In politics, as in comedy, timing is everything. Sometimes you get lucky, but if you don’t get lucky at the right time, you might as well not have gotten lucky at all. The folks hereabouts fighting the Bush administration’s plan to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge got a lucky break recently […]
The Arctic: A slave to luck
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Montana gets a crash course in methane
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Powder River Basin doesn’t end at the state line; about one-third of the sprawling basin lies in Montana. Though the coal seams are thinner here than in Wyoming, coalbed methane development is expected to explode in the northern third of the basin and […]
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Mickey Steward, coordinator for the Coal Bed Methane Coordination Coalition
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Mickey Steward, coordinator for the CoalBed Methane Coordination Coalition: “The fastest way to kill the coalbed methane industry is for gas prices to drop below a dollar. The surest way to get significant attention paid to even the slightest (industry) concerns is for gas […]
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Defending the Red Desert’s desolation
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. OREGON BUTTES, Wyo. – “This is what the pioneers saw. This is what Wyoming was,” says Mac Blewer, a 30-year-old who works for the Wyoming Outdoor Council, an environmental group headquartered in nearby Lander. From the top of a sheer-sided cliff, Blewer is looking […]
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Miles Keogh, Wyoming rancher
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Miles Keogh, Wyoming rancher: “I’ve told them (drillers) all the same story. If you guys want to play hardball, I’ll play hardball. I’ve been around the block. So part of the terms and conditions of this agreement is you take total responsibility, so the […]
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Patricia Clark, Wyoming rancher
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Patricia Clark, Wyoming rancher: “We’ve had this place in the family for 105 years, and I’m looking to keep this in the family for another 105 years, and I want to keep it as pristine as I can. Once the damage is done, it’s […]
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Agencies tangle over Hells Canyon dams
Federal energy commission evades endangered species conservation
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Utah’s Grand Staircase turns 5
Locals still wondering if the monument will provide an economic step up
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Cattle make way for tortoises in the Mojave
Closures could spark a modern-day range war
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Wasting disease spreads in Colorado
Game farm shipped 400 exposed elk to 15 states
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Dear Friends
Never say never For decades, High Country News has monitored the rise and fall of extractive industries in the West. In recent years, we’ve joined a growing number of scholars and pundits in asserting that the West has turned a corner: Logging, mining and grazing are on their way out, even as a new amenity-based […]
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Wyoming’s powder keg
Coalbed methane splinters the Powder River Basin
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Kudos for Craig
Dear HCN, I just wanted to congratulate you and Craig Childs on the wonderful article about desert streams (HCN, 9/10/01: The rise and fall of a desert stream). I thought that was the most inspirational and entertaining reading that I have ever seen in HCN (which is saying a lot, by the way). I enjoyed […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Sharper than a serpent’s tooth
Dear HCN, I have been on a crusade to stamp out redundancies and the use of the plural when referring to the Sierra Nevada, which means Snowy Range. It is just plain Sierra or Sierra Nevada, not Sierras or Sierra Nevadas, Sierra Nevada Mountains, or Sierra Nevada Range. Your Aug. 27 issue did get it […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Freedom or irresponsibility?
Dear HCN, I had to respond to the following statement from the Sept. 10 article about shooting in Arizona: ” ‘I go out to these places, carpeted with spent brass (cartridges), a car door over here, a TV or a propane bottle over there, and what I see is unbridled freedom…’ ” I lived in […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
WOTR columns are propaganda
Dear HCN, I want to take this time to comment vociferously about a trend I see in HCN‘s Writers on the Range columns. And I am not at all happy with it! There have been at least three columns published this year in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that are a bunch of bull! If I […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Remembering internment in Idaho
For just over three years, between August 1942 and October 1945, more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were unwilling residents of the Minidoka War Relocation Authority Center in southern Idaho (HCN, 10/8/01: Lessons of an intolerant past). This fall, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts will host Whispered Silences, a multidisciplinary exploration of internment in […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Grassfires burn bigger
In Montana’s Gallatin National Forest this past summer, rays of sunshine filtered through pine trees, diffusing in the smoky haze produced by ravenous flames. While such scenes make for alluring photographs and dramatic headlines, a new study says that wildfires in national forests account for less than 15 percent of acreage burned this year to […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Good Neighbor Handbook
Has your once-peaceful town been overrun by trophy homes, off-leash dogs and transplanted neighbors that just don’t seem to care? In eastern Washington, the Methow Conservancy is taking steps to prevent these sorts of unintended excesses. They’ve published the Good Neighbor Handbook: A Guide for Landowners in the Methow Valley. Authored by former HCN intern […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Trumpeter swans for the taking
UTAH A struggling population of rare trumpeter swans may be the unintended victims of an ongoing tundra swan hunt in Utah. That’s the word from some anonymous Fish and Wildlife Service biologists, who say their agency has ignored science and bowed to political pressure from Utah wildlife officials. Federal biologists have worked for years to […]