“We call these vandal killings,” says Chris Servheen, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator, “people who just kill things and let them lay.” He’s talking about the 11 grizzly bears that were killed illegally last year in northwestern Montana; one was poisoned and the rest were shot or otherwise killed. In 2004, […]
Bear killing increases but protection decreases
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
The Latest Bounce
In late December, crews moved five boulders with numerous prehistoric petroglyphs out of the path of a controversial road being built on the edge of Albuquerque (HCN, 6/27/05: Suburbia blasts through a national monument). The road, which cuts through Petroglyph National Monument, was touted as a way to alleviate traffic congestion on the city’s fast-growing […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
Heard around the West
OREGON Bobby Henderson may be 25 years old and in between jobs, but the Oregon State University physics graduate is the founder and prophet of a wildly popular new religion. Henderson has it on good authority that a “Flying Spaghetti Monster” created mankind, along with everything else from dinosaurs to wombats. Therefore, he says, his […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
What’s the NRA’s beef with roadless areas?
I am a hunter who cares deeply about our hunting heritage and our ability to pass it on. Like most hunters, I consider organizations that work on behalf of hunting my friends, and those that work against hunting my adversaries. So I don’t like it when the lines become blurred. And today the lines are […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
Quick Stats
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Timberlands up for grabs.” BUT WHO’S COUNTING… 2 Acres of timberland lost per minute. 1 million Acres of timberland lost per year. 23 million Acres of timberland projected to be lost by 2050. 340 Number of species threatend by timberland loss. 300 million Acres […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
Gray water, green living
NAME Brian Moore AGE 50 KNOWN FOR Conserving water by watering his garden with a homemade backyard shower and simple “gray water” plumbing. HE SAYS “We think of the countryside as (the place to live) off the grid, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. I’d like to demonstrate that it is possible […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
An ecosystem wanting for wolves
Predators could bring Rocky Mountain National Park back into balance
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
The end of an era on the Colorado Plateau
As the Mohave power plant closes its doors, two Arizona tribes wonder what’s next
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
Dear friends
Welcome, new interns! Sarah Gilman arrived in Paonia for a winter internship, still smiling after a summer of trail work on Colorado’s 14,421-foot Mount Massive. A native of Boulder, Colo., Sarah is no stranger to the Paonia area. She spent two summers working at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, just over the hill in Gothic, […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
For sale: The West
It’s a little disconcerting to look at the ads in the local newspaper these days. I’m bound to recognize the mug of someone I know who has just cast in his or her lot with Re/Max, Coldwell Banker or another of the multitude of agencies now playing the West’s biggest gambling game: Real Estate Roulette. […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
Timberlands up for grabs
The West’s private forests are on the auction block, pitting forest communities against developers in a red-hot real estate market
Posted inWotr
Cruising down a river
There is something liberating about the wide open vistas of a great river, something that encourages a person to break through the normal restraints of civilized society and expand outward — sometimes in ambitious directions, but as often as not along eccentric lines in isolated regions. I witnessed this even before I got out on […]
Posted inWotr
Bison aren’t Buicks, and other dangerous beliefs
Don’t believe everything you hear about the West. While some Western myths are mere entertainment, others can kill you. Like thinking a 4-wheel drive provides traction on ice. Recently, some dangerously incorrect statements gained serious media attention during the first hunt in 15 years for bison leaving Yellowstone Park. Calling the hunt a slaughter, protesters […]
Posted inWotr
The windy West gains influential support
The wind blows constantly across the Western plains, as anyone who’s driven north from Denver and across Wyoming can attest. You feel your car needs alignment until you see the tumbleweeds bustling towards Kansas City. That’s why America’s heartland has been called the Saudi Arabia of wind, and that’s why we should be looking closely […]
Posted inWotr
The West comes closer to speaking with a regional voice
Recent developments have given new impetus to the idea of a coordinated Rocky Mountain West presidential primary in 2008. Utah Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman has asked that state’s Legislature to set aside $850,000 to enable Utah to hold an early presidential preference primary. Meanwhile, a special commission of the Democratic National Committee has recommended changes […]
Posted inWotr
Organic labels don’t tell the real story
When I first sold my family’s vegetables at farmers’ markets in 1980, Slow Food hadn’t been born, and the phrase “local foods” was not yet in the lingo. The word “organic,” however, was in vogue, and our customers always asked you the same question: Are you organic? Nine years old and barefoot, I tried not […]
Posted inWotr
Death in the backcountry
News accounts about fatal avalanches — and we’ve had nine deaths in the West this winter — sometimes give the impression that the difference between life and death is one easy piece of technology: an avalanche beacon. If only the buried victim had been wearing a beacon, goes the story line, a life could have […]
Posted inWotr
Someday, chickens will come home to roost
From the air, part of New Mexico’s Carson National Forest looks like a spider web that’s been carved into the landscape. Here on the 33,000-acre Jicarilla District, more than 700 gas wells and a maze of over 400 miles of associated roads crisscross the land. While companies have been leasing this New Mexico forest for […]
Posted inWotr
What the gas industry owes us
First, the gas industry should admit that it is changing Pinedale, and not all the change is good. Don’t tell us we should be happy to have industry and the jobs and money that come with it. Certainly, gas exploration and drilling have made our economy stronger than ever, and finally, many of us are […]
Posted inWotr
What one small town owes to the gas industry
Miracles are performed in the gas-drilling fields of Wyoming every day by roustabout and frac crews, drillers, hot-shot crews, water-truck drivers, office managers and others at all levels. No one in Sublette County — no rancher, waitress, sheriff’s deputy, newspaper editor, Bureau of Land Management employee — works harder, and we ought to respect that. […]