Food chain collapsing in the California Delta
A massive restoration program may have nothing left to save
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Learning from Moab’s example
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Moab: On the horns of a recreation dilemma.” In western Colorado, the Bureau of Land Management has tackled the issue of dueling recreationists head-on, and come up with a plan that gives each user group room to […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Moab: On the horns of a recreation dilemma
Finally, a limit to off-roading on public lands
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
For sale: Your local ranger station?
Budget cuts and forest thinning force agency to trim down
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
A call for modest reform
Hardly a week goes by that I don’t read a heartwarming story in our local newspaper about a conservation easement deal that is saving some important chunk of the West from the subdivider’s bulldozer. The typical story features the landowner, usually a longtime farmer or rancher, who waxes eloquent about the importance of the land […]
Posted inWotr
Opposing Wal-Mart doesn’t make you a Nazi
I’m a radical, yes. An environmentalist, yes. A small-is-better zealot, yes. A feminist, a fierce supporter of independent bookstores, a rabble rouser. I’ve been called a Chicken Little who shrieks, “The sky is falling!” I admit to all those labels. What I am not, and this is the second time in a decade I’ve been […]
Posted inWotr
On the basketball court, a confusion and profusion of races
Steve Nash was chosen as this year’s most valuable player in the National Basketball Association, and other than that he grew up in British Columbia and now plays for the Phoenix Suns, you might ask what this has to do with the West. A fair question, and one I will get to. Nash is a […]
Posted inWotr
Energy Bill rewards the fattest cats
As you may have noticed, gasoline costs more than of yore. Some basic economics: Gasoline is a manufactured good. Its price depends in part on the price of its basic commodity, in this case crude oil. It costs more than of yore, as does natural gas. More basic economics: The price of crude oil and […]
Posted inWotr
I say good riddance to bad billboards
For four years in the 1980s, I lived in Vermont, and then left for the West after tiring of its busybody politics. But I certainly admired one aspect of life in the bucolic yet politically correct Green Mountain State: No billboards. Back in 1968, the Vermont Legislature passed a law banning billboards, and since then […]
Posted inWotr
Love the gas, not the drill
I have a confession to make: I like natural gas. Every morning at five minutes before 6:00, I wake up to the gentle whumph of the gas stove kicking on in the family room. I then get out of bed, tap on my son’s door and call, “Time to get up,” and plant myself in […]
Posted inWotr
In our rush to protect America, we secretly put Americans at risk
Growing up in Richland, Wash., in the shadow of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where the Department of Energy produced plutonium for bombs, Trisha Pritikin never imagined that the milk she drank or the air she breathed was poisonous. Her father, a safety engineer at the plant, was supremely patriotic, and the entire family felt proud […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
The Hayduke Trail: A Guide to the Backcountry Hiking Trail on the Colorado Plateau
The Hayduke Trail: A Guide to the Backcountry Hiking Trail on the Colorado Plateau, Joe Mitchell and Mike Coronella, 288 pages, paperback $19.95. University of Utah Press, 2005. If you have to ask, “Who’s Hayduke?” this isn’t the book for you. This guide wanders from Zion National Park to Arches via the Grand Canyon, Bryce, […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music andStories of Undocumented Immigrants
Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants, Edited by Nicholas J. Cull and Davíd Carrasco, 192 pages, softcover with DVD $34.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2004. When the movie Alambrista first appeared in 1977, it took viewers by surprise. No moviemakers had ever shown what it was like to […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
The Guymas Chronicles
The Guaymas Chronicles, David E. Stuart, 394 pages, hardcover $24.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2003. Anyone familiar with Southwestern archaeology will recognize the name David Stuart. Only this time, he’s not authoring a ground-breaking study of the Anasazi; he’s writing a memoir of the time he spent in Mexico during the early 1970s. It’s […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
More than numbers: The dead of Idaho’s Sunshine Mine
The statistics of Idaho’s worst mining disaster are still startling, even more than three decades after that fateful day in 1972, when an underground fire broke out in the Silver Valley’s Sunshine Mine: Ninety-one men dead, 77 women widowed and 200 children left fatherless. The oldest victim was 61, the youngest 19. More than half […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Finding good grub in Mormon redrock country
The small towns that border the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah have long steamed with political and cultural conflict. But on the northern edge of the monument, in the tiny town of Boulder, a determined peacemaking effort is under way. Blake Spalding and Jennifer Castle, two young chefs from Flagstaff, Ariz., moved to […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Let’s not ram corporations through the Grand Canyon
Drifter Smith is correct that interest in floating the Grand Canyon has increased dramatically in the last three decades (HCN, 2/21/05: Let’s not ram more boats through the Grand Canyon). There are many reasons for this. Rafting equipment has become safer, more reliable and less expensive. Opportunities to learn boating skills, low-impact camping skills, and […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Rulison drilling may spread contaminants
Jennie Lay’s very nice piece on gas drilling near the 1969 Rulison Plowshare nuclear blast shows a slightly misplaced concern of local residents that radioactive materials might be released by the new drilling (HCN, 3/7/05: Drilling could wake a sleeping giant). Their bigger concern should be contamination of groundwater by the nasty stuff put in […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Points to consider about buyouts
I’m a rancher and grazing permittee in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin. Our family ranch has used adjacent BLM and USFS permits since the early 1900s, and I found “The Big Buyout” quite interesting (HCN, 4/04/05: The Big Buyout). I’d add a few comments for your consideration: Mary Flitner This article appeared in the print edition of […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Burns amendment needed for mustang management
Shara Rutberg’s article “Do you want fries with that mustang?” does not provide a workable solution to preventing long-term damage to the rangeland ecosystem from wild horse overgrazing (HCN, 4/04/05: Do you want fries with that mustang?). The Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act protects wild horses so there will always be a place for […]