The Legend of Colton H. BryantAlexandra Fuller202 pages, hardcover: $23.95.Penguin Press, 2008. On Valentine’s night in 2006, Colton Bryant fell to his death off a gas rig in the snowy, windswept vastness of Wyoming’s Upper Green River Basin. To most of us, his death was as anonymous as his life; he was just another roughneck […]
Francisco Tharp
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
Boom! Boom!
In western Colorado, an energy boom of unprecedented proportions has been layered on top of a thriving amenity economy. Which will come out on top?
Posted inArticles
Can wildlife weather the gas boom?
In northwestern Colorado’s Piceance Basin, the sage and juniper landscape is home to flocks of the dwindling greater sage grouse and one of the country’s largest migratory mule deer herds. It also happens to hold one of the nation’s largest natural gas reserves. Now, Colorado Division of Wildlife researchers are beginning a $1.3 million-per-year study […]
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Jaguar’s road to recovery unmapped
Some Native American cultures attribute divine power and magical stealth to the American jaguar — traits that could come in handy now that the endangered cat won’t be getting a federal recovery plan. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in mid-January that creating a recovery plan for borderland jaguars would “not be sensible.” Under […]
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Return of the Teton Dam?
Updated April 7, 2008 Almost 32 years ago, the Teton Dam in southeastern Idaho failed against the force of a 17-mile long, 270-foot deep reservoir. Eight months of stored stream flow and snowmelt crashed down the valley in less than six hours, swallowing the communities of Rexburg, Teton, Newdale and Sugar City. Eleven people died […]
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A rough road to repair
Updated April 3, 2008 This winter’s storms hit the Northwest hard. In December, Washington’s Olympic Peninsula was thrashed for two days by 90 mph winds and saturating rains. Rivers rose up to 14 feet, twisting bridges and sweeping away roads. The storm caused $5 million of road damage in Olympic National Forest alone. While maintenance […]
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Yellowstone grazing allotments
Updated March 24, 2008 Stephen Gordon lost more cattle to grizzly and wolves than any other rancher in his neck of the woods. In the 20 years that he ran his Diamond G Ranch herd on the Dunoir federal grazing allotment just east of Grand Teton National Park, predators killed between 200 and 250 calves. […]
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Guarding Galisteo
As oil and gas companies sink more drills into Western soil, landowners often find themselves at the mercy of corporations and industry-friendly federal law. Citizens of Santa Fe County, N.M., however, are pushing the limits of local control and demanding a seat at the table. In Galisteo Basin, south of tony Santa Fe, ranchers and […]
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Dems reach out to Native Americans
Women and African-Americans aren’t the only demographics receiving extra attention from Democrats this year. The party has also been reaching out to Native Americans. “In the past, Native American voters have been ignored, or thought of in the last minute,” says Laura Harris of the Comanche Tribe. “What (Democratic National Committee Chairman) Howard Dean has […]
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Slideshow: Crossing the ‘Berlin Wall’ for wildlife
The bridge, now in the design phase, would be Colorado’s first, but construction depends on securing the $4 million-$8 million needed for the project. Photographs courtesy of Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project, Digital Animation Services, Sloan Shoemaker
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Sheep station to explore environmental hoofprint
For nearly a century, the Department of Agriculture’s Sheep Experiment Station has grazed over 6,000 sheep on 100,000 acres of public land in Montana and Idaho west of Yellowstone National Park. Yet the research center has never formally assessed its ecological impact on this mountainous habitat for native wildlife species. This month, in response to […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Mining the West
A glimpse at mining data — including workforce, mining salaries, metals revenue and production, minerals produced in 2007, the metals and minerals one person uses in a lifetime, miscellaneous statistics, and specs on the world’s biggest dump truck! Download the PDF » Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Reluctant Boomtown […]
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Mining reform has one foot in the door
For only the second time in 136 years, Congress is nearly unanimous in its call to update the 19th century law that still governs the country’s metal ore mining. “There’s a pretty broad sentiment in both parties and both houses that the mining law of 1872 needs to be reformed,” says Luke Popovich of the […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
Dear friends
WELCOME, NEW HCN INTERNS New winter interns Evelyn Schlatter and Francisco Tharp will be the last set of interns to spend a four-month stint at High Country News. We’ve found that most interns spend the first month or so just figuring out what HCN is all about and where we keep the coffee. So, starting […]
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Death in the Delta
Fish populations continue to tank in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, according to figures released last week by the California Department of Fish and Game. After tossing the trawl nets and tallying the numbers, the agency found a record low population of longfin smelt in the Pacific Coast’s largest estuary. Populations of Sacramento splittail, American shad, […]