$118.2 millionBLM wild horse and burro program budget request, 2011 $2.5 millionU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf management budget request, 2011 (Northern Rockies) 26,600Number of wild horses and burros Western public lands can sustain (BLM estimate) 32,000Number of wild horses and burros now held in corrals and pastures (after being removed from public lands), up […]
Communities
Posted inBlog
A model for community environmental participation
“A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both.” – James Madison As any first year medical or law student can probably tell you, a patient facing an invasive medical treatment must first give the doctor her “informed consent” […]
Posted inWotr
Only 40 years ago, the Earth got its day
The upcoming 40th anniversary of Earth Day is a testament to Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin who conceived of the celebration during a 1969 tour of the West. Earth Day turned out to be a brilliant idea, but Nelson went on to accomplish even more, shaping environmental protections that many of us take […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
The harsh truths of Bowden
Charles Bowden is a wonderful, as well as provocative, writer (HCN, 3/1/10). He has a way of serving up the truth so it slaps you in the face. I’m not sure any magazine but High Country News would have the guts to print this story as is. Maybe you would be willing to reprint something […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
A once and future abundance
The Living Shore: Rediscovering a Lost World Rowan Jacobsen 176 pages, hardcover: $20. Bloomsbury USA, 2009. The Olympia oyster — small, slow-growing, sensitive to heat and cold, copper in color and taste — is a rarity among shellfish. Yet this fussy bivalve, the West Coast’s only native oyster, once carpeted intertidal areas from Alaska to […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
It’s the population, stupid — part I
Thanks for Charles Bowden’s grim but clear-eyed view of events along the border and Jonathan Thompson’s editorial relating them to too many people and too much consumption (HCN, 3/1/10). There’s no doubt that our addiction to consumption creates social and environmental costs, but I have a quibble regarding Thompson’s statement that it is “the most […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
It’s the population, stupid — part II
I am sorry that Charles Bowden, in “The War Next Door,” does not mention Mexico’s population growth among the causes of Mexican migration into the United States (HCN, 3/1/10). It is, he says, “a natural shift of a species.” Perhaps, but it is also a case of the mushrooming of a people. Since I was […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
Out of the cubicle, into the canyon
Wilderness provides consolation after a layoff.
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
Saving the U.S. Forest Service
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire That Saved AmericaTimothy Egan336 pages, hardcover: $27. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. The United States of America leaped into the 20th century with a surfeit of natural resources and a flamboyant leader. Early in his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt proposed a radical idea: Set aside and protect certain parts […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
Spring visitors
Here in Paonia, Colo., March brought us 60-degree days and 20-degree days, glorious sunshine and freezing sleet — sometimes during the same half-hour. Zac and Lisa Tuthill stopped by on one of the wet, snowy days, on their way home from Moab to Laramie, Wyo., where she’s a psychotherapist and he’s studying civil engineering. A […]
Posted inRange
HCN Reader Photo: Hopeful
When I first saw this image thumbnail in our Flickr pool, I couldn’t really tell what it was. I enlarged it for further examination, and found a beautifully-composed image with a strong message and a lovely title: “Hopeful.” Add your photos to our Flickr group and be sure to check out our upcoming photo contests.
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
More grousing
Greater sage grouse — whose numbers have declined by 90 percent over the past century — deserve federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on March 5. For now, though, they won’t get it: The feds say they have to deal with other species first. As non-decisive as it was, […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
Pioneer stock
Finding the ivory-billed woodpecker of the plant world
Posted inGoat
Best. Conference. Ever.
Ahem. The Eagle has landed. At approximately fourteen hundred hours today, an eighteen-wheeler rolled through town here in Paonia, Colorado, right past the front windows of High Country News, on a curious mission. Naturally, we went out to investigate. And so we discovered … the ConferenceBike. Pause, please, and meditate on this photo.
Posted inWotr
Winterkill
Not far from where I live, in northwestern Montana, the land opens up and the people disappear. Skiing through tall trees toward a ridge, we see two ravens chasing a magpie through a glade up ahead. A moment later, three bald eagles appear, all sitting at the very top of trees. These normally quiet woods […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
March Madness in Indian Country
Wyoming Indian High School dominates the basketball court
Posted inWotr
A devotee of a new kind of retail therapy
My daughter and I found the perfect sofa on the way to school today. It was just the size and color I was looking to add to the living room. Unfortunately, someone had dumped it upside down in the mud of my neighbor’s front yard. Apparently it took too much energy to have a garage […]
Posted inWotr
Oregon halts corporate affluenza
Tea Party activists across the country probably shuddered with horror when they read what Oregonians did at the polls recently. But for a majority of us who live in this state of rain, big trees and mighty rivers, voting for new taxes during an economic downturn was common sense. For the first time since 1930, […]
Posted inGoat
How much carbon is “In My Tree”?
The grunge band Pearl Jam is known for being loud — and for being socially and environmentally conscious. The rockers deserve more applause this week, after announcing they will mitigate their emissions for their 2009 tour, one tree at a time. The band’s giving $210,000 to the Cascade Land Conservancy to help restore urban forests […]