Birds are in trouble. Pretty much everywhere. Largely thanks to our appetite for energy. “In the last 40 years,” reports AP, “populations of birds living on prairies, deserts and at sea have declined between 30 percent and 40 percent.“ The biggest bundle of federal-lands deals in decades (the Omnibus Lands Bill) — which died last […]
Politics
Posted inRay
Western states flex various Congressional muscles
Keep in mind the famous line: “There are three kinds of lies — lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Roll Call, a 54-year-old Washington, D.C. insider magazine, has announced its latest ranking of the political clout of each state’s Congressional delegation. The Western states are ranked: California has the most influential delegation of all the states, […]
Posted inGoat
Salvaging the “Fire Service”
Lawmakers are trying, for a second time, to toss a lifeline to the Forest Service. Ballooning fire-fighting costs and constrictive Bush-era budgets have been squeezing the soul (read: expenses other than fire retardant, hoses and helicopters) out of the agency. But last week, 12 senators and five U.S. reps, most of them from western states, […]
Posted inWotr
Let them eat copper
I am sitting on the sun-blasted South Rim of the Grand Canyon, tracking condors through binoculars and trying to read the numbers on their wing tags as they dip and wobble above and below me. Next to me is Elaine Leslie, the heroic National Park Service biologist who never gave up on condors, even when […]
Posted inRay
Enviros suffer first major setback in Obama era
The environmental movement has just fallen short of a major goal, for the first time in the new green-trending era of President Barack Obama and the ramped-up Democrats in Congress. The stakes of this national battle are mostly on Western ground. It’s the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 — the biggest public lands […]
Posted inGoat
The “tyranny of fleece”
President Obama today named activist and author Van Jones — an African American — as his Special Advisor on Green Jobs. Perhaps no one is more qualified to dole out stimulus funds for green jobs than Jones — especially now, as more and more people are impacted by a deteriorating environment and a failing economy. […]
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
A desert poet takes his work inside
Richard Shelton has taught writing in prisons for 30 years
Posted inGoat
Endangered Species Act restored
Gray wolves and other endangered species will be happy about President Barack Obama’s decision on Tuesday to bring back the original rules of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In December 2008, as a parting gift, the Bush administration introduced rules to allow federal projects to bypass a mandatory review from either the U.S. Fish & […]
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
Stewardship, not politics
My husband and I count ourselves among those “who care about the West,” and we are activists on behalf of the natural environment. This does not mean, however, that we stand at the political left; nor do we want to be bombarded with liberal bromides. Case in point: “Putting our house back in order” by […]
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
Security vs. sovereignty
Border requirements trample on the rights of Indian nations.
Posted inGoat
Power Shift 2009
Federal action on climate change. Green jobs. Youth empowerment… and economic development. Am I buying it? Yes. Are energy companies buying it? Sometimes. I am – by default (because of age) – part of this Millennial generation, and we’ve been called lazy, yes, but we’ve also stood up for the things we believe in. Maybe […]
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
Lessons of habitat
Last July, Nancy Eastman was leafing through HCN when she came across a photo of artificial cholla built by California scientists (HCN, 7/21/08). The imitation cacti are intended to serve as nesting sites for beleaguered coastal cactus wrens, but they’re also great gangly jumbles of spikes, pipes and spindly legs. Eastman, an artist and landscaper, […]
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
True tests of ‘Stay and Defend’
Australian wildfires could alter Western fire policies.
Posted inGoat
Will pesticide applications require a Clean Water permit?
On January 7th the Federal Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a decision in a long-running battle over whether the application of pesticides in, near or over water requires a Clean Water Act point source permit. In a case which consolidated multiple challenges to a Bush Administration regulation exempting pesticide applications from clean […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
“But enough about you…”
Former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said goodbye to his employees with a slide show, reports Washingtonpost.com. He showed about 600 slides, “each picturing the distinguished secretary, many of them taken at a national park.” One staffer who sat through the presentation commented, “It was special. That’s all I should say.”
Posted inGoat
Put up yer dukes
The Western Business Roundtable hosted a conference call yesterday. It was touted as a “sneak peek” into a new analysis of the Western Climate Initiative. But if you’d dialed in hoping to hear a fresh critique of the cap-and-trade framework designed to encompass 90 percent of the emissions across much of the west and part […]
Posted inGoat
Mo’ Money…
I just took a gander at www.recovery.gov. It’s the website the new administration made so we could keep ourselves informed and hold the government accountable in light of the economic stimulus package. On the site, there’s a section that estimates the amount of jobs that will either be saved or created in the next two […]
Posted inWotr
At last, a Montana rivers bill that makes sense
A former professor of mine once said that building a house in a floodplain is like setting up a tent on the interstate just because no cars are coming by right at the moment. It defies common sense. Yet, across western Montana in recent years, sprawling trophy homes have spread like a cancer along the […]
Posted inGoat
A place at the table for Native Nations
On December 31st, a 66-year old Cheyenne River Sioux man died after a doctor told ambulance drivers to “take him back to his residence or dump him in a ditch” because there wasn’t money for his care, recounted President of the National Congress of Indian Americans (NCAI), Joe A. Garcia, in his State of Indian […]
Posted inWotr
It’s time to abandon Desert Rock
There’s a lot at stake when it comes to energy development in New Mexico: the state’s crystalline blue skies, job opportunities for native people, and a sustainable future for all of those living in the land of little rain. Yet when it comes to weighing in on the proposed Desert Rock coal-fired power plant, New […]