock to public streams
Growing pastime raises concerns about an outdated law
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Pure bison make a comeback
Prairie conservationists build a herd free of cattle genes
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Burning down the house
Bush administration proposes sweeping cuts to community fire programs
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Dear friends
VISITORS Katie Lee, the grande dame of Western folksingers, river runners and environmentalists, graced us in early April with her merry grin and insouciant manner. She’s been updating her 1998 elegy to Glen Canyon, All My Rivers Are Gone, and says a new edition will be published soon (HCN, 12/21/98: A river rat remembers). Katie […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
California, here we come
The Interior West has long regarded California as the sort of rich eccentric uncle whose peculiar behavior is an embarrassment to the rest of the family. I have some firsthand knowledge of this attitude, because I am a fourth-generation Californian, who moved to rural western Colorado back in 1992. The sidelong glances I received from […]
Posted inWotr
We’re Tiger Woods, not Paris Hilton
“We decided not to be Invisible anymore,” read one headline when those floods of people turned out in cities around the country, from Washington, D.C., and Denver to Salt Lake City, Reno, Phoenix and Salem. For more than 60 years, Hispanic immigrants have been a deliberately created, out-of-sight-out-of-mind, disposable, low-wage work force. Hispanics work for […]
Posted inWotr
National Parks are truly under the gun
The words “heavy artillery” and “national park” aren’t usually uttered in the same sentence. Get used to it. National parks are under fire — both literally and metaphorically. First, let’s talk about the literal blasting. It’s proposed in one of America’s grand old parks, Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana. The Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad […]
Posted inWotr
The bottom-line truth: We are protecting our parks
Open your paper in the next few weeks, and you might see this headline: “Bush budget cuts end 911 coverage for Yosemite.” The story underneath says an official review of the National Park Service by a government agency found that budget cuts and staff vacancies at Yosemite National Park mean that visitors in life-threatening emergencies […]
Posted inWotr
What I learned as a self-appointed immigration agent
Like millions of others, he was going to overstay his visa and remain in the country illegally. Months earlier, my sister had returned to Arizona from her studies in Colombia with a boyfriend in tow. Though our parents were very conservative, she was their only daughter, and they agreed to sponsor his entry into the […]
Posted inWotr
This land is my land — really
President Bush wants to sell my land to fund rural schools. I mean my land — not the vast tracts of federal forests and grasslands I co-own with the proverbial New York cabbie, the Seattle widow and all other American citizens. My private land — the 12 acres I own with my husband. We bought […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Communities and Forests: Where People Meet theLand
Communities and Forests: Where People Meet the Land ed. Robert G. Lee and Donald R. Field 320 pages, softcover: $29.95. Oregon State University Press, 2005. This collection of essays suggests that traditional forest management is shifting, from being solely science-based to accounting for societal and cultural values. Lee and Field present four major types of […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Legend of the Eagleman
Legend of the Eagleman Wayne Parrish 364 pages, softcover: $18.95. Morro Press, 2006. Based on an Indian legend warning against gambling and greed, this suspenseful and engaging novel blends tribal history, water disputes, illegal land swaps, and political corruption. Matt Dillon, Indian sculptor and special agent for the Arizona Gaming Commission, goes undercover to investigate […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
On the wing again
As California condors disappeared, a new world emerged. From observation posts in Southern California’s Transverse Ranges in the 1960s, hazy vistas of L.A. subdivisions, office buildings and jet airplanes gradually replaced sightings of the largest bird in North America. “This is not a species that’s grown old and feeble,” NPR science reporter John Nielsen writes […]