Health insurance – and the lack of it – in the
West; Larry Craig, Burning Man, and parts of Montana go up in
flames; Wyoming booms and house prices are up, but the kids are
still leaving in droves; new Border Patrol duds debut.
Jonathan Thompson
Contributing Editor
Jonathan Thompson is a native Westerner with deep roots in southwestern Colorado. He owned and edited the Silverton Standard & the Miner newspaper in the tiny town of Silverton, Colo., and was the editor-in-chief of High Country News from 2007 to 2010. After that he lived in Berlin, Germany, and then was a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder. In 2016, Jonathan was awarded the Society of Environmental Journalist's Outstanding Beat Reporting, Small Market.
email: jonathan at hcn.org
In southern Colorado, conservation groups find a way to
save 9,000 high-altitude acres from second-home
development.
Coal-mining is always a dangerous business; wild horse
problems in Nevada; biofuel boondoggle?; and biofuel bio the
numbers.
Santa Fe coyotes replaced by mountain lions; cat problems
in Colorado; bunny restraining order in Oregon; dead snakes bite
back; mysterious things in a dead bird’s tummy.
Jonathan Thompson learns to love guns – and to fear
them even more than he did before.
In the Rocky Mountain West, old mining claims are suddenly
the newest real estate hot spots.
Coal-fired power plants don’t get no respect;
nuclear is nudging its way in; resort real estate is hot as
plutonium
When it comes to fund raising, Mitt Romney is the
West’s favorite presidential candidate, as is demonstrated by
a series of charts
The continuing saga of the white-tailed prairie dog vs.
Julie MacDonald; sage grouse in trouble; Westerners are still
burning – and drowning; statistics about air conditioning and
a long hot summer
Jonathan Thompson takes his family to one of the
West’s last drive-in movies, and fondly remembers his own
misspent youth.
The West is on fire; Dick Cheney exposed; toning down
RS-2477; and firefighting statistics
On the messy bureaucratic soap opera As Interior Turns,
the cast keeps changing, and getting indicted; Good Samaritans need
to able to clean up old mines without getting burned; foreign
countries drive Western mining boom; and data about
mining
Western states get serious about global warming; Colorado
stands up to energy industry; environmental
“terrorists” sentenced; “Kids in the
Woods”; McMansions & mobile homes; eco-chic ain’t
cheap
Chefs fight for salmon, and uranium gets hotter;
electricity usage and generation in the West; data on park fees and
visitors
Westerners like to romanticize our wide-open spaces and
wild wolves, but in rural areas, our real mascot is the ubiquitous
feral dog
James M. Doohan heads to final frontier (briefly) from New
Mexico’s spaceport; northern spotted owls in trouble again;
Veterans Conservation Corps; drugged up and rehabbing in the
West
Western real estate slump hits suburbs, but developers
keep on developing; Marijuana McMansions; copper booming; Logan,
Utah, rejects dirty power; Tri-State puts off two coal power
plants; animals killed by Wildlife Services
Death (and life) in the Sonoran Desert; fire and drought
in the Southwest; courts rule against Bush on environmental
issues.
No yellow snow for Snowbowl; gonorrhea and meth: a match
made in hell; split-estate bills in New Mexico and Colorado;
Montana’s green energy bills languish; “Rocky Mountain
High” second Colorado state song, bolo tie is official New
Mexico neckwear.
Western governors go green; King Coal gets hammered;
Divine Strake strikes out; Colorado cons on the North Forty; Mother
Nature’s bodyguards; Western wagering data; and energy use
and Bush approval: a case of eerie symmetry.
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