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 […]
High Plains Films
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 […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Sherman Alexie in his own words
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “The big show with braids.” On Hollywood: “Hollywood is the most liberal community in the history of the world. And yet the way they conduct their business is Machiavellian. Donald Trump and the Enron executives would fit […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
The big show with braids
The success of his film Smoke Signals offered Native American writer Sherman Alexie an entree into the world of Hollywood. It was a short sojourn. Alexie’s interest in busting stereotypes ran headlong into the film industry’s weird conservatism, which favors target-marketing over story line and big-name stars over talent, casting Filipino actor Lou Diamond Phillips […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
A modest forest proposal for President Bush
President Bush just whistled through southern Oregon for a quick look at our catastrophic wildfires and a high-profile policy address at a county fairgrounds. He repeatedly told a cheering crowd that he’s for “common sense” forest management to stem “endless litigation.” His boldness inspires me to come right out and say it publicly: I, too, […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Island Hoping
Island hoping In Arizona and New Mexico, a unique complex of 27 mountain ranges encompasses vast stretches of desert scrub, grasslands and oak woodlands, and is home to more than 75 species of reptiles. Called the Sky Islands (HCN, 4/26/99:Can science heal the land?), the landscape inspired Aldo Leopold to write that ” … these […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Museum collections hit the roof
‘Curation crisis’ could stall construction projects on public lands
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Drought unearths a water dinosaur
Colorado’s Front Range reaches for a share of the Colorado River
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
The BLM stabs at a tired land
Bush’s push for oil and gas development touches down on the San Juan Basin
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
A legend of the land
A legend of the land He’s been described by writer John McPhee as the “grand old man of Rocky Mountain geology,” and by longtime friend and HCN founder Tom Bell as a man you meet “once in a lifetime.” Born in Riverton, Wyo., in 1913, and raised in the rich landscape that became his life’s […]