As summer rafting season begins, safe passage to all river runners.
Andrew Gulliford
Posted inFebruary 6, 2017: River of Healing
All the presidents’ dogs
What sort of canine companion might Donald Trump bring to the White House?
Posted inArticles
Close the wolf-killer loophole
For the benefit of all endangered species, hunters should face consequences for killing vulnerable species.
Posted inArticles
Privatize public lands? Start with grazing fees.
Advocates for federal-to-state land transfers have overlooked some of the implications, including higher grazing fees.
Posted inArticles
Wolves are already headed for Colorado. Let’s make it official.
The official reintroduction of a breeding pair could help ecosystems and prevent conflict.
Posted inArticles
Justice in the West has a double standard for protesters
In Boston over 200 years ago, a group of American patriots dressed and painted like Indians smashed crates and dumped tea into the city’s harbor. In today’s American West, protesters ride their ATVs into publicly owned canyons to protest federal restriction of motorized access, and more recently, grazing-fee opponents forcibly “occupy” the desks of wildlife […]
Posted inArticles
Looking back on a century of poisoning predators
Note: the opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of High Country News, its board or staff. If you’d like to share an opinion piece of your own, please write Betsy Marston at betsym@hcn.org. We celebrate most anniversaries, but there are some we should just acknowledge by pausing […]
Posted inArticles
For Dinosaur National Monument’s 100th birthday, let’s protect more land
We launched our rafts on Colorado’s Yampa River at Deerlodge Park, and ran Little Joe and Big Joe Rapids. On the second afternoon, we pulled into Mathers Hole Camp under an overhung cliff wall that towered 500 feet above us. As I set up my tent, I thought about the 100th birthday of Dinosaur National […]
Posted inArticles
Remembering a feathered river across the sky
Sometimes there are anniversaries that we should remember but not celebrate. This month marks such an occasion: A hundred years ago this September, Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in the Cincinnati Zoo. On the Midwestern frontier, billions of the birds had once gathered, so many they formed “a feathered river across the sky.” By […]
Posted inWotr
You can still get your kicks on Route 66
I had the ride but not the road. I was a Westerner living in Tennessee and I’d bought my dream car, a 1963 pearl-white Thunderbird complete with a 390 cubic-inch Ford V-8 engine and black leather bucket seats. But what I missed was the Mother Road, Route 66. I had the car but not the […]
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Houseboaters vs. river runners
Andrew Gulliford, a professor in Durango, Colo., spent five days last summer on a houseboat floating around Utah’s most famous party scene, Lake Powell – a reservoir on the Colorado River – and then another five running the Yampa and Green rivers on the Colorado-Utah border. Gulliford noticed sharp differences between the cultures of houseboating […]
Posted inWotr
Recapture Canyon and an illegal ATV trail
A Utah county attempts to gain right of way on an illegal ATV trail built on public land.
Posted inWotr
Who speaks for the sage grouse?
Across the West, politicians and oil and gas industry spokesmen are wringing their hands, shaking their heads and saying “no” to Bureau of Land Management proposals to set aside large swaths of land for the greater sage grouse, and for federal plans to list the separate Gunnison sage grouse as an endangered species. Colorado Gov. […]
Posted inWotr
We need younger hunters
Hunters are aging, and without new hunters to carry on conservation traditions, wild game and habitat will suffer.
Posted inWotr
A roadside shrine, a beacon of faith
Seeking out a roadside shrine that touched this writer decades ago.
Posted inWotr
National parks see suicide upticks each summer
Many of us are attracted to nature, expansive views and wild settings, so it’s not surprising that this year millions will come West to visit our spectacular national parks. Almost all will go back home to talk of the wonders of the mountains and the brilliant stars at night. But a tragic few will never […]
Posted inWotr
My public land pup
My dog is the best dog in the world. Now, he hasn’t always been that way. He’s a springer spaniel-Labrador or a “springador,” and he was the puppy from hell. He chewed up three pairs of reading glasses and nibbled the top off of one of my cowboy boots. He didn’t do too well in […]
Posted inWotr
Wild horses: Too much of a good thing
I grew up with a dozen horses on Colorado’s eastern plains. In winter I busted hay bales to feed them, and, under a star-strewn sky, chopped holes in iced-over water tanks so the animals could drink. I’ve always believed that the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man. But not […]
Posted inWotr
Never underestimate the power of prejudice
Last year, both New Mexico and Arizona celebrated the centennial anniversaries of their becoming states. But why did it take them until 1912 to join the Union? The answer isn’t pretty; it reveals a pattern of racism and discrimination against Native Americans, Hispanics and Catholics in the West. For New Mexico, the long road to […]
Posted inWotr
How, 150 years ago, the Homestead Act transformed the West
All across forests of the West, 10-by-12-foot cabins stand forlorn and forgotten, many with tumbledown roofs and gaping doors. Yet these modest homesteads represent a revolution in public-land policy: They were the culmination of an American dream born of Thomas Jefferson’s belief that at our best, we would become a nation of independent farmers. This […]