ROCKY FLATS, Colo. – When Charlie McKay’s uncle, Marcus Church, was forced to sell 1,250 acres of ranchland to the U.S. government for a top-secret military facility, the deal was sweetened only by the promise of a development boom. The year was 1951, and Denver, which sat 17 miles away, had a population of a […]
Hot Property: A former nuclear bomb factory gets caught in suburban turf wars
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Coalition finds harmony in the backcountry
Skiers, snowmobilers agree to give each other elbow room in Idaho
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Land trade threatens trails and trees
Oregon plans to trade away an intact ecosystem
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Coloradan tapped for Interior
Gale Norton is conservative, bright andrelativelyunknown
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Dear Friends
Calling all party animals The year’s first meeting of the board of the nonprofit High Country Foundation, which governs High Country News, will be held in Phoenix, Ariz., Feb. 2-4. As is the custom with board meetings, we’ll be hosting a potluck dinner for readers from the Phoenix area. These events, held around the West […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Mormonism 101: A primer for gentiles
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Being Green in the Land of the Saints.” The Mormon faith began in 1820, when Joseph Smith, then 14 years old, had a vision of God and Jesus Christ in a grove of trees near his home in Palmyra, N.Y. Three years later, the […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Of raptors, rats and roadkill
At the Northern Rockies Raptor Center in northwestern Montana, Ken Wolff has been nursing injured birds back to health for 12 years. But this August his nonprofit operation hit a small snag. Five hundred pounds of frozen rodents, which Wolff uses to feed birds of prey, failed to arrive at the Missoula airport. He spent […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Bovine weedeaters
Leigh Frederickson, a natural resources professor at the University of Missouri, has been testing whether cattle can hold down the spread of noxious weeds, particularly white top. Last summer, the 14,186-acre Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado worked with five neighboring ranchers, who rented pasture with mixed results. “Depending on the moisture and the […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Bring back towns
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream makes the buzzwords “new urbanism” come alive. The authors, who are community planners, have written and designed an easily accessible and smartly illustrated book, which is not surprising, since Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck believe that what works to build […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Agency gets rebuked
Since the late 1980s, scientists have known that more than 100 federal nuclear sites, over half of which lie in the West, will remain toxic forever. The problem is how to manage these former bomb sites for thousands of years. Though the Department of Energy commissioned a National Academy of Sciences study over two years […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Atomic farmgirl
It was a headline in The Spokesman-Review that informed my family that both the bomb at Alamogordo and the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki contained plutonium produced at Hanford. That’s how everybody – everybody in the whole world and everybody in our neighborhood – found out what was going on down there: from the […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Unclassifieds
NOTICE TO OUR ADVERTISERS: Effective immediately, ad submissions must be received no later than 14 days prior to issue date, 5 p.m. Deadline for Jan. 15 issue is Jan. 1. In addition to advertising in our newspaper, all classified and display ads may be posted to our Web site for an additional 15 percent of […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
A short story about palladium
Dear HCN, I have just finished lunch with your essay, “Squishy-soft processes – hard results” (HCN, 8/28/00). I read with particular interest the part about Nye, Mont., and the palladium mine. We visited Nye in the early ’90s for the sole purpose of seeing the mine (hillbillies do that). We were having a chuckle about […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Make them pay
Dear HCN, Mark Muro’s piece about the defeat of growth-control initiatives in Colorado and Arizona was disheartening, but there is a bright side (HCN, 11/20/00). All of us know that developers care about only one thing. Forcing them to spend money to defeat such proposals puts a crimp in their profits, and more than $4 […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Deeper than deep
Dear HCN, Your story, “Into the depths” (HCN, 11/6/00) grossly understated the depth of Crater Lake, Ore., the deepest lake in North America at nearly 2,000 feet. You surely meant 600 meters. Because of this great depth and its clarity, it has an incredible blue color caused by molecular scattering and its steep shoreline. Go […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Stop the propaganda
Dear HCN, Susan Cockrell’s letter attacking my research into nonlethal federal management of coyotes in the Oct. 23 issue of High Country News proves that, once again, you can lead some horses to water but you can’t make them drink. But the hopelessness of some tasks just encourages folks like me (I love my job!). […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
One for two
Dear HCN, I have just finished lunch with your essay, “Squishy-soft processes – hard results” (HCN, 8/28/00). I read with particular interest the part about Nye, Mont., and the palladium mine. We visited Nye in the early ’90s for the sole purpose of seeing the mine (hillbillies do that). We were having a chuckle about […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Why immigration hurts
Dear HCN, Bob Skaggs and so many others miss the point when they argue that immigrants only take low-paying jobs that “no one else wants” (HCN, 11/20/00). Corine Flores is right. We have little hope of advancing the earnings potential of this nation’s poor or minorities, or of protecting the environment, as long as immigration […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Gun controllers need to think again
Dear HCN, I am glad that Ali Macalady and her family are devoted to hunting. I share with her the belief that “there is something important about harvesting my own food,” and a love of early mornings spent waiting for game. But it is disappointing to read that an outdoorswoman such as Macalady considers it […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Let’s organize!
Dear HCN, I was pleased to see the article on “Hunters for Gun Control” (HCN, 11/6/00). I am interested in building a coalition of groups in Montana (and elsewhere) that can effectively challenge the perception that all or most hunters and sportsmen accept the NRA line. Ralph StoneVista, Montana This article appeared in the print […]