Congratulations on your editorial concerning Western land sales (HCN, 1/23/06: For sale: The West). You succeeded in insulting a sizeable group of hardworking people in your own community. I find it somewhat ironic that right next to an article blasting the announcement of new Realtors who have joined our local Paonia real estate firms is […]
Editorial an exercise in hypocrisy
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Wilderness fashion police
I read with amusement John Nelson’s letter regarding wheelchairs in the wilderness, not because of the wheelchair issue, but because of his obvious disdain for fluorescent kayaks (HCN, 1/23/06: Wilderness with horses, not wheelchairs). What will it be next? Objections to the color of one’s tent or polar fleece vest? Public-land agencies such as the […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Southwestern farmers, lawmakers seek solutions to worker shortages
Thanks to increased border security, and competition from other industries offering better pay and working conditions, Southwestern farmers are facing a severe shortage of workers this winter. It’s so bad that some political leaders — including President George W. Bush — are beginning to talk beyond party lines and look at immigration reform. The Western […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
BLM rolls back environmental review
The Bureau of Land Management is punching holes in the National Environmental Policy Act big enough to drive a 30-ton thumper truck through. In January, the BLM proposed adding 11 new categorical exclusions to the 73 already existing. The designation, used for projects routinely found to have no significant environmental impact, allows the agency to […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Downwinders say fallout study numbers don’t add up
Almost all of the 140 million Americans alive during the nuclear bomb tests of the 1950s were exposed, in some degree, to radioactive fallout. Thirty million have died or are expected to die of cancer. Yet only a tiny fraction of those cases — no more than 16,000 — can be attributed to nuclear fallout, […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
The Latest Bounce
Taxpayers have been losing money on public-lands grazing, and now the feds have a solution: Charge ranchers even less. Although the Government Accountability Office says the federal grazing program loses $123 million annually, the Forest Service and the BLM plan to cut the fee that ranchers pay to pasture a cow and calf on public […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Heard around the West
COLORADO Whoever owns Bongo Billy’s Café in Salida, Colo., must just love kids. A sign by the cash register announces, “Unaccompanied children will be given an Espresso and a free puppy.” THE WEST So much for the mystique of the Old West. Mega-millionaires are putting their pricey ranches on the market, reports the Wall Street […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Waiting for Rain
This year, I spent Christmas in Albuquerque lounging on my back porch, reading in a tank top and suffering a fool’s sunburn. Now, in late January, it’s sunny and in the mid-50s. And although two days ago, the local newspaper kept posting updates about a storm system heading into the state, here in the city, […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
The many problems of Richard Pombo
This must be the winter of Richard Pombo’s discontent, or it would be if they had winter in California. It isn’t just that his plan to privatize 15 national parks and other public lands went kerblooey, or that he found it prudent to give away several thousand dollars of embarrassing campaign contributions. It isn’t just […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Dr. Sharon and the lion hunters
NAME Sharon Seneczko VOCATION Small-animal veterinarian AGE 45 HOME BASE Custer, South Dakota KNOWN FOR Educating the public about mountain lions. SHE SAYS “Nobody is looking at the value of wild animals until they’re gone. That’s why I’m stepping up to the plate now. We have to leave a place for wildlife.” Inside a veterinary […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
‘Ghost fleet’ in search of a final resting place
Ship recycler promises jobs, but coastal community decides costs outweigh benefits
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Tribe brings on the tourists
Hualapai Nation plans ambitious development at Grand Canyon
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Colorado River states reach landmark agreement
In severe drought, farms could become cities’ life support systems
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Dear friends
NEW ARRIVALS The HCN family has grown by two in recent weeks. Laura Paskus, HCN’s Southwest editor, gave birth to a baby girl on Sunday, Jan. 29. Lillian Jane arrived at 11:38 p.m., weighing 6 pounds, 15 ounces, and measuring 19 1/4 inches long. Laura and her husband, Hollis Lawrence, report that Lillie is “ridiculously […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
The difficulties of cohabitation
Way back in 1973, when I was a pimply middle schooler living in a Chicago suburb, President Richard M. Nixon signed into law a bill that embodied America’s noblest conservation intentions. The Endangered Species Act set an amazingly ambitious goal: to conserve all of the imperiled plant and animal species in the country. The act’s […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
High Noon for Habitat
In Southern California, a host of imperiled wildlife lies in the path of America’s worst urban sprawl. The battle over the last patches of habitat is ringing through the halls of Washington, D.C.
Posted inWotr
It’s true: Guns don’t kill people
When I was in sixth grade, my entire class was marched into the school gym for Hunter Safety class. There, for several class periods, the public school system helped us understand the difference between the deer we could shoot and the ones we shouldn’t, the ethics of “shooting your wife’s deer” (which always made me […]
Posted inWotr
Idaho seems set on killing wolves
Last week, I was thrilled to find four sets of wolf tracks carved in the snow in our back pasture. Two nights previously, wolves killed a neighbor’s black Lab within 200 yards of the owner’s house. I feel bad about that dog. We have Labrador retrievers, too. When I let them out in the morning, […]
Posted inWotr
Oregon’s academic food fight in the cafeteria of ideas
It isn’t often an academic dean gets up in public and apologizes for participating in an effort to suppress the work of a graduate student. But that’s exactly what Oregon State University College of Forestry Dean Hal Salwasser recently did. “I profoundly regret the negative debate that recent events have generated,” he wrote in a […]
Posted inWotr
What price New Mexico’s sky?
When I moved back to New Mexico this summer, I did my best to contain my enthusiasm for a long-awaited homecoming. In short, I tried to avoid tangling memory with reality. New Mexico is often easier to love in the abstract. Despite its often idealized history — full of noble American Indians, a stern Georgia […]