Scientists may have discovered a radioactive “hot spot” at a future wildlife refuge surrounding the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. The plant, northwest of Denver, produced plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons for more than 30 years. The U.S. Department of Energy and Kaiser-Hill, the company contracted to clean up the site, plan to dispose […]
Wildlife refuge may still be radioactive
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
California’s farmers ditch dirty diesel pumps
California’s two biggest utility companies want to help farmers ditch their polluting diesel pumps to comply with air-quality crackdowns. In the process, the companies stand to gain thousands of new customers. In November, Pacific Gas and Electric Company and Southern California Edison submitted a proposal to the California Public Utilities Commission — which authorizes all […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Klamath farmers face a new threat
In 2001, farmers in the Klamath Basin marched against the federal government when it withheld irrigation water to protect endangered salmon and suckers (HCN, 8/13/01: No refuge in the Klamath Basin). But ultimately the fish may not be to blame if the crops in this arid landscape dry up. In January, the power company PacifiCorp […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Follow-up
Employees at New Mexico’s nuclear weapons lab may soon have new bosses. After Los Alamos National Laboratory suffered repeated financial and security scandals, outgoing U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced that the lab’s contract, held by the University of California since 1943, was up for grabs (HCN, 11/24/03: New Mexico goes head-to-head with […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Heard around the West
THE WEST Hunting is coming to the Internet. A Texas entrepreneur plans to offer online hunting that isn’t virtual — it will have real impact. John Underwood, an auto body estimator, wants to import exotic animals, including wild pigs, Barbary sheep and Indian blackbuck antelopes, to his 330-acre ranch. There, he’ll set up Web cams […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Prowling the back spaces of the West
The drive from Salt Lake City to the Nevada border feels like a ride in a not-too-seaworthy sailboat. Long-haul rigs blast past me, leaving my rickety little four-door swaying in their wakes. The flat, briny waters of the Great Salt Lake reach south toward the highway, threatening to rise up and reclaim their ancient territory. […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
The BLM wields fork and spatula over the West’s wildlands
To my jaundiced and hungry eye, the federal Bureau of Land Management, which manages oil and gas development on public lands in the West, is looking more and more like a McDonald’s franchise. I first noticed it last January during a trip to Denver. At the McDonald’s in Glenwood Springs, Colo., the sign under the […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Roadkill statistics
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Caught in the Headlights.” 4 million Miles of roads in the United States. 226 million Number of vehicles registered in the United States. 23 trillion Vehicle miles traveled in the United States in 2002 6.3 million Number of automobile accidents annually in the United […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
‘Redneck liberal’ defends a hard-to-love landscape
“I want to see people enjoy this country the way it was meant to be enjoyed, the way God created it,” says Tim Faber, speaking about Montana’s arid, rough-hewn Missouri River Breaks. “It’s a place like no other place in the world.” Faber grew up on a cattle ranch in the Bear’s Paw Mountains east […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Developers push ahead with mammoth ski village
Feds say they’re largely powerless to regulate impacts of ‘The Village at Wolf Creek’
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Split-estate rebellion: Ranchers take on energy developers
By threatening to bring the fight to voters, landowners may force the Legislature to regulate drilling
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Bush’s second-term shake-ups
The political appointments you don’t hear about — and how they affect the West
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Reawakening our wild humanity
I stepped onto the front porch to the bugling of an elk early one morning this week. As the eerie fluting carried over the gray, frozen hayfield, something fired briefly in my brain — perhaps some ancient instinct dulled by the years I’ve spent inside buildings, staring at computers, or behind the wheel of a […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Caught in the Headlights
A personal obsession leads one woman into a world of scientists, wildlife rehabilitators and eccentrics who are mesmerized by the often bloody relationship between wildlife and roads
Posted inWotr
Drive-up nature is better than nothing
The woman dubbed “eagle lady” grabbed a chunk of fish and threw it out on the sand in front of her trailer. Fifteen bald eagles immediately jumped off their perches and flew into a scuffle for the meat. A large, younger eagle, its feathers still gray-brown and mottled, emerged with the prize clamped in its […]
Posted inWotr
Surprise: Easterners balk at a giant wind farm
While Wyoming ranchers and hunters are facing off with gas companies eager to drill their rangelands and hunting grounds, Massachusetts lobster barons are facing their own showdown with an energy juggernaut. Has the West found an ally in Eastern blue bloods and politicians such as Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.? Not exactly. In Wyoming’s Powder River […]
Posted inWotr
Global warming brings a clash of civilizations
Global warming is not just another issue in a long line of environmental problems that have received attention starting with Earth Day 1970. With honor and respect to all the great environmental victories, and to the people who fought for them, we feel that global warming will take a revolution in the way we see […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s hunt wild bison instead of plugging them where they stand
I’m a hunter, and I believe that the recent decision by Montana’s officials to postpone a bison hunt near Yellowstone was a stroke of bold leadership. It was also downright gutsy and the right thing to do. It earned Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and the state game commission a lot of uninformed criticism. They’ve been […]
Posted inWotr
Jackalope hops into the heady world of official myth
The Wyoming Legislature is coming close to declaring the jackalope the state’s official mythical creature. A ferocious jackrabbit with horns, the jackalope was first portrayed by taxidermist Douglas Herrick in 1939, and now adorns gift shops and tacky postcards all over the state. An eight-foot jackalope statue greets entrants to the Wyoming State Fair, and […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s not ram more boats through the Grand Canyon
Each year, nearly 5 million people visit the Grand Canyon, most traveling to the South Rim where they spend as much time looking for a parking place as they do looking at the canyon. Only a few venture below the rim on a trail. Another 22,000 people a year see the canyon from the bottom […]