Like a lot of other Westerners, I recently added chickens to my suburban back yard. I didn’t plan on raising fryers; I envisioned only fresh eggs, grasshopper control and free entertainment. What I hadn’t anticipated was how attached I’d become. I began with nine, 2-month-old chicks. Town ordinance allows only six hens, but I figured […]
Jodi Peterson
Posted inGoat
Condor quandary
A prominent group of biologists and scientists is strongly criticizing conservation plans for Tejon Ranch, a 270,000-acre property north of LA. The ranch is slated for 30,000 acres of housing, industrial and resort projects — which will sprawl across roughly 20,000 acres of critical habitat for the endangered California condor. Tejon’s developers have asked the […]
Posted inGoat
Three strikes for the Forest Service
Yesterday, a federal judge once again struck down an attempt to revise the rules governing national forest planning (see our story “The End of Analysis Paralysis“). Environmentalists had filed suit, charging that the changes would weaken protections for wildlife (by getting rid of the viability requirement) and exempt national forest plans from formal review under […]
Posted inGoat
Off-road clampdown in the West
We all know that irresponsible off-road vehicle use causes major damage to public lands. The June 8 HCN contained a story about Western states passing laws to more strongly regulate offroaders (“States rev up ORV rules“). KUNC’s Kirk Siegler recently interviewed associate editor Jodi Peterson about that story, focusing on the new laws and the […]
Posted inJune 1, 2009: Voyage of the Dammed
Visitors from underground
VISITORS FROM UNDERGROUNDPat Jablonsky and Bill Yett of nearby Delta stopped in to our Paonia, Colo., office to renew their subscription and tell us about their recent trip to New Mexico’s Fort Stanton-Snowy River Cave National Conservation Area. They showed us astonishing photos of the Snowy River passage, named for the miles-long formation of bright […]
Posted inWotr
The lands less traveled are a treat
After a late-February snowstorm left western Colorado frosted with white, I decided to check out the cross-country skiing at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. It turned out to be an experience I can only call “manicured.” I drove to the visitor center on a paved road, then skied along a well marked trail […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
See you in July
This will be the last issue you receive for a month; we skip an issue four times a year. Look for the next HCN to hit your mailbox around July 20, and in the meantime, visit hcn.org for fresh blog posts, new Writers on the Range columns and other exciting content. VISITORSOn her only day […]
Posted inGoat
Adobe Town drilldown
The tussle over Adobe Town continues. This spectacular chunk of Wyoming’s Red Desert has been in the sights of energy companies for years (see our story The desert that breaks Annie Proulx’s heart) . But the area has also been designated “Very Rare or Uncommon” by the state, in recognition of its unique geology, fossils, […]
Posted inGoat
A woolly problem
Domestic sheep and bighorn sheep don’t mix. Or at least they shouldn’t, say most biologists. The tame sheep tend to infect their wild cousins with fatal pneumonia. In Idaho’s Payette National Forest, the Forest Service has even banned grazing in areas where flocks might encounter bighorns (see our story Sheep v. Sheep). Recent developments have […]
Posted inMay 4, 2009: Salmon Salvation
Visitors going and coming
On his way out of town, Nick Berling stopped into HCN‘s headquarters in Paonia, Colo. He had just quit his job on a local farm and was Boulder-bound — picking up the books again to study environmental engineering at the University of Colorado. Nick is an avid skier and an artist. While hunting for property […]
Posted inJune 1, 2009: Voyage of the Dammed
The river wilder
Just about every watershed in the West has streams and rivers in need of restoration. Both rural and urban waterways are damaged — dried by drought, plugged by dams, polluted by livestock or factories, channeled off to farms and cities, or diverted into culverts and covered by cement. Here in western Colorado, the Gunnison River […]
Posted inGoat
“The Sportsman’s Park Service”
Do paved trails, groomed picnic areas, and visitor centers stocked with tacky t-shirts and soft-serve ice cream make your outdoor experience seem uncomfortably like Disneyland? Next time, skip Rocky Mountain National Park and wander into the much less developed lands of the National Landscape Conservation System – like the Gunnison Gorge, in western Colorado. The […]
Posted inGoat
The “Bennett Thaw”, at last
Last week, President Obama signed legislation putting an end to a time warp in Indian land. For more than 40 years, Navajos and Hopi living near Tuba City, Ariz., had been prohibited from building new roads or new homes. Nor could they improve existing homes, or even install electricity and running water when those services […]
Posted inGoat
Jaguars A to Z
For years, HCN contributor Tony Davis has been following — and writing about — the Southwest’s endangered jaguars. The rare cats are in danger of being wiped out in the U.S. by the border fence that isolates them from their Mexican counterparts (see our story Cat Fight on the Border). Recently, a huge male cat, […]
Posted inGoat
Portland’s crystal ball
For three decades, Oregon has been a leader among Western states with its progressive planning for growth. Now the city of Portland is looking into the future, staking out land for farms and homes for the coming decades. After the state passed landmark land-use planning rules in 1973, Portland decided to protect the open space […]
Posted inGoat
Desert disappearances
In mid-April, writer Laura Paskus told us of a dozen murdered women whose remains were found in the New Mexico desert. This week, the desert has given up additional bodies — one an explorer who disappeared 75 years ago, the other a hiker missing only since November. Everett Ruess, artist, poet and aesthete, was 20 […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
A Paonia love story
In March, we hired a new senior advertising representative, David Anderson. With 20 years of experience in marketing and sales and an upbeat personality, he helps fill our advertising pages, which contribute an essential chunk to our annual budget. David enjoys golf, live music, and spending time with wife Stevi and young son Skylar. The […]
Posted inGoat
“The Darth Vader of forest policy”
If you paid any attention at all to national forest issues during Bush’s tenure, you heard the name “Mark Rey” a lot. Appointed Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment, Rey oversaw the Forest Service for eight years. From the start, environmental groups were wary of Rey’s logging-friendly record, while his supporters praised Rey’s […]
Posted inGoat
Score one for Grand Staircase-Escalante
Thirteen years ago, when outgoing President Clinton designated Grand Staircase-Escalante a national monument, the outcry from some southeast Utah residents was deafening (and HCN was there to write about it). Angry ranchers called their representatives and demanded repeal, locals burned Clinton in effigy, billboards saying NO MONUMENT! went up along the highways. Garfield and Kane […]
Posted inApril 13, 2009: The Desert That Breaks Annie Proulx’s Heart
Wanted: your support and ideas
By now, you should have received our reader survey and spring fund-raising appeal for the Research Fund, which helps to pay our writers, photographers and artists, among other things. Please complete the survey (and return it to us in the postage-paid envelope). And please consider including a donation to support our work – we need […]