The West’s big newspapers fall short when it comes to covering today’s most important issues: the “big story” about the environment, and the impacts on the region of growth and development.
Also in this issue:Lea County, N.M., is courting Louisiana Energy Services, a company that wants to build a uranium-enrichment facility to create fuel for nuclear power plants.
Chalk it up to bolt dolts
Mike Ryan’s defense of rock climbing (HCN, 7/7/03: Invasion of the rock jocks) — that “climbers aren’t just dirtbags … it’s mainstream now” and that they now are “doctors and lawyers” (and such, I must add) who by God “drive SUVs and have credit cards” is telling: telling us it’s an elitist avaricious capitalism that…
Energy bill is no good for fish
Your August 18 news story, “Energy bill will likely boost drilling in the Rockies,” characterizes last year’s (and now this year’s) Senate energy bill as good for fish and fish passage. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The article incorrectly says that the energy bill passed again by the Senate “would force hydropower companies to…
Back down the fireline
In a new book, Fire and Ashes, author John N. Maclean leads readers through three sweaty-palmed stories about human encounters with wildfire. Maclean returns to the ground his father, Norman Maclean, covered in the 1992 book, Young Men and Fire. He joins the last living survivor of the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire in Montana to…
Calendar
The San Juan Mountains Association will host a conference, Bridges to Cultural Stewardship: Building Respect for People and Places, at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., on Oct. 24-26. The symposium will explore strategies for protecting the region’s diverse heritage and resources. Visit www.sjma.org or call 970-375-9272 for more information. If you can’t make it…
Follow-up
Dig deep, fellow taxpayers: On Oct. 1, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund — a fund, fed by corporate polluters, which cleans up some of the nation’s most contaminated places — officially ran out of money (HCN, 12/9/02: Life in the wasteland). Now, taxpayers will foot the cleanup bill for everything from toxic dumps to defunct…
In the field with fire
Federal spending on fire suppression is wildly out of control, forests are increasingly unhealthy — and everyone seems to have an opinion about how to fix the problem. A Season of Fire, by Seattle-based journalist Douglas Gantenbein, is one of the latest titles about fire in the West, and refreshingly, he doesn’t glamorize firefighters or…
Ready, set, vote
George Bush and Howard Dean aren’t the only ones gearing up for the 2004 election — grassroots organizers across the country are getting ready, too. A coalition called America Votes plans to link grassroots groups to pump up election-day turnout. Sixteen organizations, ranging from the AFL-CIO and ACORN to the Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood,…
Contamination uncovered at Energy office
The toxic heavy metal beryllium has mysteriously cropped up in a U.S. Department of Energy complex in North Las Vegas, and investigators believe it may have come from a 1965 nuclear reactor explosion some 85 miles away. In March of 2002, a contract worker at the complex was diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease, which can…
Urban planners look to farmland to feed industrial growth
Portland — the darling of urban planners — is bursting at the seams, and the growth is forcing policy-makers to expand the region’s prized urban growth boundary. Metro, the agency responsible for keeping development within the boundary, already added an unprecedented 18,600 acres for residential and industrial use last year. But the agency says it…
Pygmy-owl may lose protection
Arizona’s cactus ferruginous pygmy-owl may no longer be endangered, according to an August ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The three-judge panel concluded that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to prove that 18 pygmy owls in Arizona are distinct from a much larger population of owls in Sonora, Mexico. In…
National monument back under attack
In southern Utah, local officials are escalating their fight against the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. On Aug. 25, Kane and Garfield County commissioners and two state legislators sent a letter listing their grievances with the monument to Utah State Bureau of Land Management Director Sally Wisely and national BLM Director Kathleen Clarke, among others. The…
Don’t demonize climbers
After reading “Invasion of the Rock Jocks” (HCN, 7/7/03: Invasion of the Rock Jocks), one might conclude that rock climbing impacts the environment on the scale of coal mining or desert off-road races. The article does highlight some real issues, but the generalizations are a little too sweeping, the values and motivations of climbers are…
The Big Story Written Small
After more than a hundred years of publishing, the West’s daily newspapers still fall short where it counts most.
Talking about a revolution
For 33 years, High Country News has built its reputation on giving people news about the West’s environment. At times, it’s been a lonely business. Betsy Marston, who served as the paper’s editor from 1983 to 2001, says that in the 1980s, HCN was one of the only newspapers that consistently covered issues affecting the…
Western patriots are rebelling against the Patriot Act
A quick opinion poll: The mass murders of Sept. 11, 2001, were allowed to happen because: A. Letting airline passengers carry potentially deadly weapons such as box-cutters was a bad idea. B. Airport security is a job too important to delegate to corporations. C. Cockpit doors were either unlocked or missing. D. Americans enjoy so…
Dear Friends
CONGRATULATIONS Michelle Nijhuis penned her final words as HCN’s senior editor in December 2001, but she has not been sitting still since then. Michelle returned as our contributing editor last year; she’s also written for Audubon, The Christian Science Monitor and Salon, and has forthcoming articles in Smithsonian and Orion. Michelle’s feature story about urban…
New Mexico: A nuclear homeland?
With open arms, New Mexico’s politicians welcome a new uranium-enrichment plant
Return of the King
Scientists finally have the seed they need to restore the beleaguered white pine — now they need a place to plant it
Clearing the air
For more than 30 years, farmers in California have been exempt from the Clean Air Act. That’s about to change.
Where’s Teddy when you need him?
What do Westerners keep in their bedrooms? My wife and I have the assorted bric-a-brac of family photos, a Navajo rug, a miniature Apache burden basket, and far too many books. We have a few plants, early drawings by our two boys, and a vintage log cabin syrup can, because we’ll never be able to…
Heard Around the West
CALIFORNIA Non-Californians might assume that living close to nature is a wonderful thing. Not so at Del Webb’s Sun City in Palm Desert, a 1,600-acre gated community for 9,000 people. Residents complain vociferously about sand in a nearby nature preserve that won’t stay put. “We are getting buried,” said Dennis DeBorde, 74, at a public…
One good example: The publisher
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Big Story Written Small.” “I’m a great believer in newspapers,” says “Butch” A.L. Alford Jr., publisher of the Morning Tribune in Lewiston, Idaho. Many publishers voice that faith, but Alford is among the few who really live by it. His grandfather and great-uncle…
Excellence
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Big Story Written Small.” Only nine English-language daily newspapers in the American West do an excellent job of covering the region’s big story, according to the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources. In recognition, the institute gave these papers the first Wallace Stegner…
One good example: The reporter
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Big Story Written Small.” Few environment reporters can claim the beat longevity, dogged determination and data-crunching appetite of Karen Dorn Steele of The Spokesman-Review, the daily paper in Spokane, Wash. Steele’s pioneering work uncovered Cold War secrets at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in…