The West’s largest tribe works to reform its government.
The casual violence of driving
Slow is not always beautiful, but it’s the best way to experience the West — for better or worse. When I’m cross-country bicycling, I’m out in the air where I can smell everything, including the road surface, petroleum exhaust and carrion, especially deer that have died after being hit by vehicles. Of course, roads are…
Toads on high: tracking and photographing boreal toads
On a warm July morning, two biologists and three volunteers scramble up an alpine valley on the Williams Fork of the Colorado River, high in the Colorado Rockies. Their boots, scrubbed with disinfectant at 6 a.m., have become mud-sicles squelching through sucking, oily-sheened bogs. Hordes of mosquitoes pursue with zen-like focus. It’s not exactly Club…
Navajo Monster Slayers: a tribe struggles to fight corruption
Window Rock, Arizona The Navajo Nation Council Chamber is a rounded bit of beauty inspired by the traditional Navajo hogan. It’s set against a natural arch of sandstone that gives Window Rock its name, a wide and frequently dramatic sky, and temporary government-office barracks that have been at their task several decades too long. The…
River rafting — no car required
One reason I live in the West is that taking a car or plane to enjoy nature always struck me as paradoxical. How can a hiker, biker, skier or camper claim to “leave no trace” when his or her carbon footprint exceeds Bigfoot’s by several orders of magnitude? No, I said, let the Sherpas summit…
Invasion of the feral pigs
Feral pigs are invading New Mexico and other Western states, but biologists are working hard to stop them.
Relying on Navajo guides
Twenty-some years ago, I joined a gaggle of other semi-adventurous tourists in Canyon de Chelly National Monument on the Navajo Reservation. We climbed onto the open bed of a big “deuce and a half” — an old Army surplus two-and-a-half-ton truck — and took rudimentary seats. The driver shifted into gear, and six tires (on…
The Taj Mahal, the pyramids – and HCN?
Sam Fox crossed visiting HCN off his personal “bucket list” when he came by our Paonia, Colo., office with Erin Drake. Sam pitched some cool story ideas and noted his successful track record — over the past decade he’s suggested other ideas that we’ve used for stories. The Fort Collins, Colo., duo chatted with Executive…
A life in the wild
Wolfer: A MemoirCarter Niemeyer374 pages, softcover: $17.99.BottleFly Press, 2010. Former federal trapper and shooter Carter Niemeyer, the author of the memoir Wolfer, seems an unlikely advocate for wolves and other predators. A “wolfer,” after all, is a person who kills wolves, a job with its genesis in the great wildlife extermination campaigns that are as…
Down and out in the West
With all this talk of a possible double-dip recession, it’s disheartening to note that Western unemployment rates are still sky-high from the last economic crisis. Nevada leads the country for the 14th straight month, due to its almost complete reliance on the still-pretty-dilapidated housing, gaming and tourism industries.“Construction was a larger share of our economy…
Idaho: The CAFO state?
In 2008, California voters granted egg-laying hens the right to enough space to lie down, stand up, and stretch their wings. Egg farmers warned that the measure would increase costs, forcing them to leave the state to compete. And Idaho hastened to woo the would-be émigrés. “(Poultry is) a really great industry to have around,”…
A bad bargain
Your article “Fumigant fight” points out that, “without an effective replacement (for methyl bromide), growers could face lower yields, costing an estimated $100 million per year” (HCN, 7/25/11). However, the purchase and application of methyl iodide is not free. Farmers are interested in net profitability, not merely revenues. Perhaps, the real negative impact on pre-tax…
A plunderer is a plunderer
Kudos to Jonathan Thompson for bringing attention to the growing plunder of Western resources by multinational corporations (HCN, 7/25/11). Not only are rare minerals being extracted at a record rate, more importantly, irreplaceable wilderness areas are being devastated in the process. And what about those American corporations that shamelessly violate and destroy our precious public…
Cleaner, shmeaner
First, I commend HCN on the excellent article, “The Global West,” which skillfully presents how energy markets are affecting resource extraction in the West (HCN, 7/25/11). I’m going to get as many of my friends and family members to read it as I can. That said, it drove me nuts to read this in one…
Give us your bears and your energy
Chinese demand is also bad news for wildlife (HCN, 7/25/11). In Africa, thousands of Chinese are building railroads, highways and other projects while illegally exporting ivory. Elephants are being butchered in the thousands to meet this demand. In Russia, the Chinese will pay $50,000 for one dead, rare Siberian tiger. Apparently, they value tiger parts…
In praise of prose
“The Global West” was well researched and beautifully written (HCN, 7/25/11). I hope the Atlantic and New Yorker crowd took notice, as the last three paragraphs of Thompson’s article could easily have qualified for their precious space. Also, thanks to the researchers who pulled together the astonishing inventory of extra-national participants in the exploitation of…
Not dead yet
“The timber industry, battered by environmental regulations and unfavorable economics, was wheezing a death rattle: In the two decades after the hippies arrived, logging in the county declined by 60 percent.” This is a bit of a pet peeve, I admit, but the timber industry in Humboldt county is not “dead.” It still contributes around…