Wyoming native and luthier Bevan Frost discusses how he started making guitars, shows some works in progress, and tells how living in the rural West shapes his craft.
Emilene Ostlind
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Foal control
Nevada hosts more than half — about 17,700 — of the 33,700 wild horses that roam around federal lands. But Bureau of Land Management rangeland scientists estimate the state can support only 12,700 horses and burros. And if left alone, wild horse herds typically grow 20 percent annually, doubling in size every four years. “We […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
BLM stays course in Wyoming gas patch despite mule deer decline
Mule deer wintering near Pinedale, Wyo., rely on the sagebrush habitat of the Mesa, a 300-square-mile plateau between the Green and New Fork rivers. Part of the Pinedale Anticline natural gas field, where nearly 2,000 wells have been drilled to tap the nation’s third-largest reserve, it once hosted 5,000 to 6,000 wintering deer. As winter […]
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Human health v. economic health
Twenty years after amendments to the Clean Air Act authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate additional toxic emissions from coal-fired power plants, the agency is finally flexing its muscle. New rules proposed this month would cut mercury emissions along with other dangerous metals like arsenic, chromium and nickel and particulate matter from oil- and […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
The Big Four Meatpackers
Related story: Cattlemen struggle against giant meatpackers and economic squeezes About 35 million cattle are slaughtered in the U.S. annually by 60 major beef-packing operations processing around 26 billion pounds of beef. Four firms control over 80 percent of all the beef slaughtered. [NEWSLETTER] **** Tyson Foods Springdale, Ark. Daily slaughter capacity 28,700 U.S. market […]
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Tumbling along
What smashes into cars on the highway, spreads wildfire and causes painful weltering scratches? It’s Russian thistle Salsola spp., more commonly known as tumbleweed, a hard-to-control invasive species that grows in disturbed soil and spreads quickly when the thorny plants break off from the ground and roll along dispersing seeds and piling up along fences […]
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Crow Tribe to vote on water compact
Federal settlement could fund reservation infrastructure improvements.
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Conservation progress in the Wyoming Range
On January 25, Jacque Buchanan, the supervisor of the Bridger-Teton National Forest, made a somewhat unusual decision when she told the Bureau of Land Management to buy back 44,720 acres (roughly 70 square miles) worth of gas leases — called 44-7 for short — that the agency sold at auction in 2005 and 2006. Environmental […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Glimpses of the high desert
Where the Crooked River Rises: A High Desert HomeEllen Waterston144 pages, softcover: $18.95.Oregon State University Press, 2010. In 1973, Ellen Waterston, a New England transplant, and her husband drove into the high desert of eastern Oregon. “In our rundown pickup with Montana plates and a cab-over camper we looked more like evacuees from the Dust […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2011: Serendipity in the Desert
Challenges pile up for avalanche mitigation on mountain highways
Backcountry skiers complicate slide control
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Mud Woman Rolls On
Coming January 30, the Denver Art Museum will open the doors to its freshly renovated American Indian galleries, featuring the well-known Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor Roxanne Swentzell among other fine artists. “People think there are no artists on our floor,” curator of native arts Nancy Blomberg says, referring to the stereotype of American Indian artists […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2011: Serendipity in the Desert
The latest: Wyoming Range
Update on HCN’s coverage of natural gas development
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Happy New Year, pronghorn!
At a site called Trapper’s Point about six miles west of Pinedale, Wyo., the New Fork and Green rivers sweep toward one another and then away, creating an hourglass shaped strip of land. Every spring and fall more than 3,000 pronghorn and mule deer pass through this bottleneck as they travel between winter range in […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
The BLM’s conservation experiment
Salazar directs agency to put conservation first – in some places
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Super mouse to the rescue
What’s three inches long and can leap tall buildings in a single bound? It’s a bird. It’s a really, really small plane. No! It’s the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse! Well, maybe it can’t leap over a building, but the little rodent can jump a foot and a half up in the air, cover twice that […]
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Compromise in the Wyoming Range
Three days after my recent story about a proposed energy development in the Wyoming Range’s Noble Basin rolled off the presses, the Forest Service released their much-anticipated draft environmental impact statement for the project. The Forest Service’s “preferred alternative” would let Plains Exploration and Production (or PXP) develop the necessary roads and infrastructure to drill […]
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High Country Views: Anticline deer decline
The 300-square-mile Pinedale Anticline in western Wyoming has been called America’s Serengeti. It’s crucial winter range for mule deer and pronghorn antelope, and is a sage grouse stronghold. But it’s got riches below ground too – the third largest natural gas reserve in the United States. Development of the gas reserve has been underway for […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
The supposedly protected Wyoming Range faces new energy development
Legacy energy leases remain in prime hunting lands
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Goldilocks and the three bears
Once upon a time Goldilocks was hiking across northwest Wyoming and she met a big fierce grizzly bear. Grizzlies were once severely endangered throughout this part of the West, down to just over 100 bears in the 1970’s. But today more than 600 of these hostile bruins haunt the Yellowstone area. And this summer in […]
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Our forest
This video accompanies the story: The supposedly-protected Wyoming Range faces new energy development. Please wait while the player loads. Note: you must have Javascript enabled and the Adobe Flash Player installed. Learn more about the pending natural gas development at the Wyoming Range website. The Forest Service’s environmental analysis will be posted for public […]