Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. AUBURN, Calif. – Tom Aiken guides his old pickup along a crumbling road, past a steel gate, past a weathered shed filled with drilling cores, past heaps of gravel. Stopping at a pullout, he parks and leads the way to the canyon’s lip. The […]
Dam busters win symbolic victory
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
Idaho seeks a reputation – and a reality – free of hate
Nothing irritates us more in Idaho than our reputation as a haven for neo-Nazis. Our tolerance of hate-mongers in the past brought us this sorry legacy. These days, we can make a case that Idaho has become a place that stands up for human rights. That case was strengthened this summer, when Boise residents dedicated […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
Independent ranchers fight corporate control
Lawsuits seek to eliminate mandatory checkoff payments
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
It’s open season on New Mexico’s bears
Despite dire warnings, state maintains an extended hunting seaason
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
Balancing act, part 2
Balancing act, part 2 The cover story of this issue is the second in our series, “California’s Water Balancing Act.” In it, veteran journalist Susan Zakin writes about the state’s water hub: the California Delta. The delta, just inland from San Francisco Bay, collects a mammoth one-half of the state’s rainfall and snowmelt each year. […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
Delta Blues
California struggles to get a massive restoration project off the ground
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Fire story was propaganda
Dear HCN, Normally informative and refreshing, the paper stepped in a hole with “Anatomy of Fire” as a cover article (HCN, 7/8/02:The anatomy of FIRE). As a wildland firefighter and Forest Service employee, I had hoped for the arrival of some scientific (“anatomy” made me think we were really going to get into it) exploration, […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Carroll’s nonsensical diatribe
Dear HCN, High Country News disappointed readers of Writers on the Range last month by printing the nonsensical diatribe of Frank Carroll (“Logging is Beginning to Look a Little Better,” Jackson Hole Guide, 7/31/02). He blames the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity, and “their actions over the last two decades” for the recent […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
High Plains Films
High Plains Films, creator of such documentary gems as the prairie dog classic, Varmints, is screening its latest film This is Nowhere at the Temecula Valley International Film Festival in Temecula, Calif. The film investigates the philosophies and motivation of RV enthusiasts who like to camp out in Wal-Mart parking lots. The piece also explores […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
With golden cottonwoods
With golden cottonwoods and monsoon-raised waters, fall is a great time for a boat trip down the San Juan River. So Canyonlands Field Institute, working with the national Elderhostel organization, will leave Bluff, Utah, Oct. 5, for a seven-day trip, exploring Ancestral Puebloan sites and the geology and watershed of the river. The trip is […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Learn about everything
Learn about everything from fueling your car with vegetable oil to how Aspen, Colo., manages its “alternative building” at the Fourth Annual Sustainable Communities Symposium, Sept. 20-22 in Crested Butte, Colo. The conference kicks off with words from Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (HCN, 7/6/98:Defining a scientific movement), and features workshops […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Yes, I’m gonna eat that!
After visiting the Fertile Crescent, where he eats “local” food for the first time, Lebanese-American writer Gary Paul Nabhan returns to the U.S. determined to do the same at his Tucson home. To most of us, that would have meant growing a larger garden and buying a lamb or cow from a neighbor. But Nabhan, […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
A cow of a time
There’ll be some verbal sparring, rangeland management tips, literary musing and maybe a little bird-watching at this year’s annual RangeNet conference, “Bovines or Biodiversity: The National Campaign to End Abusive Public Lands Ranching.” The three-day-long program in Boise, Idaho, includes talks by Jon Marvel of the Western Watersheds Project * which is sponsoring the conference […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Rough riding
More than mere annoyances, tearing up trails or disturbing the peace, all-terrain vehicles are deadly, according to a report published last month by the Consumer Federation of America, Bluewater Network and the Natural Trails and Waters Coalition. The ATV Safety Crisis Report says that ATV accidents have injured more than 111,000 people in the last […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Traveling dunes
It is the largest dune complex in North America, spreading across 1,000 square miles, from Southern California to Mexico. It’s also the locale of the 32,240-acre North Algodones Dunes Wilderness area, where rare species of plants and animals thrive in the basins and flats of the dunescape (HCN, 12/18/00:Feds fight chaos in a desert playground). […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Toxic fish taint tribal diet
Seafaring salmon are struggling against extinction, but they might be safer than some of their neighbors in the Columbia River. During a recent study, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission found that Columbia River fish – especially species like mountain whitefish and white sturgeon, which spend their entire lives in […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
The Latest Bounce
In Wyoming, the Bureau of Land Management is reconsidering its approval of 5,100 coalbed methane leases in the Powder River Basin (HCN, 5/13/02:Land board says, ‘Look before you lease’). The second look follows a federal review board’s ruling earlier this year that the BLM failed to adequately consider the environmental impacts of three other methane […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Working among the West’s newcomers
It’s well past midnight on the first night of my new job, and I’m looking out the window of a Ford van heading north on I-25, radio tuned to Radio Romantica, the undisputed slicked-back pompadour of Denver radio stations. We speed through the city and sprawl of the Front Range in these wee hours, just […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Oh, the things you see
Oh, the things you see when the water drops. Right in front of the Nature Center in Pueblo, Colo., ancient cars lurked semi-submerged and jutting up from the Arkansas River, reports the Rocky Mountain News. Thanks to record low flows, a dozen volunteers were able to yank out a 1950s-era Cadillac convertible and a Depression-era […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Some see economic upside in loss of farm water
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. CALEXICO, Calif. – Jose Valles may not know it just yet, but he’s on the cusp of what could be a radically different Imperial Valley economy. Valles, a field worker for 14 of his 32 years, is learning English and training to become a […]