Note: this editor’s note introduces this issue’s feature story, “Global Warming’s Unlikely Harbingers.” The weather always gets the last laugh. It’s the rowdy guest at weddings, the unwelcome visitor at planting time, the cruel joker on the fire crew. It defeats our most dedicated efforts to plan ahead, rudely announcing that the climate is in […]
Hot Times – Global Warming in the West
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Heard around the West
ARIZONA Wearing brightly patterned robes and spectacular strands of African beads, Masai warriors livened up the town of Douglas in southern Arizona when they arrived to talk shop with local ranchers. Members of Arizona’s innovative Malpai Borderlands Group had visited the African herdsmen in 2002, and found they had lots in common. Both the Masai […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Roadkill is a right and a privilege, and don’t you forget it
Driving through northern Idaho this summer? Bring a fork. A judge in Bonners Ferry recently stood up for the right of people to eat the kind of roadkill that even other roadkill fanciers might find inedible. It sounds like one of those jokes bluegrass musicians tell: “How many banjo players does it take to eat […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Life cycle of a bark beetle
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Global Warming’s Unlikely Harbingers.” This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Life cycle of a bark beetle.
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Scientific Principle: Klamath whistleblower throws in the towel
In 2002, federal biologist Mike Kelly “blew the whistle” on the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the agency responsible for protecting threatened and endangered salmon (HCN, 6/23/03: Sound science goes sour). As one of the scientists charged with ensuring that enough water was left in the Klamath River for rare coho salmon, Kelly discovered that […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Drilling done right?
‘Responsible’ gas development gets put to the test in northern New Mexico
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Supreme Court reins in citizens’ right to sue
Conservationists can’t interfere with the government’s ‘own ordering of priorities’
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Dear friends
Visitors The letters have been pouring in to HCN, and so have the people — folks like Minneapolis subscriber Larry Weisner, who is traipsing across the West, and Flagstaff subscriber Jeff Latham, who is on the initial leg of a motorcycle trip to Alaska. Colleen Nunn, who works in the Western History/Genealogy Department at the […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
The people who care about HCN
Two issues back, we invited readers to toss in their “two cents” about HCN’s coverage of the Bush administration’s environmental policies. We got about a million bucks in reply. Readers from all over the West wrote in to tell it like it is. One writer announced that he would not renew his subscription because of […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Global Warming’s Unlikely Harbingers
The West is heating up — and bark beetles are moving in for the kill
Posted inWotr
Just push it
When I was 10 years old, my mother’s boyfriend had a push mower. Every weekend during the summer, he’d drag the rusty thing off the porch and shove it around our weedy lawn. It scraped, jammed on every twig and left dandelions still waving tall and insolent while he sweated and struggled to make muscles […]
Posted inWotr
When does our garbage become archaeology?
A rusted cooking pot, an old stove top, bits of china and pottery. Exploring in the woods around a backcountry chalet in Montana’s Glacier National Park, we poked through the remains of garbage–everything from glass chips to bed springs. We prodded these remnants of the past: Historic rubbish. Knowing the National Park Service classifies these […]
Posted inWotr
One significant step toward reining in those pesky all-terrain vehicles
For years, environmental groups like the Bluewater Network have warned of the coming plague of Jetskis, snowmobiles and the many versions of all-terrain vehicles on our public lands. Now, the plague is upon us, and while the impacts of these machines have been documented in countless studies, more and more people are witnessing the damage […]
Posted inWotr
Backpacker beware: don’t boldly go where you don’t belong
I was dismayed when I read Backpacker magazine recently. I worked for the National Park Service for eight years, and I’ve been a guide in Yellowstone National Park. I know there are some places we can hike to and camp at safely, and some places we should leave alone. But now we have Backpacker magazine, […]
Posted inWotr
John Muir, go home
Any experienced summer traveler through the West might have pointed to my wife and me as classic examples of clueless tourism: “See what you get when you travel without an itinerary? When you think camping has something to do with owning a tent?” I can hear them stifling their snickers, trying to sound sympathetic but […]
Posted inWotr
Free advice for tourists traveling West
The West’s drought has made us so desperate for moisture, we go outside to sweat. Even sagebrush, a Western icon, is in danger. Experts estimate that 600,000 acres is dead or dying in Utah alone. But come West, Podnuh! Step up to that gas pump, pretend that nozzle is a Colt .45, and pump away […]
Posted inWotr
Enough is enough
The announcement this June that Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal opposed new oil and gas leases in the Upper Green River Valley startled both conservation groups and the oil industry. After all, Wyoming is one of the few states fortunate enough not to face a budget crisis because of oil and gas royalties. Yet, in the […]
Posted inWotr
Living with wildlife in an urban setting
The good news is, there are foxes in my neighborhood. The bad news? There are foxes in my neighborhood. Bad news for my cats, anyway, because I allow them to cruise outside for a few daylight hours on warm weekend days. Recently, like an overanxious mother, I panicked when my favorite lap cat, Sonar, failed […]
Posted inWotr
Lake Powell: When drought becomes opportunity
Drought is a rude reminder that in any given year the interior West is but a storm or two from that hydrological tipping point where farming, ranching and the presence of cities become not merely ill-advised but — impossible. The region is being reminded of this now in a big way: Five consecutive years of […]
Posted inWotr
The risky business of fighting fire in the West
The 2004 fire season has not yet truly begun in the Rocky Mountain West, and already three fire-fighting pilots have died in crashes. While investigations into the causes of the accidents are under way, the U.S. Forest Service finds itself crushed between a rock and a hot place. On May 11, with aerial tanker-training in […]