The West is just beginning to tap its potential for clean, renewable geothermal energy
James Yearling
Red Desert rarity
Wyoming moves to protect Adobe Town –
but will the feds follow suit?
Preble’s mouse protection jumps to Colorado
In Wyoming, the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse may soon be regarded as just another rodent, but in Colorado, the mouse will continue to block the path of bulldozers. On Nov. 1, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to remove Wyoming’s Preble’s mouse populations from the protection of the Endangered Species Act. Colorado’s populations, however, […]
Soakin’ in southwestern Colorado
Centuries before prospectors flooded Ouray, Colo. in search of silver and gold, Ute Indians discovered the town’s true treasure: natural hot springs. Today, people flock to Ouray for those same “sacred healing waters.” And on an immaculate day in October, so did I, as part of a jeep caravan that toured the tidy town’s geothermal […]
Literary trivia of the West
Think you know your Western literature? Answer 15 or more correctly and count yourself among the true Western literati. 1) Where were David Brower, Charles Park and John McPhee camping in the first section of Encounters with the Archdruid? 2) Which fictional fishing village in Washington was the site of Kabuo Miyamoto’s trial for allegedly […]
A watershed proposal
Colorado’s Cache la Poudre River tumbles 80 miles from its high-alpine headwaters in Rocky Mountain National Park down to the South Platte River on the plains below. The upper Poudre is the only designated wild and scenic river in the state – but after it exits Poudre Canyon, 90 percent of its flow is siphoned […]
Apache trout swim ‘full stream’ ahead
It is a pre-meditated killing, cold-blooded in every sense. Before night descends, the conspirators make final calculations. The next morning, they return with the lethal poison. Hundreds die, but to one federal agency their deaths are not in vain – the victims are non-native fish, taken out by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as […]
Public lands precedent?
Recently, the Utah Bureau of Land Management cancelled an oil and gas lease sale, citing the need to further study the impact of drilling on wildlife habitat. Conservationists think the cancellation – the first in over 25 years – sets a national precedent for protecting wildlife habitat from energy leasing. But the BLM disagrees and […]
Losing their luster
In the 1850s, “gold fever” lured hopeful prospectors to Colorado, but left most disappointed. Now people still flock to the state in search of gold, but instead of precious metal, they look for bright yellow aspen leaves. This autumn, however, those gold seekers, like the disenchanted souls before them, may find a depressing development: Colorado’s […]
Dear friends
WELCOME, NEW HCN INTERNS Fall intern Christine Hoekenga is happy to be back home in the West. The Boulder City, Nev., native earned a double major in environmental science and rhetoric and media studies from Willamette University in Salem, Ore. While there, her passion for scuba diving led her to a semester abroad in the […]
