My earliest memories revolve around my dad waking me up with the sun to work cattle. My feet took the shape of the pointed boots and my head grew within my Stetson, leaving an indented white forehead. I never even thought about not ranching. In 1978, I partnered with my dad to buy a ranch […]
Ranching the changing times
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
In the West, drought is a native
“You have to get over the color green,” wrote the late historian and novelist Wallace Stegner in Thoughts on a Dry Land, his treatise on living in the West. I’ve remembered Stegner’s words frequently this brown spring, as gusty winds smudge the air over my valley with clouds of dry soil. Green appears only along […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Wolves still struggle in the Southwest
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The effort to restore Mexican gray wolves to the Southwest started later and smaller than the restoration of wolves to the Northern Rockies, and it has run into stiffer local resistance. But “we’re on track,” says Colleen Buchanan, assistant Mexican wolf recovery coordinator for […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
‘There isn’t much room for more wolves’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Ralph Maughan is a professor of political science at Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho, and president-elect of the Wolf Recovery Foundation. He believes there are still reasons to worry: “There was no need to kill off all of the Whitehawk Pack. That […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
‘I respect wolves. I still don’t like them killing our sheep.’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Margaret Soulen Hinson helps run her family’s ranch near Weiser, Idaho, northwest of Boise. Wolves have killed 105 of the ranch’s sheep since 1995, but Soulen Hinson says: “In comparison to other predator problems, the wolves have been pretty minimal. We lose way more […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Small towns court upscale tourists
Visitors who like art, theater and fine cuisine bring big bucks to the rural West
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Indians play power game
One tribe cashes in on the energy boom
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Where there’s smoke wood, there’s less fire
An Arizona entrepreneur makes good on juniper slash
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Elk conservation group sharpens its ax
New CEO tries corporate-style downsizing
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Grazing foes float a buyout
But will ranchers and Congress buy in?
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Dear Friends
It’s gut check time for a conservative Western Colorado county The county that has been home to High Country News for the last 19 years has reached a decisive moment. For the last few decades, residents of 1,149-square-mile Delta County have chosen a live-and-let-live approach to land use. Outside of the towns, we have no […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Wolf at the door
Now that the West’s top predator has reached civilization’s back porch, managers face some agonizing decisions
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
Condors and bullets
Dear HCN, Four things that I wish you had covered in your story on lead in condors (HCN, 2/18/02: Condor program laden with lead): 1) The problem is with deer gut piles left by legal hunting, probably not with wounded and lost game. Gut piles from legally taken game number in the hundreds during the […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
Charter forests not an answer
Dear HCN, Finding ways to make the Forest Service more accountable is an admirable task. Excluding the public from Forest Service decisions will make things worse. The Charter Forest idea will exclude the public from decision-making processes. Charter forest projects will likely cost the taxpayers more and provide environmentally harmful results. The vast majority of […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
It takes one to know one
Dear HCN, Regarding the article about habitat protection taking a hit under the Bush administration (HCN, 4/15/02: Habitat protection takes a critical hit), may I say about the Sierra Club’s Bill Arthur quote: It takes one to know one. It was the Clinton administration that waited for environmentalists to file lawsuits and then settled the […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
USFWS creating enemies through empire building
Dear HCN, Re: your recent article, “Habitat protection takes a critical hit” (HCN, 4/15/02: Habitat protection takes a critical hit). What has happened here is that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service performed a very poor and cursory economic analysis in establishing critical habitat for the southern willow flycatcher in New Mexico, and they got […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
‘Commercial message’ prompts questions
Dear HCN, As any HCN reader knows, there’s a whole lot to environmentally responsible red-meat ranching: including, but not limited to, conscientious stocking and grazing rotation, scrupulous protection of riparian areas, big-hearted attitudes about the presence of large canid predators as vital, rightful, native members of the ecosystems into which exotic, domestic, grazing animals are […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
Kudos for Quillen
Dear HCN, I do not want to tell you that Ed Quillen’s article about Mel Coleman (HCN, 4/1/02: The ‘Niche West’ reconnects us to the land) was worth the price of this year’s subscription, but it’s some of the best work he or you has done. You can remind me of that next time I […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
Infuriating selfishness
Dear HCN, In your last two issues you featured articles on the snowmobiles in West Yellowstone (HCN, 4/1/02: Move over!) and the dairy farms in Idaho’s Magic Valley (HCN, 4/15/02: Raising a stink). There is a common and infuriating thread: The producers of pollution, be it noise or bad odors, noxious fumes or foul wastes, […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
West Yellowstone a cosmic comedy
Dear HCN, You can imagine how “silly” I felt when I read Glen Loomis’ comments about the snowmobile curfew (“it would be one more of the freedoms in our country whittled away”) (HCN, 4/1/02: Move over!). I felt “silly” as I realized that I must have been too preoccupied with my head being up my […]