Meager snow pack leaves reservoirs low, fire danger high
Wilted West staggers into summer
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Dear Friends
Ex marks the spot We love those ex-interns, especially when they land in some Western locale and start sending in stories. This issue is an intern tour de force: Tim Westby, who spent time here in the summer of 1999, penned our cover story on the misunderstood and much abused Great Salt Lake, near whose […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Researchers scramble to understand one of the West’s most neglected ecosystems
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
Can the tide turn for Walker Lake?
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Walla Walla Basin sidesteps a water war.” SCHURZ, Nev. – Robert Quintero, the chairman of the Walker River Paiute Tribal Council, apprehensively surveys the sun-baked view of his tribe’s 360,000-acre reservation near the Nevada-California […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2002: The Great Western Apocalypse
Walla Walla Basin sidesteps a water war
MILTON-FREEWATER, Ore. – For more than 100 years, the Walla Walla River has dried up each summer like clockwork, as its water is shunted off to farms on the river’s journey from Oregon’s Blue Mountains to the Columbia River in eastern Washington. Endangered bull trout and steelhead have been stranded in shallow pools, and volunteers […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Raising a stink
Factory dairies catch Idaho’s Magic Valley by surprise
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Getting better all the time
Dear HCN, As a long-time reader of HCN, I must say that your paper just keeps on getting better all the time. The last two issues were, in my opinion, great! Not to say all of them aren’t, these just seemed to appeal to me on a different level. Keep on doing what you do […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Eucalyptus smells nice, anyway
Dear HCN, I was amused by the vehemence of Ted Williams’ essay, “The Eucalyptus: Sacred or profane?” (HCN, 2/18/02: The Eucalyptus: Sacred or profane?) as a native Californian living on the other coast. My moldering 1968 copy of Munz’s A California Flora and Supplement lists four species of eucalyptus as native. At the time the […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Sibley a brilliant equivocator
Dear HCN, An absolutely brilliant essay by George Sibley (HCN, 3/18/02: How I lost my town). Memorable lines, sweeping flourishes, paragraphs that could stand alone as poetry. But when you take it all in, Sibley never “had” a town or “had” any place else. Missing was some call to action. It was kind of nihilistic. […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Those darn capitalist tendencies
Dear HCN, I appreciated George Sibley’s essay, “How I lost my town” (HCN, 3/18/02: How I lost my town), and I can certainly empathize with his loss. In 1981, I spent a month near Crested Butte as a student on an environmental policy field course. Locals were celebrating AMAX’s cancellation of the proposed Mount Emmons […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Charter forests and the Valles Caldera don’t mix
Dear HCN, While there’s no question that U.S. Forest Service management and decision making could use some progressive reform, the Bush administration’s proposal to establish “charter forests” takes it in the wrong direction (HCN, 3/18/02: Can ‘charter forests’ remake an agency?). Putting the future of our public national forests in the hands of any narrow […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Salmon poison
Ten years after Pacific salmon were first given federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, the fish are still swimming in pesticide-laced water, and the Environmental Protection Agency is ignoring the problem, says a report recently issued by the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides and the Washington Toxics Coalition. Besides directly killing the fish, […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Wire Song sticks in your mind
Mark Todd’s often lyrical poems are about the reality of the work, the moments of recognition, and even the reveries of an everyday, outdoor life on a ranch. As such, they may have an innate appeal to those of us who recognize both the romance and the tough reality of a life in those parts […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Bonelight: Ruin and Grace
Bonelight: Ruin and Grace in the New Southwest is Mary Sojourner’s timely and occasionally quirky reckoning of loss and resilience. Throughout these 50 vignettes, some new, some previously published, the Flagstaff, Ariz., author and High Country News contributor weaves personal stories into a compelling history of her hometown’s growing pains. Bonelight’s intimate musings on environmental […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Saving tired tires
Ernest Cordova is “burning rubber” to come up with new ways to put old tires to use. His family-owned business, Cordova and Sons of Cuba, N.M., collects and recycles used tires to make bales for landscaping and building projects. Americans discard 270 million tires each year, says the Department of Environmental Quality, a huge burden […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
For the love of spoons
What does frilly Victorian flatware have to do with Navajo silversmithing? More than you might imagine. In her new book, Navajo Spoons, Cindra Kline uncovers the unlikely convergence of Victorian America’s obsession for commemorative spoons, love of tourism, and the “classic period” of Navajo silversmithing. In the late 1800s, when the railroad reached the West, […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Ranchers offer hospitality
In Park County, Colo., ranchers who want to maintain their traditional land uses are saying “no, thank you” to housing developers. Instead, they’re welcoming tourists. Seven years ago, several ranchers and county officials formed the South Park Heritage Area Board. The board, along with six partner organizations, aims to protect ranchers with conservation easements, and […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Elk and deer disease could waste Western Slope
COLORADO Chronic wasting disease, the fatal brain malady found in elk and deer, has jumped west across the Continental Divide despite efforts by Colorado wildlife and agriculture agencies to contain it (HCN, 11/5/01: Wasting disease spreads in Colorado). In late March, wildlife officials determined that two wild deer illegally penned on the Motherwell elk ranch […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Land exchange could short-change monuments
ARIZONA A land-exchange referendum slated for the November ballot could set the stage for shifting the borders of the Sonoran Desert and Ironwoods national monuments, two of President Clinton’s 11th-hour designations (HCN, 1/29/01: Monumental changes). Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Arizona Gov. Jane Hull have conferred several times in the past year about how to […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
City gets in the zone for fish
OREGON Portland is one of a few urban areas where endangered fish swim in the shadows of high-rises. In an effort to prevent eroding stream banks and rising water temperatures that harm fish, the city’s planning bureau designated zones along its streams that impose building and landscape regulations on 19,000 acres of residential property. That […]