As Congress wraps up its business for the year, Western lawmakers will be heading home with a little bit of pork and a whole lot of change. That’s not pocket change, however: New laws passed this year could mean some big changes across the Western landscape. The 108th Congress has passed a significant number of […]
As Congress adjourns, the environment is left in limbo
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
News flash: Fish do need water
Federal wildlife managers admit that a massive fish kill was caused, in part, by diversions of water to farmers
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Dear Friends
PARTY TIME The staff of High Country News cordially invites all readers and friends to HCN’s holiday open house at our Paonia, Colo., office (119 Grand Ave.) on Monday, Dec. 15. Knock back a few eggnogs with the entire HCN crew between 5 and 7:30 p.m. Please bring a treat to share. We’ll provide drinks. […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Save the middle ground: Hug a radical
Here’s a message for all the “radical centrists” out there, those who have decided that the best way to manage the public lands is to sit down at the table with ranchers, off-roaders and everyone in between, to come up with a plan everyone agrees on: The next time you run into a radical, thank […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Riding the middle path
In Idaho’s remote Owyhee region, an effort to protect wilderness and keep ranchers in business threatens to crack under pressure, or slip into oblivion
Posted inWotr
Sportsmen for Bush: Wise up!
Without enthusiastic support from most of America’s 50 million hunters and anglers, George W. Bush and his appointees would still be employed by oil, gas and coal companies. I still see bumper stickers that say: “Another Sportsman for Bush.” Yet as a lifelong sportsman myself, I wonder why even one sportsman, let alone “another,” would […]
Posted inWotr
A love letter to a sewage lagoon
At a neighbor’s house a few years ago, I saw a sphere of ruddy sandstone displayed on a ledge. Rolling it in my hand, I recognized the heft and grittiness of the ball. “We used to find these at Lake Powell,” I said, “Is that where this came from?” Our neighbor, a dedicated environmental activist, […]
Posted inWotr
Does Wal-Mart really need our tax dollars?
Typical of shopping centers built decades ago, Alameda Square in Denver is a cheap, single-story strip of stores. It’s ugly and rundown. But that does not deter shoppers. Mostly Asian Americans, shoppers come from miles around to patronize more than a dozen Asian-owned businesses, including two grocery stores, two restaurants, a hair salon, a clothing […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Butte ponders the power of Evel
BUTTE, MONTANA — This is a town that has stopped at nothing in its pursuit of a buck. It has fouled its water with mining runoff and demolished half its downtown for a gigantic open pit, all for a relentless red harvest of copper. It seems strange, then, that many longtime residents feel Butte has […]
Posted inWotr
Getting ready to wreck the vote
Let’s just get this out of the way: As a nerd, and an overly opinionated one at that, Election Day — not Thanksgiving — has always been my favorite “holiday.” Some kids couldn’t wait to turn 16 and drive; I couldn’t wait to turn 18 and vote. Simply put, I’m a maniac for democracy. That […]
Posted inWotr
Thanksgiving as a holiday of the imagination
There is a saying among the Lakota that when the Pilgrims first landed at Plymouth Rock, they fell on their knees and prayed, and then they fell on the Indians and preyed. Perhaps it is not surprising that the stories of this country’s founding are awash in error. As Napoleon reportedly said, “What is history […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Being a local doesn’t make you any better
“Where is this guy from?” I said to myself, flipping to the inside cover of the new book, “True Grizz,” by Douglas Chadwick. It said the author lived in Whitefish, Mont., a trendy town north of Flathead Lake. He may live there, I thought, but where’s he from? It’s embarrassing to recount my thought process. […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them
In recent years, we’ve watched droughts parch the West, heat waves claim lives, and tempests encroach on the nation’s capital. With the advent of plagues like West Nile and SARS, soothsayers have enough fodder to last until the apocalypse. But in Six Modern Plagues and How We are Causing Them, author Mark Jerome Walters takes […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Road ripping
The 43,000 mile-long U.S. Interstate Highway System “has been called the largest public works program in the history of the world dwarfing … Egypt’s pyramids and the Great Wall of China,” writes David Havlick in No Place Distant: Roads and Motorized Recreation on American’s Public Lands. Roads across our national forests, parks, wildlife refuges and […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Calendar
The Idaho Conservation League will showcase eight professional photographers’ work in Images of Wild Idaho, Dec. 4 in Boise. The show is part of ICL’s effort to win wilderness protection for the Boulder-White Cloud and Pioneer Mountains and the Owyhee Canyonlands. www.wildidaho.org 208-345-6933 On Jan. 9 and 10, the second annual Wild and Scenic Environmental […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
The BLM is blowing in the wind
It’s no secret that the Bush administration is pushing for increased oil and gas development across the West. But one often-overlooked recommendation of Bush’s National Energy Policy calls for greater reliance on sources of renewable energy, such as the sun and wind. In response, the Bureau of Land Management is studying the prospects for developing […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
The Daily Sun doesn’t shine
“The Big Story Written Small,” about the shortcomings of daily newspapers in the West was well- written and informative (HCN, 10/13/03: The Big Story Written Small). However, I was taken aback to read that my own hometown newspaper, the Arizona Daily Sun, was one of nine newspapers to be awarded the first Wallace Stegner Award […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Journalism’s dirty little secret
Ray Ring’s excellent piece on the shortcomings of Western newspapers (HCN, 10/13/03: The Big Story Written Small) brought back a lot of memories from my own daily reporting days. His story, and the recent report from the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources, reveal a dirty little secret: Too many of our newspapers are skewering […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Journalism is in bad shape
Congratulations on a fine piece by Ray Ring, “The Big Story Written Small” (HCN, 10/13/03: The Big Story Written Small). I was a reporter in Arizona in the early ’80s who wrote extensively on environmental and development issues, and frequently found I had the field pretty much to myself. Over the past two decades, alas, […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Whirling disease hits Yellowstone
Cutthroat trout, a native species in trouble around the West, are facing an increasing threat in a key sanctuary, Yellowstone National Park. Whirling disease, spread by a European parasite that showed up in the park five years ago, now infects 12 to 20 percent of the cutthroats in Yellowstone Lake, according to biologists’ studies. And […]