Alaska’s politicians and scientists wrestle over how to manage big game and the predators that prey on it.
Western wildlife commissions on the chopping block
In Washington and New Mexico, state wildlife commissions could become a thing of the past. As part of their budget-trimming measures, both states’ legislatures are considering bills that would do away with the commissions’ power to set regulations and policy for managing fish and wildlife. In theory, wildlife commissions, found in every Western state, allow…
In Navajoland, a contentious water deal divides the tribe
The Navajo Nation sprawls across about one-tenth of the nearly quarter-million-square-mile Colorado River drainage. But ever since the seven states that depend on the river met to divide its water 88 years ago, the tribe has been pushed into the shadows of river politics. About 40 percent of the reservation’s roughly 170,000 residents still don’t…
Jeff Rice on documenting the West in sound
Hear the sounds Jeff Rice collects around the West and learn about why he does it. You can catch High Country Views approximately every other week. Available via our RSS feed, and for download now through iTunes.
Jeff Rice collects nature’s noises
Some people collect butterflies. Others amass dolls or antique cars. Armed with a microphone and recorder, Jeff Rice chases the West’s natural sounds — from the hooting of owls to the buzzing of Great Basin rattlesnakes. A relative newcomer to nature field recording, Rice worked in audio production for about 15 years. As a radio…
Arizona’s Fossil Creek gets restored — and loved to death
Deep in Arizona’s Mazatzal Mountains, there’s a 16-mile-long undulating channel of emerald-green travertine. Clear 75-degree water bubbles from the ground and flows down it at a steady 45 cubic feet per second. It’s home to a thriving native fish population, rare and endangered aquatic and terrestrial creatures, and towering canopies of cottonwood, ash and sycamore…
How my thoughts on wolves have changed
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA The wolves that periodically venture into the valley behind my home are blood-thirsty killers. That’s what I admire about them. They evolved to near perfection in their ecological niche, and they are lucky. They are not forced to contemplate whether their lifestyle serves nature well. People, well: People are different. Our greatest evolutionary…
Craig Medred on predator-prey science
Both proponents and opponents of predator control claim to have science on their side. But as Alaskan journalist Craig Medred tells us in this episode of High Country Views, the actual science — and all of its complexities — is often lost in the debate. You can catch High Country Views approximately every other week.…
Audio librarian Jeff Rice captures the sounds of the West
Jeff Rice discusses how he collects sound and plays some of the sounds from the Western Soundscape Archive
Palin, politics, and Alaska predator control
On the day we fly to Game Management Unit 16, the sun is shining and the air is crisp and the mountains glint from their summits. Out the side window of the Alaska Wildlife Trooper Supercub, 20,320-foot Mount McKinley, also known as Denali, gleams through a ribbon of cumulous. Up front, past Sgt. Mark Agnew’s…
Poisonous language on both sides of the fence
The shooting slaughter in Tucson Jan. 8 and the subsequent national debate about the tone and effect of our political rhetoric came home to roost in San Juan County recently. The media reported that several “Wanted: Dead or Alive” posters, threatening members of the environmental group Great Old Broads for Wilderness had been discovered by…
Alaska ho!
Here at High Country News, we’re even more charged up than usual: This issue has our first cover story exploring the rough terrain of Alaska’s environmental politics. The only other cover story we’ve devoted to Alaska analyzed Bering Sea crab fishing, in July 2009. You might wonder why a 41-year-old news operation focused on the…
Collateral damage
When the Killing’s DoneT.C. Boyle384 pages, hardcover: $ 26.95.Viking, 2011. One of the West’s most prolific and trenchant novelists returns to a theme he previously explored in Tooth and Claw and A Friend of the Earth: our interactions with nature and their repercussions. T.C. Boyle’s characters often root for the environment. The tension and narrative…
Craig Childs walks with desert ghosts on the Navajo Nation
The dogs are getting closer, barking through junipers about a half-mile away. We douse our small can stove, scoop the rest of breakfast into our mouths, and within two minutes are gone. The day before, we were dropped off on a dirt two-track where we hopped a gate and smuggled ourselves into the wilderness atop…
Unpacking health hazards in fracking’s chemical cocktail
Meet the Master Well Formula — the chemical cocktail that Encana Corp. will use to hydraulically fracture every natural gas well it drills in Wyoming’s Jonah Field. Drillers mix 11,800 gallons of this solution with over a million gallons of water and a heavy dose of sand, inject it underground to release gas deposits, and…
Cy-board meeting
In late January, the High Country News board of directors met via Web and phone. With a headset and a smile, Board President Florence Williams marched more than a dozen board and staff members through an agenda that included finances, editorial direction, marketing capacity and what skills the board would like to add to its…
Evolution not revolution
I appreciate your highlighting the Bureau of Land Management’s efforts to invigorate its National Landscape Conservation System (HCN, 12/20/10). After 10 years, there have certainly been mixed results, as you pointed out in your reference to the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument and its fluid mineral leasing program. But I think it’s important to…
Putting the ‘cow’ back in ‘cow-town’
Thank you so much for the excellent article on poultry slaughterhouses and the local food movement (HCN, 1/24/11). In Denver, Colo., we are trying to remove the disincentives to backyard agriculture that the city and county adopted several decades ago when they successfully transformed Denver from a cow town into a culture-rich city. Now that…
Political animals
In a recent op-ed, Denver Bryan, a self-described “hunter, conservationist, and also a supporter of wolves taking their rightful place in the West,” fell in step with the backlash politics of Western wildlife policy. (See Denver Bryan’s Writers on the Range opinion piece in fullhttp://country-survey-collabs.info/wotr/yes-to-wolves-but-not-so-many.) He began by declaring that legitimate conservation groups are trying…
Salmon got your tongue?
Judith Lewis Mernit’s “Obama and the West” was strangely silent on the administration’s track record on Northwest salmon (HCN, 2/7/11). Maybe that’s because it doesn’t fit neatly into the theme of “slow but steady progress.” Columbia Basin salmon — and the communities that rely on them — have suffered mightily since the nation’s first salmon…