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 […]
Whirling disease hits Yellowstone
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Moving the cheese to New Mexico
Neighbors and local governments are increasingly fed up with the stinky, unhealthy conditions of the huge dairy operations on the Snake River Plain. One of the world’s largest cheesemakers, Ireland’s Glanbia Inc., recently wanted to expand its operations near Twin Falls, but local opposition — in the form of heated public meetings and two counties’ […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Logging faces new pollution controls
A recent federal court ruling and a new California law could both curtail stream pollution by the timber industry. On Oct. 12, outgoing Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill that allows regional water quality boards to veto logging plans if they would damage streams classified by the federal Environmental Protection Agency as “impaired due to […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
State struggling to keep up with CBM
Pollution regulations for coalbed methane wells in Wyoming are severely under-enforced, a state task force says. “Basically, there’s one full-time (inspector) covering all coalbed methane activity (in Wyoming),” says Todd Parfitt, who represented the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) on the task force. The department’s lone field inspector monitors 3,924 permitted discharge points from […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Follow-up
Is that sound science, or the sound of science being strangled? For years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has pressed the Army Corps of Engineers to operate its Missouri River dams to mimic natural river flows and help endangered fish and birds (HCN, 11/11/02: Corps stands behind status quo). But the Corps has consistently […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Heard Around the West
MONTANA Here’s a story to make you wince: Three mountain lion kittens, all about eight weeks old, tried to cross railroad tracks 12 miles west of Butte. The kittens were wet from crossing a nearby creek, and the air temperature was only 10 degrees. So the kittens stuck fast, one frozen to the track on […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
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 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Cold War workers seek compensation
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut.” Workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) are a special breed: Not only do they work with the most dangerous objects on the planet, but most of them believe in what they are doing and are […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Atomic comics
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut.” Visitors to the “history” section of the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos will find more than photos of early lab workers and atomic test explosions. They’ll also find comic books, including Learn How Dagwood Splits […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Mixing oil and water in the Lone Star state
Why are Texans raising hell about a water deal that could raise money for their schools?
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
A mountain town considers going ‘micropolitan’
An airport expansion could forever change an out-of-the-way ski town
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Voters swipe at sprawl
Plan to build commuter expressway through national monument hits roadblock
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Dear Friends
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 […]
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 […]