Please consider not using the term “eco-terrorist” or “eco-terrorism” (HCN, 2/6/06: The Latest Bounce). Individuals taking direct action often break the law. Sometimes they trespass and disobey lawful orders, and sometimes they destroy private and public property. These are crimes and the perpetrators should be charged, tried, and appropriately punished. In general, the worst crimes […]
Activists are not terrorists
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
The Latest Bounce
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has abandoned an internal investigation into its decision not to regulate hydraulic fracturing (HCN, 12/20/04: Conscientious Objectors). In 2004, the EPA said “frac’ing fluid,” an often-toxic mix of chemicals used in natural gas drilling that can contaminate underground drinking-water supplies, should be exempt from the Clean Water Act. But an […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA San Francisco — which is named after St. Francis, the patron saint of animals — plans to put some of the city’s 120,000 dogs to work. The work isn’t hard, though the yuck factor is impressive: All the dogs have to do is poop, reports The Associated Press. The city’s garbage hauler, Norcal Waste, […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Resurrecting J. Thomas
The skull of J. Thomas rested in my palm. He was buried in the 1870s and my mother had just dug him up from the old pioneer cemetery that rests on the southern edge of our ranch. It’s a small ranch — 100 acres in northern Colorado, below the foothills — but it houses all […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
The trouble with the Endangered Species Act is us
With House approval of his “Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act” last September, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., got a step closer to his career goal of eradicating the Endangered Species Act. Pombo, a developer posing as a rancher posing as an advocate of the public good, proclaims that the 32-year-old law is “broken” and a […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Is everyone a Realtor?
Realtors are everywhere in the West these days — including the seats of power
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Blowing bubbles
Around the region, real estate offers the latest incarnation of the old boom-and-bust
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Painting for progress
The call of the wilderness sounded more like a holler to Joan Hoffmann in 1963. At 13, already a headstrong artist and budding environmentalist, she was determined to go backpacking with the Sierra Club. Neither her urban family of Southern California golfers, nor the fact that she had to sew her own sleeping bag, could […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
U.S. Department of Energy elbows in on Clean Water Act
Feds challenge Montana’s efforts to establish pollution controls for coalbed methane
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Spotted owl or red herring?
Pretty much everyone agrees that logging on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest has declined by 80 percent since its heyday in the mid-1980s. Job losses in the region’s timber sector over the past two decades number in the tens of thousands. But don’t blame the critical habitat rule, or even the Endangered Species Act. […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Reality Check
Misinformation, spin abound in endangered species debate
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
ESA talks end in stalemate
While major disagreements remain, Pombo claims consensus
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Dear friends
WE’VE COME A LONG WAY … Pick up a pre-2003 copy of High Country News, and you might find it hard to believe that you’re looking at the same publication. It was in ’03 that we ditched the black-and-white, pick-it-up-for-a-quarter-at-the-local-diner design that had been the paper’s signature since its founding in 1970. We shrank the […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
The next boomtown
Consider this issue’s cover an early April Fools’ prank of sorts. We took inspiration from Outside magazine, the home of the “Top 10 Secret Getaways” that are obviously no longer secret by the time the issue comes off the press. Those headlines are the bane of our cover story’s author, M. John Fayhee, who has […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Town Shopping
Maintaining karmic balance in the New West’s real estate economy
Posted inWotr
Selling forestland won’t solve the real problem
Selling federal forest land to subsidize rural schools and road projects is a bad idea for many reasons. But a proposal to do just that, incorporated into the Bush administration’s 2007 budget, has one powerful virtue: It has focused welcome public attention on a century-old welfare program that has yet to achieve its goals. Bush […]
Posted inWotr
Oil shale is still a pig in a poke
More than half the world’s oil shale is found in Utah and Colorado, and for a century, men have tried to unlock this energy source. The rocks have proved stubborn, promising much, delivering little. “I find it disturbing that we import oil from Canadian tar sands, even though our oil shale resource remains undeveloped,” complains […]
Posted inWotr
SUWA, can you spare a dime?
When I made southeast Utah my home, almost 30 years ago, I came for one reason — the rocks — the most stunning display of intricately carved, brilliantly hued red rocks imaginable. It’s the kind of place one can believe only exists in dreams. I’ve lived here ever since. Naturally, I went searching for kindred […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Save Our Snow
Can Aspen and other Western towns put a dent in a global problem?
Posted inWotr
Requiem for a messy small town
I live in one of those Western towns that’s booming. Fast and furious. Set near a national park, surrounded by 2.3 million acres of national forest, and right at the base of a ski resort, Whitefish, Mont., lures not only visitors but also the affluent who want to buy into the Montana lifestyle. Ironically, newcomers […]