Once, I canoed around an Idaho river bend and surprised two enormous, white birds in the shallows. As they lifted off, showing black-tipped wings, I shaped my mouth around the unfamiliar words, “whooping cranes.” Another long-legged bird, farther downstream, joined the whoopers in flight. Yet when I told a knowledgeable birder that I’d seen three […]
A sense of wonder needs no name
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
The American West is an island besieged
I saw the future of the American West. It stared at me with an unblinking black eye through a narrow metal window in the wall of an aviary on the island of Maui. “That’s the female,” said our guide, Mary Schwartz. “She’s the social one.” The facility manager for the Maui Bird Conservation Center opened […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Will listing hurt the Colorado lynx?
Broad federal plan may leave Southern Rockies population out in the cold
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
A neighborhood for Aspen’s ‘middle’ class
Developer tries to revive his community
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Judge puts kibosh on logging plan
The Forest Service’s rush to cut Montana’s burned Bitterroot forest
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Joy Belsky: ‘She made us better’
Joy Belsky, a Portland, Ore., range ecologist who rose to national prominence while crusading to boot cattle off public lands in the West, died Dec. 15 of breast cancer. She was 56. Belsky took on ranchers who, she argued, were letting their cattle trample native plants and wildlife, public agencies that she believed discriminated against […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Dear Friends
End of an era This issue’s cover story will be the last for a while from senior editor Michelle Nijhuis. Michelle left HCN at the end of the year to travel and pursue a freelance writing career. Her departure is a great loss for the paper. From the day Michelle arrived as an intern in […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Finding the words
Can tribes rescue the West’s vanishing languages?
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Sharing credit for restoration
Dear HCN, The Pueblo of Santa Ana sincerely appreciates the extensive coverage in the Nov. 19 issue to highlight our efforts to restore the Rio Grande bosque and river channel within our reservation lands. While we understand that the purpose of the article was to highlight Pueblo efforts, we feel it is important to acknowledge […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Rodeo’s virtues
Ardeth Baxter’s letter commenting on the review of the book Riders of the West requires my response (HCN, 11/19/01: Romanticizing rodeo abuse). Animal-human relationships are the core ingredients in the settlement of the West. That relationship continues in the form of arena events – rodeo, team penning, cutting dressage, etc., and ranch work – gathering, […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Time to embrace drip irrigation
Dear HCN, In the West, water is a pervasive issue, and it is a common theme among HCN articles. “Bringing back the bosque,” and “Will Salt Sink an Agricultural Empire?” (HCN, 11/19/01: Bringing back the bosque) touch this subject. These articles leave one believing that the battle between agriculture and ecological water could never be […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Sheep ranch sympathy misplaced
Dear HCN, Steven Stuebner’s recent article “Global market squeezes sheep ranchers” (HCN, 11/19/01: Global market squeezes sheep ranchers) has to rank as one of HCN‘s worst articles of the year, or silliest. What might have been an informative report on the situation of the sheep industry, if only Stuebner would do a little research, turns […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Good riddance to the sheep
Dear HCN, I was heartened about the future of our public lands as I read the article on “Global market squeezes sheep ranchers” (HCN, 11/19/01: Global market squeezes sheep ranchers). As a long-term resident of Boise who frequently hikes and mountain bikes on public lands, I have experienced first-hand the effects of Brad Little’s and […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Water is more precious than gas
Dear HCN, Thanks for the recent article on coalbed methane (CBM) in the Powder River Basin (HCN, 11/5/01: Wyoming’s powder keg). While some of our issues here in the Raton Basin are slightly different – fewer ranchers, more rural residential development, no celebrity poster child – we appreciate any visibility that CBM development gets. The […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
The Buffalo War: a maelstrom of Western issues
If there were one emblem of Western history, it might be the American buffalo. In Matthew Testa’s new documentary, The Buffalo War, that emblem becomes the focal point for an impassioned controversy. “The buffalo provide a mirror,” says Testa. “They reflect how we see ourselves and our place in wilderness. And that reflection is incredibly […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Audible biodiversity
The first few tracks of The Diversity of Animal Sounds take me from the enthusiastic song of a male satin bowerbird in Australia to the deep-toned, primordial growls of the American alligator to the unabashed mating grunts of a jaguar. I am amused, and then deliciously frightened, and finally, slightly embarrassed – I keep the […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
National grasslands up for review
The grasslands of the Northern Plains – primarily under U.S. Forest Service jurisdiction – are home to abundant wildlife, from deer and elk to endangered swift foxes, mountain plovers and ferruginous hawks. But they are also the site of promising oil and gas deposits. With the release of the final environmental impact statement for the […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Tribe’s pines fetch clean air credits
Last spring, Montana’s Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes were happy to improve wildlife habitat and water quality on their Flathead Indian Reservation by replanting 250 acres of burned land with ponderosa pines. But for the London-based company that is funding the restoration, satisfaction comes from how much carbon dioxide the growing trees will suck out […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
No go on state land reform
ARIZONA A coalition of developers, educators, ranchers and environmentalists has agreed to postpone an effort to preserve about 10 percent of Arizona’s 9.2 million acres of state trust land. Citing internal disagreement, the coalition has abandoned its attempt to put a preservation initiative on the 2002 ballot (HCN, 7/30/01: Not in our backyard). Since managers […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Show me the water
CALIFORNIA The California state assembly says developers must prove they have water rights before they receive final approval for their subdivisions. State legislators have debated a water-rights mandate for nearly a decade; it took the state’s electricity crisis (HCN, 1/29/01: Power on the loose), which raised the specter of natural resource shortages, to push Senate […]