Washington’s Hanford Site and New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range both hold deadly nuclear contamination — along with unspoiled landscapes rich in wildlife.
Walking Woman
A parable of Western restlessness.
Saving wildlands, ignoring urban lands?
I feel that the “Flare up” article misses the real story and scapegoats environmental groups (HCN, 4/26/10). Libby has asbestos problems? Those awful environmental groups! Sinclair refinery spilling too much pollution? Where are the environmentalists!? Environmental groups aren’t superheroes, fixing refineries, organizing labor and healing the sick. Instead, you should ask the real questions: Who…
What lies beneath?
The Farmer’s DaughterJim Harrison308 pages, hardcover: $24.Grove Press, 2010. It’s a favorite trope in Western literature and film: The soft-boiled city slicker who’s “hardened up” by the rural West, taught the value of a good day’s labor and stripped of frivolous notions of comfort and security. The land tempers you, according to popular mythology, instilling…
Birding, fast and slow
First, a confession: I am a serious birder. Maybe too serious: For 364 days a year, I lead field trips for beginners, share my spotting scope and am happy to explain the differences between, say, a song sparrow and a savannah sparrow to anyone who is interested (and, perhaps, to a few who might not…
Civics lesson
In your April 26 edition of “Heard Around the West,” author Betsy Marston clearly enjoys poking fun at the Utah parents who want to ensure that certain schools in their counties are using the proper terminology to describe our system of government. She obviously thinks that republic is simply short for Republican, and what could…
Going to extremes
How wacky grandstanders hijack Western politics … and what some reformers plan to do about it.
HCN wins awards
We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve received the prestigious 2010 Utne Independent Press Award for Environmental Coverage. “High Country News covers this vast (Western) landscape like an experienced backcountry guide, pointing out the threats along with the wonders,” wrote the Utne judges. “Whether its writers are watchdogging resource-intensive industries like ranching, mining, drilling, and logging…
It’s cultural, not rational
It’s hard to see rural opposition to public-land protection as anything more than a front on the great American culture war (HCN, 4/26/10). To hear, again, the opposition of San Juan County, Utah, commissioners to new national monuments or to wilderness designations confounds economic rationality. National parks and monuments are big drivers of economic activity…
Let’s make a (national) deal
When I read the subhead of Jonathan Thompson’s article “Wilderness by Committee,” I inwardly groaned (HCN, 4/26/10). Thompson wrote: “Federal land protection is all about dealmaking.” Here in Montana, we are being confronted with this kind of “dealmaking” in the form of Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, the fruit of three separate…
Power struggle
The numbers behind the energy rhetoric
The rabbit course
Western urbanites meet their meat
Last rites in salmon country?
As California’s water war grinds on, salmon fishermen gear up for a risky season
Clean air, hazy politics
Colorado air quality law pits coal against gas, rural against urban greens
Accidental Wilderness
Hanford, White Sands and other ‘wastelands’ are good for bombs—and biodiversity.
For wilderness, look to a wasteland
Select DOD and DOE sites in the West