Why guns, politics and saguaros don’t mix.
Emily Guerin
Posted inGoat
Could the Tennessee Valley Authority put Colorado coal mines out of business?
The coal train was one of the first things I noticed when I moved to Paonia, Colo., the hometown of High Country News. When it chugged through town, whistle blasting, my bedroom windows rattled like teeth in the cold. If I was on the phone, I would tell the person on the other line to […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
Can more oil extraction cut CO2 emissions from power plants?
Some environmentalists are getting behind enhanced oil recovery.
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Accident sours the return of hardrock mining to a SW Colorado town
Like many of the historic mountain towns in Colorado, most of the mining that goes on in Ouray these days is of tourists, not ore. In between high alpine jeep tours and ice climbing, visitors can get a glimpse of Ouray’s romanticized mining heritage by dining at the Goldbelt Bar & Grill and the Silver […]
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Could oil companies incentivize coal plants to use carbon capture tech?
When Gina McCarthy, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, stood before the National Press Club on September 20 and announced draft rules for regulating carbon dioxide from new power plants, she said the proposal, “rather than killing future coal, actually sets out a certain pathway forward for coal.” That way forward is through carbon […]
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Pro-coal arguments win the day at Denver EPA hearing on CO2 regulations
At 5 a.m. on Oct. 30, coal miners and residents of Moffat County, Colorado, gathered at a McDonald’s in Craig for a pancake breakfast before boarding buses to Denver chartered by Peabody Coal. They were headed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s listening tour, in which the agency travels around the country seeking input on […]
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States pay to re-open national parks and fuel anti-feds fire
Last Thursday, the complaints of business owners and restaurant workers in national park gateway towns around the West hit home when my boyfriend’s parents, who were about to embark on the Southwestern leg of their once-in-a-lifetime cross-country road trip, realized the shutdown had foiled their entire itinerary for the region. Instead of snapping pictures from […]
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Chronic wasting disease: forgotten, but not gone
As an environmental journalist, I know full well how difficult it can be to get people interested in a creeping problem. Climate change is a perfect example—its effects are hard to pin down and slow to develop. Wildfire, on the other hand, is dramatic, deadly and easily identifiable as a problem, especially if your house […]
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Could drought and a court case stop water deliveries to the Salton Sea?
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has an unenviable job in a wet year, but in prolonged periods of drought, the task of managing the Colorado River is even harder. The agency is in charge of balancing the water levels in the country’s two largest reservoirs, the serpentine desert lakes called Powell and Mead. Seven Western […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
What’s in the water in Woods Cross?
A Salt Lake City suburb weighs environmental risk as it grapples with drinking water contamination.
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Glen Canyon Dam’s evaporating hydropower
Ever since water levels in Lake Powell started dropping in 1999, the last time the reservoir was near full, I’d heard a lot about the infamous bathtub ring—the white band of minerals and salts that separates the current lake level from the high water mark. So I was looking forward to seeing it for myself […]
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Massive California water transfer to continue
Ah, San Diego: great weather, a zoo with adorable panda bears, sandy beaches, turquoise swimming pools — and very little water. Unlike other arid Southwestern cities, San Diego doesn’t have an aquifer to draw its drinking water from, so it imports about 80 percent of it. For many years, L.A.’s Metropolitan Water District supplied most […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
Crossing the border gets deadlier
Between October 2011 and September 2012, 463 people died in the desert after slipping across the U.S.-Mexico border – the most since 2005, when about three times as many entered the country illegally. Today, migrants are eight times more likely to die than a decade ago, according to the National Foundation for American Policy. Most […]
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The United States of Energy
I’m kind of a map geek. I hang them in the bathroom and study the names of small Colorado towns while brushing my teeth. Meals frequently turn into geography bees thanks to the world map tacked above the table (quick—name three countries that border Afghanistan). But how do you map something that’s basically invisible? That’s […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
The latest: A worrying amphibian decline
BackstoryScientists have known for years that frogs and toads are in rough shape. Nearly a third of all amphibian species face extinction — including the boreal toad, once common in high mountains around the West (“Toads on high,” HCN, 8/22/11). Climate change, habitat loss and disease are all factors in the decline; chytrid fungus, which […]
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Gray wolves to be removed from endangered species list
Gray wolves no longer face the threat of extinction, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Calling the recovery “one of the most remarkable success stories in the history of conservation,” FWS Director Dan Ashe announced today the agency is proposing to remove all of the nation’s wolves from the endangered species list, turning […]
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Frogs and toads in trouble
There hasn’t been a lot of feel-good amphibian news lately (except this video of a happy toad getting a back scratch) as increasing numbers of frogs and toads succumb to mysterious ailments. Now, we have a way to quantify all that doom and gloom, thanks to a new study in the online journal Plos One. […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
A Utah realtor’s quest to sell a ghost town
Woodside, Utah Mike Metzger strides through a row of cracked wooden headstones decorated with faded plastic flowers. The 35-year-old wears a button-down shirt and gray pants. He has lightly-gelled short dark hair and a trim goatee. “These graves are silent now,” he says, staring wistfully at the camcorder. “But if they could speak, the stories […]
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Dying to come to the USA
Cochise Stronghold rises abruptly from the desert outside Tombstone, Ariz., a craggy nest of pink granite spires and domes. Rock climbers like me flock to the area for its tall, coarse slabs, weird rock formations, epic sunsets and remote backcountry feel. Although it’s never happened to me, many climbers I know have encountered tattered backpacks, […]
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The cattle-cheatgrass connection
Can grazing help control cheatgrass? That’s one of those questions that in some places doesn’t mean a thing, but in the Great Basin is likely to elicit a range of answers, from a decisive ‘yes’ to a forceful ‘absolutely not.’ The answer, as usual, lies somewhere in between: It depends on how dominant cheatgrass already […]