Around the region, real estate offers the latest incarnation of the old boom-and-bust
Blowing bubbles
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 […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies
Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies Fred W. Rabe 146 pages, softcover: $29.95 Aquatic Ecosystems, 2006. Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies features dozens of color photographs, maps and sketches. But it’s not a travel guide to the approximately 8,000 high-elevation lakes speckling the region; instead of trails, biologist Fred Rabe describes geology, […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Got Sun? Go Solar
Got Sun? Go Solar Rex A. Ewing and Doug Pratt 160 pages, softcover: $18.95, PixyJack Press, 2005. Tired of waiting for Washington, D.C., to make a serious commitment to solar power? Then pick up this information-packed but very readable book and get started on your own. Authors Rex Ewing and Doug Pratt explain home renewable […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Friends in high places
Breaking Through the Clouds is a compilation of essays by Richard Fleck, a scholar, writer and wanderer of the West’s high mountains. Fleck deftly weaves in the history and human background of each peak, quoting John Wesley Powell on the first ascent of Longs Peak in what is now Rocky Mountain National Park. Far from […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Big dams, big battles
Like it or not, dams define the West. This is the birthplace of big dams — Hoover, Glen Canyon, Grand Coulee — and to a large extent, these monuments have written the history of our cities and our agriculture. These days, Westerners talk more about taking down big dams than about building new ones. But […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Keep buffalo corralled
As I see it, a person has the God-given right to protect life and property (HCN, 2/6/06: The Killing Fields). Yellowstone National Park encompasses approximately 2,219,799 acres. There are approximately 4,000 head of buffalo that roam freely upon this land (taxpayers’ land). This would amount to about 554.94 acres per head of buffalo. If any […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Grateful for real hunters
Thanks to Hal Herring for a fantastic article (HCN, 2/6/06: The Killing Fields)! I’m not a hunter, but I’m definitely a meat-eater. I feel honored and grateful to be on the same side of the table as the real hunters who respect and steward the game and habitat. David Wicks Rye, Colorado This article appeared […]