Looking back on Bazy Tankersley: publisher, rancher and conservationist.
Arizona
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Book review: A Natural History of the Santa Catalinas, Arizona
A Natural History of the Santa Catalinas, Arizona. Richard C. Brusca and Wendy Moore, 232 pages, softcover: $24.95. Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Press, 2013. The Santa Catalina Mountains in southeast Arizona “easily become a good friend,” writes philosopher Bill Broyles in the introduction to this new book by two Southwest naturalists. A Natural History explores the […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
The power grid may determine whether we can kick our carbon habit
Minutes before 4 p.m. on a sizzling September day two years ago, right at the time when they were most needed, San Diego’s air conditioners suddenly died. Thousands of television and computer screens also flickered into darkness. Stoplights stopped working, gas stations ceased pumping, and traffic slowed to a snarl. Trains ground to a halt […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Book review: Ground/Water: The Art, Design and Science of a Dry River
Ground/Water: The art, design and science of a dry river, edited by Ellen McMahon, Ander Monson, and Beth Weinstein, 112 pages, hardcover: $48. The University of Arizona Press, 2012. Arizona’s Rillito River runs from the Santa Catalina Mountains through Tucson to join the Santa Cruz River. “Except it doesn’t run,” writes journalist Nathaniel Brodie in […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Listening to the secret heart: a review of The Last Shepherd
The Last ShepherdMartin Etchart203 pages, softcover: $22.University of Nevada Press, 2012. Arizona author Martin Etchart’s compelling second novel takes readers to the heart of a Basque family, originally from the French Pyrenees, that has been whittled down to two: a father and a son. Mathieu Etcheberri, the son of Basque shepherds who built a hardscrabble […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
The Latest: Pumping Arizona’s rivers dry?
BackstoryLast July, Arizona’s state water board approved a large new development in Sierra Vista that would pump 3,300 acre feet of groundwater per year — despite evidence that such pumping could decrease flow in the San Pedro River, one of the West’s healthiest desert rivers. Environmentalists appealed the decision; so did the Bureau of Land […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
The fading Arizona town of Gila Bend bets big on solar
One afternoon last April, I took a walk down Pima Street, the main drag that runs through Gila Bend, Ariz., linking the state highway from Phoenix with Interstate 8 to Yuma and beyond. It had been an unusual spring in the Southwestern deserts; abundant late-season rains spread carpets of green across rocky hillsides in the […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Can solar produce long-lasting jobs?
Climbing to the top of the observation tower above the Agua Caliente Solar Project takes some nerve. Wind gusts up to 35 miles per hour challenge white-knuckle grips on the railing; the grated steel landings shudder underfoot. At three stories, the tower is just high enough to set off alarms in the acrophobic brain. It […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Retirees join environmentalists in fighting Arizona copper mine
Nestled as it is amid saguaro-studded hills, under a sky crisp blue by day and starry by night, you’d never guess Queen Valley, Ariz., is only 40 miles east of Phoenix. Its cozy homes surround a lush golf course, about four miles from a swath of state land perfect for four-wheeling, hunting and bird-watching. About […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
Traveling Arizona Highways, in your dreams and on the ground
Even as a kid, I recognized an obsession when I saw one. My father’s began late in the Eisenhower years when he got his first subscription to Arizona Highways. A rural route mailman in northern Illinois, he used to rise at 4 a.m. and be home by 1 p.m. As soon as each month’s issue […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters: Silt and the Slow Demise of Glen Canyon Dam
Updated 5/17/11 The Lower San Juan River courses through a rather forsaken landscape of clay hills and redrock plateaus in southeast Utah. At the end of a long, dusty road, there is a boat ramp at the water’s edge where, at any warm time of year, vans and roof-racked Subarus bake in the sun while […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Arizona’s Fossil Creek gets restored — and loved to death
Deep in Arizona’s Mazatzal Mountains, there’s a 16-mile-long undulating channel of emerald-green travertine. Clear 75-degree water bubbles from the ground and flows down it at a steady 45 cubic feet per second. It’s home to a thriving native fish population, rare and endangered aquatic and terrestrial creatures, and towering canopies of cottonwood, ash and sycamore […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Reluctant Boomtown
Mining abandoned Superior a decade ago. Now the industry is ready to return, but this little Arizona town is not sure it wants it back.
Posted inArticles
Carpe Noctem
I pledge devotion to the stars of the majestic Milky Way Galaxy and to a dark night sky in which they shine; one cosmos, overhead, clearly visible, with liberty from light and dark skies for all. — Jack Troeger, Dark Sky Initiative In 2001, Florida developer and amateur astronomer Gene Turner came to southeastern Arizona […]
Posted inArticles
Highlighting Western heritage
The cottonwoods, willows, mesquites, and palo verde trees that once towered over the banks of the Colorado River near Yuma, Ariz., have returned. These native trees once again shade hikers and shelter wildlife, thanks to a massive wetlands restoration effort in the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area. Since the area was officially designated in 2000, […]
Posted inArticles
Apache trout swim ‘full stream’ ahead
It is a pre-meditated killing, cold-blooded in every sense. Before night descends, the conspirators make final calculations. The next morning, they return with the lethal poison. Hundreds die, but to one federal agency their deaths are not in vain – the victims are non-native fish, taken out by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Problems in Paradise
A murder near the famed waterfalls of Havasu Canyon reveals the social ills of a tribe that needs help
Posted inMay 14, 2007: Two Views of the Verde
The Battle for the Verde
Will a new pipeline dry up one of the West’s last free-flowing streams?
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
The granddaddy of all collaboration groups
One thing you quickly learn in the rural West is that ranchers come in all shapes and sizes. There are the fourth-generation ranchers hanging on by their toenails with overextended credit and the eternal hope that cattle prices will rebound, the drought will break, and most of their cows will be found on the mountain […]