Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. John D. Leshy, who served as the Department of Interior’s top attorney during the Clinton administration, played a key role in the attempt to reform federal mining regulations. On Oct. 25, the Bush administration announced that many of those reforms will be abandoned (HCN, […]
Ed Marston
Posted inNovember 19, 2001: Bringing back the bosque
Dear Friends
Balmy weather It’s been an unusual fall here on Colorado’s West Slope. Unseasonably warm days and nights not only prolonged the vivid display of blazing aspens in the high country, but also kept the equally resplendent river-bottom color alive all the way into early November. The balmy air seemed to ripen leaves like fruit: Foliage […]
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Dear Friends
Never say never For decades, High Country News has monitored the rise and fall of extractive industries in the West. In recent years, we’ve joined a growing number of scholars and pundits in asserting that the West has turned a corner: Logging, mining and grazing are on their way out, even as a new amenity-based […]
Posted inOctober 8, 2001: Whoa! Canada!
Dear Friends
Mountain-grown tomatoes This has been a great summer for tomato plants in Paonia. They grew husky. And the law of the garden jungle was repealed for 2001: The hated, voracious green tomato worms never appeared. Moreover, the plants bore lots of fruit: large, dark-green, rock-hard fruit. In a pre-cholesterol world, that would have been fine. […]
Posted inOctober 8, 2001: Whoa! Canada!
The once and future West
It turns out that this new economy of ours may be as subject to boom and bust as the economy based on cattle, oil and lumber. September 11 emptied Las Vegas, caused hunters to cancel trips to Idaho and Montana, and silenced ski areas’ reservation phone lines in Colorado. The West’s environmental movement was also […]
Posted inSeptember 24, 2001: River of dreams
Far from out of it
The HCN offices on the morning of Sept. 11 were the same as any other place in the nation, and perhaps in the world: People quietly huddled around radios, trying to figure out what the events would mean for themselves and the future. Circulation manager Gretchen Nicholoff sweated out the hours until mid-day, when she […]
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
Dear Friends
In wolf’s clothing Because HCN does not cover religion, we generally do not take positions on reincarnation. However, if there is reincarnation, we expect Michael Robinson to come back as a wolf. Michael, now a staffer with the Center for Biological Diversity in Pinos Altos, N.M., and a former HCN intern, cares more about wolves […]
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
New forest chief becomes a lame duck
It could turn out to be the shortest tenure as Forest Service chief in history. Dale N. Bosworth was named the 15th chief of the United States Forest Service on April 12, 2001. He may have made himself a lame duck on Friday, Aug. 24, 2001, when he removed Brad Powell as regional forester for […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Restoring the Range of Light
In California, the Forest Service sets fires, protects big trees and owls, and leaves loggers in the lurch
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Dear Friends
About this issue Writers for this special issue about the Forest Service’s Framework for the Sierra Nevada’s 11 national forests researched and wrote their stories while taking a course in environmental journalism with Ed and Betsy Marston, the publisher and then-editor of High Country News. The couple taught the course at the Graduate School of […]
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
Dear Friends
Writers on the Range, redux In the Dear Friends column for June 18, 2001, we discussed HCN’s op-ed syndicate, Writers on the Range, and the extent to which it should air a variety of views. The heart of the discussion was a column by Frank Carroll, a Potlatch timber company employee. In response, we got […]
Posted inJuly 30, 2001: Not in our back yard
Dear Friends
Babies in the family Congratulations to Florence and Jamie Williams of Helena, Mont., on the birth of Benjamin Chesnut Williams on Thursday, July 12. Ben’s stats are 8 pounds and a shade over 20 inches long. Florence is a former HCN staffer and intern who freelances out of Helena. Her most recent HCN article was […]
Posted inJuly 30, 2001: Not in our back yard
A local heroine
We ran into Paonia’s foremost scientist near our office a few evenings ago, where she was arguing with the cash machine at First National Bank. It beeped insistently at her, until she pushed the right combination of buttons and got it to disgorge her credit card and some cash. It was a rare sighting. Dr. […]
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Dear Friends
Summer break Don’t search your mailbox for a July 16 issue of the paper – it won’t be there. Each summer HCNskips an issue to give our readers and staffers a small break. We’ll be back on July 30. The changing of the guard For the first time in 17 years, High Country News has […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Dear Friends
The board comes to Paonia Meetings of the board of the High Country Foundation are always interesting. But the June 3 meeting in Paonia was almost too interesting. It opened with longtime board member Andy Wiessner objecting to a column High Country News distributed through its Writers on the Range syndication service in early May. […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Environmentalism meets a fierce friend
Ten years ago, Tom Knudson awakened the West by revealing what had happened in California’s Sierra Nevada – John Muir’s “Range of Light” and the mountains that inspired the formation of the Sierra Club. Knudson’s 1991 series in the Sacramento Bee showed a Sierra under siege from five horsemen of a coming apocalypse: logging, grazing […]
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Quenching the big thirst
Will a plan to curb California’s use of the Colorado River hold water?
Posted inFebruary 26, 2001: Return of the natives
Dear Friends
Changing times The Nez Perce tribe is returning to its stolen lands. As we report in this issue, the tribe now manages wolves on 15 million acres of central Idaho wilderness, and it’s even bought back part of the Oregon homeland that Chief Joseph fought for in 1877. Though many tribes continue to struggle against […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Interior view
Bruce Babbitt took the Real West to Washington: A High Country News interview
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Rearranging the grid
A rural electric co-op becomes a progressive force