Lovers of wild open spaces in northwest Colorado recently received some long-awaited great news. The Bureau of Land Management’s Little Snake Field Office announced that it would close 77,000 acres of the magnificent Vermillion Basin to oil and gas development. The agency’s decision came as a result of a well-publicized public process. Nonetheless, Moffat County […]
Colorado
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
Stewardship award for HCN
Stewardship award for HCNHigh Country News is this year’s recipient of the Jane Silverstein Ries Award. The award, presented annually since 1983 by the Colorado Chapter of the Association of Landscape Architects, honors “a person, group or organization that demonstrates a pioneering sense of awareness and stewardship of land-use values in the Rocky Mountain region.” […]
Posted inOctober 26, 2009: The newest Westerners
Refugees unsettle the West
Meatpacking, Ramadan and other cultural collisions in Colorado
Posted inWotr
Blame it all on my crazy biology teacher
With fall in the air, I get this funny feeling that my homework isn’t done. It is true I was one of “those” students who tested patience, strained policies, broke rules and spent quality time on a chair in the hallway. I guess it was a natural aptitude, like yodeling. My parents urged me to […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Township 13 South, Range 92 West, Section 35
A home of mysteries and restless souls
Posted inWotr
One man’s salt must not burden another man’s water
The era of massive federal reclamation projects is long over, yet a changing climate will demand more work from less water. And so a new movement — watershed management — has quietly taken the place of building the big dams. Visit the tiny town of Mancos near Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado to […]
Posted inMay 4, 2009: Salmon Salvation
Visitors going and coming
On his way out of town, Nick Berling stopped into HCN‘s headquarters in Paonia, Colo. He had just quit his job on a local farm and was Boulder-bound — picking up the books again to study environmental engineering at the University of Colorado. Nick is an avid skier and an artist. While hunting for property […]
Posted inWotr
Must our water always flow uphill toward money?
I’ve given up drinking bottled water. It’s so wasteful: Up to three quarts of water are used for each quart bottled. Also, it consumes 67 million barrels of oil annually on its journey from source to consumer, and sends 2 million tons of plastic bottles to landfills. It’s especially wasteful in arid country like the […]
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
HCN board meeting – in cyberspace
To save money during these rocky economic times, the High Country News board of directors held its first-ever board meeting via telephone and the Internet on Jan. 30. Not surprisingly, the meeting focused on HCN’s financial condition and what the organization is doing to survive in today’s down market. Before the holidays, a dip in […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2009: The Half-life of Memory
A voice in the wilderness
For 20 years, Jim Stiles has published one of the most essential alternative newspapers in the West: The Canyon Country Zephyr, based in Moab, Utah (latest motto: “All the news that causes fits”). With sharp, see-all-sides reporting, the independent has taken on the excesses of extractive industry, the failings of the New West economy, and […]
Posted inWotr
The terror and beauty of away games
The mud-spattered school bus hits snow at about 7,000-feet elevation. I’m following in a front-wheel-drive mini-van, and my tires are starting to spin in the gathering slush. Any moment, I expect the bus driver to find a wide spot in the road and retreat back to the high school, elevation 5,300 feet, where it is […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
The HCN miracle
Well, you’ve done it again. Just when we were worried that the worsening economy would seriously cripple our financial condition, you stepped up in December with a blizzard of support. All told, our readers provided $150,000 in Research Fund gifts — a record amount for a single month. The presses (and the electrons at hcn.org) […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2008: What a mess
Fa-la-la-la
We’re taking a two-week publishing hiatus in late December, like we do every year. We’ll be working on new stories, saying farewell to our latest excellent crop of interns, and singing carols. Our traditional Open House won’t be held this year, though — another victim of the economic meltdown. Enjoy the holidays and look for […]