Most weekdays, a long line of rail cars delivers thick slabs of steel to a factory about 40 miles east of Los Angeles. Deep in the bowels of California Steel Industries, the slabs are toasted until they glow white-hot and then rolled into thin sheets used to make shipping containers, metal roofing and car wheels. […]
Brendon Bosworth
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Round River pushes kids out of their comfort zones and into the field
In 1992, four fresh-faced students joined conservationist Jim Tolisano in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains in search of grizzly bears. Grizzlies are thought to be extinct in the state, but sighting rumors circulated, and Round River Conservation Studies’ founders Dennis Sizemore and Doug Peacock — who inspired the character Hayduke in Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
An underwater forest reveals the story of a historic megadrought
A curved tree saw in his gloved hand, a scuba tank on his back, Phil Caterino worked quickly to slice through a pine branch 100 feet below the surface of a small tarn south of Lake Tahoe. Bubbles streamed from the regulator in his mouth, rising through the blue alpine water and green flecks of […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Can the oyster industry survive ocean acidification?
For four frustrating months in 2007, Mark Wiegardt and his wife, Sue Cudd, witnessed something unsettling at their Oregon oyster hatchery: tank bottoms littered with dead baby oysters. Usually, the larvae are grown until they’re three weeks old and a quarter of a millimeter in size — 10 million bunched together are roughly the size […]
Posted inGoat
Protecting the Piceance
The dirt roads cutting across the Piceance Basin, a lucrative oil and gas reserve in northwestern Colorado, spread like veins, running through patches of green shrubs and tracing the tops of hard ridgelines. Some lead to active drill sites, with metal rigs thrusting skyward. Others end at patches of brown earth that show signs of […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Weird and wacky White House petitions
Last month, when the Bureau of Land Management announced the proposed lease of over 20,000 acres for gas development in Colorado’s North Fork Valley, locals took their displeasure straight to the top: They petitioned President Obama to make the BLM take the leases off the table until it’s done updating its 23-year-old land management plan. […]
Posted inGoat
West is best?
A post-Thanksgiving hike should not be too strenuous. It needs to be vigorous enough to help awaken from a food coma but not so tough as to ruin the long weekend. This year, a light stroll through nearby Dominguez Canyon, with a close group of friends, fit the bill. After just a short drive and […]
Posted inGoat
Gas guzzlers
If you’ve been feeling the pinch at the gas pumps, and wondering how drivers in other states are faring, you might be interested in a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council. It looks at what portion of their wallets drivers across the nation empty at the pumps, as well as how states are […]
Posted inGoat
Water wins
Water agencies in three Western states will soon be trading money for water with Mexico, after officials signed a pact Tuesday updating the terms of the 1944 agreement that dictates what portion of Colorado River water our southern neighbor receives each year. At a cost of $10 million, regional agencies in the thirsty states of […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Altered amphibians
This August, University of Colorado-Boulder disease ecologist Pieter Johnson made a ghoulish discovery in an Oregon pond: an “octo frog,” with eight hind legs. It was a particularly disturbing example of the kind of amphibian malformations Johnson has recorded in 17 states, six of them Western, since 1996. A common, period-sized flatworm, Ribeiroia ondatrae, plays […]
Posted inGoat
Computerized canyon
The Grand Canyon is already a public spectacle, with good reason. Every time I’ve visited I’ve been humbled by the frisson of insignificance I feel when peering into its vast orange depths. Ashamedly, I’ve only done the Canyon-lite tour – driven slowly around the car-accessible parts of the south rim, stopping at the viewing points […]
Posted inGoat
From coal mine to clean energy
At first glance, the man greeting visitors last Friday at the start of the gravel road leading to Elk Creek mine, a coal mine in Colorado’s North Fork Valley, might have been mistaken for a miner. His bright orange vest and black hardhat looked the part. But both items lacked the black dust that settles […]
Posted inGoat
Pot measures pass
“Federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug, so don’t break out the Cheetos or goldfish too quickly.” That was the word from Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper’s office Tuesday night in response to voters passing a ballot initiative legalizing pot sales for recreational use in the state. A similar initiative passed in Washington State, […]
Posted inGoat
Strange days
It was Halloween Wednesday night. This brought an extra degree of strangeness to our small town. I saw a cop handing candy to some kids, a giant red bear gyrating on the dance floor, and three of the town’s most ambitious young women shackled in binders. Over the past weeks, as elections draw closer, a […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
2012 Western ballot initiatives
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline 2012 Western ballot initiatives.
Posted inGoat
Amphibian alterations
Parasites have always filled me with fear. I still experience the occasional bout of night terrors when images of Guinea Worms wriggling out of weeping lesions in my flesh flicker across my dream state subconscious. Over the past few days, while working on a piece for the next issue of High Country News, I’ve become […]
Posted inGoat
Gettin’ down with cap ‘n trade
Next month, California will hold the first auction as part of its carbon cap and trade program. The program, which will be the second largest CO2 emissions trading system in the world, has been in the works since 2006, when the Golden State passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, a piece of legislation that mandated […]
Posted inGoat
Number games
I’ve always enjoyed the security of numbers, especially the dependable type. Two: the number of feet I have to stand on. Six: the number of months I have to work at the fine establishment that is High Country News. These are figures I can count on. They help me navigate through the world with a […]
Posted inGoat
Marijuana politics
Marijuana occupies an unusual place in the legal world. Possessing any amount is illegal under federal law with a jail term of up to one year for first time offenders. But the ill and afflicted can happily use the plant to soothe their pains in 17 states, as long as a willing doctor prescribes it. […]
Posted inGoat
The sound of pollution
Artists like British “grime writer” Moose, who scrubs designs into filthy, smog-charred city surfaces (including the Broadway tunnel in San Francisco), have found novel ways to visualize air pollution for passersby. But now it’s also possible to experience air pollution with a different sense: hearing. Using mass spectrometry, which helps scientists pinpoint the exact compounds […]