In the usual Monday-morning email deluge, one message caught my eye: “Live Webcam Captures Peregrine Falcons Laying Eggs.” The advertised falcon was in Maine, not around here, but who can resist peeking at a rare bird on her nest? It’s sort of like looking in somebody’s windows, except in a non-creepy way that won’t get […]
Jodi Peterson
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
HCN takes a break
Note: This Dear Friends is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. In mid-March, as the last of the scanty winter snow melts here in Paonia, Colo., the HCN crew will be taking one of our four annual publishing breaks. Look for the next issue to hit your mailbox, […]
Posted inGoat
Pollinator problems
What works twice as hard as a domesticated honeybee? Its wild, free-living relatives. Much of the food we eat is pollinated by bees, and it turns out that wild bees are significantly more effective than domestic honeybees at causing flowers to produce fruit. That finding is just one in a set of new studies reinforcing […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Students take over HCN Facebook page
High Country News is thrilled to participate in a special educational project with marketing students from Washington State University. Under the guidance of WSU instructors and ActionSprout, a marketing firm that specializes in social media engagement, students are partnering with HCN to develop and implement a marketing campaign. The students will gain real-world experience, and […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2013: Farming on the Fringe
Our loyal readers come through, yet again
The staff had great news to pass on to the High Country News board of directors during our winter board meeting (held in cyberspace) Jan. 25th: Over the holidays, you all sent in a record number of gift subscriptions and Research Fund donations, along with several substantial grants supporting HCN‘s editorial work and the upgrade of […]
Posted inGoat
Views of Chu
We’ve posted before about the mass exodus of cabinet secretaries Obama is facing (typical for a second-term president). One of the more notable vacancies is that of Energy Secretary – Steven Chu has announced he’s stepping down. When he took office in 2009, HCN senior editor Ray Ring gave his thoughts on Chu and other […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Welcome, new interns!
Two new editorial interns just arrived at our Paonia, Colo., office for six months of intensive training in reporting, writing and (sometimes seemingly endless) rewriting. Sarah Jane Keller may be new to Paonia, but she’s no stranger to the territory. After growing up in rural Maryland, she made a leap to the West nine years […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Whose land is this?
On Memorial Day 2004, a friend and I drove into the South Unit of South Dakota’s Badlands National Park, located within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on a former gunnery range. We stopped at the visitor center, a dilapidated trailer at one end of a crumbling parking lot, but it was closed. No matter, we […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
A big thank-you to our supporters
We’re growing! Congrats to the many readers who recently stepped up to nourish the HCN community. You helped us blow the doors off our holiday gift-giving goal of 500 new subscribers. As we go to press, you’ve given at least 750 new gift subscriptions to family members, friends and colleagues, who, like you, care about […]
Posted inGoat
A royal(ty) mess
If a U.S. company sells coal overseas, should it pay royalties based on the price of that coal if it was sold domestically, or on the actual price it is sold for overseas? Mining companies have been paying royalties based on the first price, that of domestically-sold coal. That’s never been much of an issue, […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
BLM plans for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska
On a chilly June afternoon several years ago, I sat for hours on a muddy sandbar, entranced as a seemingly endless procession of migrating caribou swam across a northwestern Alaska river. The air was filled with splashing, the grunting of cows, the answering calls of their calves. Perhaps some 2,000 animals passed by. You might […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
HCN takes a holiday break
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in Paonia, Colo. Actually, it’s mostly been bone-dry and weirdly warm, like most of the West, but at least HCN‘s hometown has put up some lights and decorations, and over the weekend we got a slight sprinkling of snow. It’s also time for another publishing break […]
Posted inGoat
The name game
Enviros are dreaming – not of a white Christmas (which seems unlikely around most of the West, given ongoing drought) but of a greener White House. A president’s re-election often creates an exodus of Cabinet secretaries, as some decide to leave for other opportunities and others are asked to step down. Hencewith, some outright speculation […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Good news and goodbyes
HCN contributing editor Michelle Nijhuis has won a 2012 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in the magazine category. Michelle’s story “Crisis in the Caves,” published in the July/August 2011 issue of Smithsonian magazine, reported on white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has decimated bats in the northeastern U.S. and is poised to spread across the […]
Posted inGoat
Of water and dust
In all the hullabaloo of the Thanksgiving holiday, you might have missed a couple of important developments concerning water use while you were brining a bird or chopping cranberries. Here’s a summary, describing a deal on the Colorado River, and a ruling about California’s Owens Lake. In 2006, the seven states that share water from […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Another win for the pronghorns
We’re delighted to announce that High Country News has won the prestigious 2012 Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism for “Perilous Passages,” a Dec. 26, 2011, package of stories on wildlife migration, by former editorial fellow Emilene Ostlind, assistant editor Cally Carswell and Mary Ellen Hannibal, with photos by Joe Riis. “Passages” also recently won […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Getting involved with the West
The High Country News Board of Directors gathered in Santa Fe, N.M., in late September to toss around story ideas with readers, discuss HCN‘s growing digital audience, and strategize about the future. The context for the discussions was a proposed $2.2 million budget that aims to improve the quality of the magazine and website, while […]
Posted inGoat
The stink over SkiLink
Updated Nov. 6, 2012 Utah’s Wasatch Range promises wintry solitude and deep chutes of fluffy powder for backcountry skiers. Its forested watershed provides more than half of Salt Lake City’s drinking water. But it’s far from untouched: The area also hosts 11 ski resorts that draw thousands of visitors each year for lift-served skiing and […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Visitors from around the West
You may have noticed that the last two issues of HCN didn’t contain Dear Friends; we moved it online to get some extra space. You can catch up on our visitors, recent journalism awards and other announcements by visiting http://hcne.ws/PXudbz and http://hcne.ws/OTI73V. VISITORS As the weather cools and the leaves fall, we feel lucky to […]