Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Drilling Could Wake a Sleeping Giant.” The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, charged with overseeing energy development in the state, is conflicted. The commission’s mission is to facilitate oil and gas production. At the same time, it is supposed to protect the public’s […]
State laws — and small staff — muzzle would-be watchdog
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Ready… fire… aim!
A decade into a massive energy boom, the West decides it’s time to deal with the impacts on the land, air, water and wildlife
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Small tribe in Idaho weighs big water deal
Nez Perce will decide whether a $193 million package does enough for salmon
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Forest Service employees and activist face racketeering charges
Developers’ attempt to silence critics of condo project could make history
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Political appointee slashes forest protections
White River National Forest may lose safeguards for water and rare wildcat
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Dear friends
BOMBS AWAY! This issue’s cover story mentions Project Plowshare, the federal government’s campaign, during the 1960s and early ’70s, to find “peaceful” uses for nuclear bombs. Longtime HCN subscriber Chuck Worley of Cedaredge, Colo., remembers it well: Worley, now 87, and his former plumbing partner, the late Fred Smith, protested the use of nuclear bombs […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Energy without hypocrisy
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 heater 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 inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Drilling Could Wake a Sleeping Giant
In Colorado, a gas company edges in on a radioactive blast site
Posted inWotr
Libby tested environmentalists, who came up short
“Goofy logic” from “Ray Rong,” one critic charged. “The most ridiculous piece of journalism I have read,” said another. “Trash” and “rubbish,” said others. Those blasts came from angry environmentalists. They’re criticizing a piece of news analysis I wrote recently, about an environmental-health disaster in Libby, Mont. I intended it to be provocative. In that […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Follow-up
The Union of Concerned Scientists is concerned again — this time, about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Union, a nonprofit coalition of scientists and citizens, has released the results of its survey of Fish and Wildlife Service employees: Forty-four percent say they have been told, “for non-scientific reasons,” to refrain from making findings […]
Posted inWotr
The Far East yearns for the Wild West
When my friend Kevin passed through South Dakota on a cross-country road trip a few years back, I did the decent thing as a host and took him to see Mount Rushmore. Why pass by the ninth or tenth wonder of the world and not at least stop by? Still, it’s one of those things […]
Posted inWotr
Don’t call shooting from the sky hunting
The small airplane circles in the sky, its pilot and passenger peering out the windows as the plane banks to the left and right. They see a dark-colored dot moving against the snow below, and quickly, they circle tighter and downward until, yes, they realize it’s a wolf. The circling then changes to a slow […]
Posted inWotr
You don’t need a motor to experience Yellowstone
While I disagree with Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s agenda for Yellowstone National Park, I have to admire her political smarts. She showed great form during her recent snowmobile and snow coach tour of the park this winter. Secretary Norton charmed reporters with her grit, gamely bouncing through sub-zero temperatures on a three-hour snowmobile excursion, and […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
A Lively Exchange with the Interior Department
HCN GOT IT WRONG ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION To the Editor: The Dec. 6 feature article, “Taking the West Forward,” contains a thoughtful overview of issues facing the West but it grossly mischaracterizes the Bush Administration’s policies and programs. The article states the administration has “opened the region’s resources to development” when in fact public […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
Where were the environmentalists when Libby needed them most?
The story of an ailing town in northwestern Montana calls into question the health of the environmental movement
Posted inWotr
Gay people seem to threaten more people than Osama
Lately, I’ve been feeling like I need to apologize to every gay person I know. I didn’t vote that way, I want to tell them, and I’m not obsessed by your presence. I can’t fathom all this horse-pucky about gay lifestyles. I have no idea how so many voters, letter-writers and politicians can exist in […]
Posted inWotr
Where did the Northwest’s moisture go?
For years I’ve hated the winter rains of Oregon’s Willamette Valley — hated the way they start in late October and continue well into April. Soaking the landscape and leaving everything wrinkled and rotted, the rain was something to hide from, something to make me hold my breath, shut my eyes and imagine a drier […]
Posted inWotr
What New York needs is a few million prairie dogs
Everybody but me is celebrating Lewis and Clark’s achievements, but I’m too peeved at William. Among other feats, those two travelers from Virginia named about 1,528 places, plants and animals. Captain Lewis, who studied science especially for the trip, correctly named one of the creatures they encountered a “barking squirrel.” William Clark changed the name […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
Of Chiles, Cacti, and Fighting Cocks: Notes on the American West
Of Chiles, Cacti, and Fighting Cocks: Notes on the American West Frederick Turner 297 pages, softcover $16.95 Fulcrum Press, 2004 First published in 1990, this book of deft essays is back in print and as engaging as ever; it even includes some new work. Whether he’s describing cock fights, the artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s solitary ways […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
The Meat You Eat: Corporate Farming and the Decline of the American Diet
The Meat You Eat: Corporate Farming and the Decline of the American Diet Ken Midkiff 240 pages, softcover $23.95 St. Martin’s Press, 2004 Midkiff shows us the ugly underbelly of industrialized meat production: “Mad cow” disease scares, farm animals shot full of massive doses of hormones and antibiotics, and giant farms producing giant amounts of […]