HCN shows its roots There was a veritable High Country News love-fest in Gunnison, Colo., in early November. Western State journalism professor George Sibley called together several hundred academics, activists, writers, students — and even a rancher or two — to ponder the history of this newspaper, and the state of the West, at the […]
Dear Friends
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
A defensive island
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” —John Donne, 1623 More than one historian has noted how undeserved is the West’s reputation for rugged, go-it-alone individualism. It took tremendous cooperation for American Indian tribes, early explorers and pioneers to survive in […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
As Los Alamos National Laboratory embarks on a new era of weapons development, critics drag its unfinished business out into the light
Posted inWotr
Fire policy in the form of Smokey and the Bandit
Among the spectacles swirling around Southern California’s recent wildfires, we had now-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who rose from body-building to movie screens and into politics on the principle of self-reliance, beseeching Washington, D.C., to cushion Californians from the toll of the flames. There was also California’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who rose with […]
Posted inWotr
The biggest environmental issue is staring us in the face
Tom Bell says we’d better connect the dots that reveal global warming.
Posted inWotr
A cheer for runaway bison and their glorious home
Anyone with a heart had to cheer the bison. One recent snowy day in Great Falls, Mont., three of the half-ton creatures were being loaded off a truck into a slaughterhouse. One of the half-wild bovines busted through a five-foot timber corral and — bingo! — led a buffalo breakout. The three beasts stampeded through […]
Posted inWotr
River advocates take a seat at the table
There is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort underway to restore natural stream flows to many of the nation’s waterways. The poster child for this groundbreaking work is California’s Mokelumne River, which flows from high up in the Sierras through the gold country. Dams and diversions have reduced the river to a relative trickle, but that is […]
Posted inWotr
Our publicly owned forests are being subverted
As the nation remains preoccupied with the war against terrorism, President Bush has been carrying out a less visible assault on another front: our national forests. Most of the attacks over the last year have been below the radar — in arcane rules, stealth riders and misnamed legislation. In this many-fronted assault, big timber is […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Agriculture’s wild side
It’s no coincidence that farming and ranching are at least partly responsible for a huge number of federal endangered species listings. When the goal of agriculture is to create monocultures of corn, soy, wheat, hogs or cattle, biodiversity loses. But that doesn’t mean modern agriculture has to be incompatible with healthy ecosystems. In his new […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Bee kind, please redesign
If you dread mowing the lawn, maybe you should just give it up altogether next year. Native pollinator insects — bees, butterflies and others — are declining across the nation because of land-management practices that range from vast single-crop farm fields to manicured urban lawns. This is very bad news, because despite their tiny size, […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Calendar
The Great Old Broads for Wilderness just printed a new booklet for public lands lovers. “Dung to Dust: How cattle have grazed our public lands to death” includes tales from seven writers who have “camped in cow poop.” www.greatoldbroads.org 970-385-9577 The University of Colorado Natural Resources Law Center and the Colorado School of Mines are […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Mucking around San Francisco Bay
Judging by its scenic photos of bridges, ships and seals, San Francisco Bay: Portrait of an Estuary is the kind of book a Bayside resident might keep on her coffee table as a reminder of why her ludicrous rent is worth it. But the book is more than a Bayside lovefest: It’s also a reckoning […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
The author responds
Overall, I stand behind my story, “Harvesting Poison” (HCN, 9/29/03: Harvesting Poison). While the Washington Department of Agriculture has done some work to address the safety of illegal farm workers, these people remain a largely invisible, and neglected, workforce. Reading Mr. Zamora’s letter, one might think the two of us were in different rooms when […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Misquoted on pesticides
I am compelled to respond to “Harvesting Poison” (HCN, 9/29/03: Harvesting Poison), as the article misrepresents what I said in my interview with the author. I did not say that every time I go out I see people spraying too close to unprotected workers. What I said was that every time I go out I […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Farmworker protection agency misrepresented
“Harvesting Poison,” (HCN, 9/29/03: Harvesting Poison) failed to mention or accurately report the efforts of the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) to protect farmworkers from pesticide exposure. WSDA places a high priority on farmworker protection. For more than a decade, WSDA’s Farmworker Education Program has provided Spanish-language pesticide safety training to agricultural workers and […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Federal report supports Klamath farmers
Farmers in the Klamath Basin found vindication in a National Research Council report, released Oct. 21, which says the solution to Klamath’s protracted water struggles lies not in irrigation shutoffs but in sweeping repairs to an out-of-balance landscape. In 2001, federal biologists reserved so much water for fish farmers nearly rioted. But there is no […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Activists raise a stink over outhouse
In the latest skirmish over a long-disputed dirt road in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, Elko county-rights activists are fuming over the Forest Service’s decision to clean a remote outhouse. The county and the Forest Service have clashed since 1995, when the agency closed a 1.5-mile stretch of South Canyon Road after most of it was […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Park expansion threatened
A ranch that promised to be an important addition to Wind Cave National Park in the Black Hills is now for sale on the open market. The 5,555-acre Casey Ranch would increase the park’s land base by 20 percent, and add an 85-year-old homestead and a “buffalo jump” — a cliff from which American Indian […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
State picks up federal slack on perchlorate
In late September, outgoing California Gov. Gray Davis signed two bills into law to protect drinking water supplies from perchlorate, a toxic chemical used in rocket fuel and explosives (HCN, 4/28/03: Cold War toxin seeps into Western water). It could be 2008 before the federal Environmental Protection Agency sets a maximum contaminant level for perchlorate, […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Follow-up
Just say “no” to greenhouse gases. New Mexico has joined the growing number of states that have sued the Environmental Protection Agency for weakening the federal Clean Air Act (HCN, 10/27/03: West Coast states tackle global warming). So far, 13 states, 20 cities and 14 environmental or public health groups have decided to fight the […]