I like to keep an eye on what the housing market’s doing in the West. That’s not because I’m invested in it — my family and I have been happy renters since we sold our house a year ago. I’m interested in the housing market because this one data set can tell so much about […]
Growth & Sustainability
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Collaborative conservation
In a July 18 High Country News article, Luther Propst explained the Sonoran Institute’s approach to collaborative conservation and referred to the proposed Resolution copper mine near Superior, Arizona as an example of that philosophy (“Beyond the politics of no“). After all, the location of that mine is in a well-established mining district. Luther qualified […]
Posted inWotr
As the housing market improves, have we learned to live more modestly?
The trouble with dream houses — the dream homes on the dream streets of big-city real estate tours, or tucked among canyons near resort areas like Sun Valley, Idaho — is that dreams tend to change over time. Despite the notion that a dream is a private world that only the dreamer can know, dreams […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
Book note: Valley of Shadows and Dreams
Valley of Shadows and Dreams Ken Light and Melanie Light, Foreword by Thomas Steinbeck 176 pages, hardcover: $40. Heyday Books, 2012. ‘Except for the perimeter, every single living thing had been placed where someone had planned it to be and placed it just so,’ writes Melanie Light, describing her first experience flying over California’s Central […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Western states’ transportation spending reveals their priorities
With President Obama authorizing $105 billion for transportation spending this July, you might wonder: Just how does that federal dough get spent? Turns out about 80 percent is funneled into highways. Given the West’s size and far-apart cities, you might also expect this road-centricity to be more pronounced here, with spending on public transit and […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
What the High Park wildfire can teach us about protecting homes
RIST CANYON, Colorado Dave Cantor’s house in the hills outside Fort Collins usually draws friends for barbecue, horseshoes and recreational shooting on July 4. This July 3, though, Cantor sifts through its ashy remains, tripping over a downed power line and catching rotten whiffs from a freezer pried open by black bears. Cantor, who co-owns […]
Posted inGoat
Talking mean with Hugh B. McKeen
While on assignment for a story on wildfire in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, I called up Catron County commissioner Hugh B. McKeen to see if he’d meet up and discuss the recent 297,000-acre Whitewater Baldy Fire that burned through the wilderness and forestland nearby. I had heard a bit about Catron County’s anti-government charm, […]
Posted inArticles
Beyond the politics of no: Luther Propst and collaborative conservation
More than two decades ago, Luther Propst jumped away from a law career back East to found the Sonoran Institute in Tucson, Ariz. Since then, the nonprofit has helped dozens of Western communities — from Driggs, Idaho, to Rifle, Colo., to Tucson itself — grapple with growth while incorporating conservation goals into their plans for […]
Posted inWotr
The Forest Service faces a test in Arizona
Arizona’s flammable ponderosa pine forests stretch from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon above the Mogollon Rim to the White Mountains in the east. Most of that land — glory country for recreationists, as well as the watershed for the Grand Canyon, the Phoenix area and many nearby towns — lies within four national […]
Posted inRange
Don’t be too self-righteous
Many years ago, in an interesting turn of events, I found myself in the same truck (mine) as a famous environmental writer. I can take no personal credit for her presence there; she was speaking that evening at a literary event sponsored by a local college. A good friend of mine was organizing the event […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Do subdivisions designed for conservation actually help wildlife?
For millennia, Colorado’s Yampa River Valley has followed the rhythms of wildlife mating and migration, the habits of elk and grouse and bear. The arrival of ranching in the 1880s altered the pattern a little, but radical change didn’t occur until the last half of the 20th century. That’s when the big ranches began to […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Same church, different pew
As a Floridian with a second home in Teton County, Idaho — we bought an existing home — I read your words with interest (HCN, 3/5/12, “The Zombies of Teton County”). In my “real life” in Florida, I am a land-use activist. What does that mean? Our county council members would probably say it means […]
Posted inGoat
Exchanging for public good
A 20-acre parcel of Forest Service land has been managed with special use permits at the base of Mammoth Mountain since 1954. It’s more a forest of development than a forest of conifers and aspen. There are two ski lifts, a snowmobile and snowcat rental service, parking lots, the Mammoth Mountain Inn and a hokey […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Unfinished zombie housing developments haunt the rural West
Matt Hail grew up in sweltering metropolitan Phoenix and spent 11 years selling women’s clothing, mostly wholesaling to department stores on the West Coast and across the Southwest. The job was boring, but he enjoyed vacationing at ski resorts, including Colorado’s Vail and Breckenridge. Like many other people, he imagined changing his life by moving […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Goliath vs. Goliath
Your story “Anatomy of a conspiracy theory” suggests that opposition to zoning, planning and conservation as a U.N.-sponsored sovereignty grab is genuinely grassroots (HCN, 2/6/12). We can just as easily see this opposition to regulation as corporate pushback, motivated and underwritten by the energy industry and large agricultural interests. What’s still missing is a documented […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Teton County subdivisions
Distressed subdivisions (shown in red, above) have little or no infrastructure. Many more subdivisions, though empty or nearly so, aren’t called “distressed,” because they have completed infrastructure.
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Weekend reading
I just spent my Saturday morning reading the Feb. 6 issue cover to cover. I appreciated every aspect of it, from the Agenda 21 buzzwords, to the “uncommon Westerner” in search of Sasquatch, to the fantastic conveyance of climate change research for a broad audience, to the classic struggle between local residents and the federal […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
A needed hard line
In his article about the reconstruction of Green Mountain Lookout in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, Nathan Rice categorizes Wilderness Watch as “a small, hard-line Montana group” (HCN, 1/23/12, “The law, the lookout and the logging town”). That’s like calling the Sierra Club “a California environmental group.” Wilderness Watch was founded in Missoula, Mont., and is […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
Fearful of Agenda 21, an alleged U.N. plot, activists derail land-use planning
In November, La Plata County Commissioner Kellie Hotter called local land-use planning “a blood sport.” She wasn’t kidding. Since last spring, as this southwestern Colorado county considered a new comprehensive land-use plan, carnage has piled up. By mid-December, casualties included a fired planning commissioner, a resigned county planning director and the plan itself — a […]