All sorts of things have been linked to climate change lately: skin cancer, shrinking leaves, extreme weather and death. This summer, scientists and reporters have been puzzling over a wave of disease outbreaks—hantavirus,valley fever and West Nile virus—and whether they, too, are linked to climate change. With some of these diseases the climatic connections are […]
Emily Guerin
Posted inArticles
That familiar loneliness: a writer’s own relationship mirrors a Stegner novel
During my first full summer in the West, I participated in a rite of passage: I read Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. The first character I fell in love with was the land. The stirrup-high grass near Leadville, Colorado, that “flowed and flawed in the wind, its motion revealed and hid and revealed again streaks […]
Posted inGoat
Wild horses to the slaughter?
On Monday, the Bureau of Land Management began its helicopter-assisted roundup of 3,500 wild horses and burros from public lands. Horses gathered from the range are corralled temporarily around the West and then shipped to pastures in the Midwest, where they’re either adopted or spend the rest of their lives chomping on grass at the […]
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The underwater gold rush
The right to dredge part of Idaho’s Salmon River for garnets and gold now belongs exclusively to one man. That was the decision of the Idaho Land Board last week when it granted Mike Conklin a mineral lease for a half-a-mile stretch of the river below Riggins, a small town near the western border of […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like
Mark Williams and Bill Baker stand amid ponderosa pines in the mountains west of Fort Collins, Colo., holding a copy of a 19th century land survey. They’re looking for a small pile of rocks with three notches on the east side, indicating that a General Land Office surveyor stopped here to describe the forest. Surveyors […]
Posted inArticles
West of 100: Fire & Brimstone
In this edition of West of 100, we’ve got a couple of stories about wildfire. First, the backstory to Emily Guerin’s piece, “Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like.” We’ll talk with Emily about why the debate over a new study arguing that severe fire may be more normal than we thought […]
Posted inGoat
Cheer up, Melon Queen
On a reporting trip over the weekend, I found myself riding in an old Ford pick-up draped with watermelon banners, wearing a sparkly top hat and holding a microphone out the window. As the truck crawled down Main Street in Green River, Utah, children scrambled like spiders to pick up thrown candy as retirees in […]
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It’s a hardrock life
South of Ouray, Colorado, dozens of abandoned gold and silver mines litter the valley below Red Mountain’s pyrite-stained slopes. Tourists clog the pullouts of US 550, the highway running through the mineral-rich San Juan Mountains, to gawk at the weathered wooden head frame of the Yankee Girl mine and the eggshell tailing piles beneath it, […]
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From predator to prey
It’s getting harder to be a wolf in the Northern Rockies. Last spring, a rider on a budget bill took gray wolves off the endangered species list in Idaho and Montana. On Friday, Wyoming joined the club when U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services declared the state’s wolf population to be recovered and no longer in […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2012: Identity Politics, Montana Style
(Don’t) Let it burn
This summer, Forest Service firefighters are stomping out wildfires they might have let burn in other years. A ‘temporary’ policy change requires local foresters to get permission from their regional supervisors for anything but full suppression, owing to fears that the current hot, dry conditions could cause remote fires to rage out of control. And […]
Posted inGoat
Why is Utah so weird?
I’m no neurologist, but I know that something suspicious happens to my brain late at night or around 3 p.m. at the office. Productivity plummets and I know I need to get away from the computer, but I can’t seem to turn it off. All I can do is wander further down the Intertube wormhole, […]
Posted inGoat
When Robert Redford speaks, I listen
A dignified Eastern lady who enjoys spending days at Boston’s Museum of Fine Art and nights at the theater, my grandmother doesn’t know, or care, very much about water issues in the West. But when the phone rings in her apartment, she often shoots me a sly look and remarks, “that must be Robert Redford, […]
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Don’t let it burn
A long plume of red smoke covered the sun as I drove back from Gunnison, Colorado on Sunday afternoon. The East Coal Creek Fire, started by lightning two days earlier, had torched 100 acres of Douglas fir by the end of the weekend. As it grew, it headed deeper into the West Elk Wilderness, away […]
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The cloud seeding believers
They might not know it, but golfers in Los Angeles, farmers in the Imperial Valley and retirees in Phoenix are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on cloud seeding in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. Until I attended the Colorado Water Workshop in Gunnison, Colo. this past July, I had no idea either. Making rain may […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
High Country News gets new interns
It’s that time of year again — when two fresh-faced interns join us in our Paonia, Colo., offices for six months of “journalism boot camp.” We’re also delighted to announce that the talented and diligent Neil LaRubbio, intern from the last session, will remain with us for another six months as our editorial fellow. It’s […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
The Continental Divide Trail gains new protectors
At 3,100 miles, the Continental Divide Trail is the most rugged and least used of the country’s three major long-distance hiking trails. In January, when financial troubles forced the Continental Divide Trail Alliance to close its doors, it also became the only long-distance trail without a formal advocacy group. Since then, nonprofits throughout the Rockies […]
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Birkenstocks and Stetsons
I have spent all of my adult life in Maine, where there are only two kinds of people: Mainers and people from “away.” If you weren’t born in Maine, you’ll never be a Mainer, and I’ve even heard purists say that your parents have to be from the state to gain insider status. “Just because […]
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Are big, severe wildfires normal?
The conventional wildfire wisdom goes something like this: Western forests are out of whack due to past fire suppression and logging practices. Forests that used to be open and free of undergrowth have turned into dense “dog hair” thickets of young trees that burn like kindling. Combine that with millions of acres of trees killed […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Congress thwarts effort to reduce Grand Canyon noise pollution
Helicopter noise is a fundamental — but annoying — part of most Grand Canyon experiences. In 1987, Congress directed the Interior Department to quiet the airborne sightseeing cacophony. After years of public debate, the National Park Service was due to release final recommendations for reducing noise this month. But a last-minute provision snuck into an […]
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Documenting drought from the ground up
While her neighbors in Nebraska water their lawns, Denise Gutzmer pages through thousands of online articles about crop loss, wild fires and water shortages. As a climate scientist specializing in drought impacts, the waste bugs her. “I have a different sense of the importance of water than my neighbors do,” she said. But aside from […]