Maybe you’re one of the millions who’ve discovered Facebook in recent years. You relish the deep connection to long-lost friends, and even neighbors, that only the Internet allows. Maybe you enjoy “friending” ex-lovers who wish you were dead, and high-school jocks who ignored you except to punch you out in the locker room. Or maybe […]
Jonathan Thompson
Jonathan Thompson is a contributing editor at High Country News. He is the author of Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands. Follow him @LandDesk
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
More grousing
Greater sage grouse — whose numbers have declined by 90 percent over the past century — deserve federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on March 5. For now, though, they won’t get it: The feds say they have to deal with other species first. As non-decisive as it was, […]
Posted inGoat
Wheatpastin’ the Rez
During the last year or so, a new kind of “graffiti” has been showing up on abandoned buildings, old billboards and rusted out oil tanks on the Navajo Nation. A street artist who goes by the name of Jetsonorama (who sometimes works with another artist, Yote, and No Reservation Required) has been plastering these places […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
When you carry your home with you, when are you home?
At High Country News, we think a lot about that overused but still relevant term, “a sense of place.” I don’t know exactly what it means, either. But I think it involves knowing that we’re here, rather than, well, over there. And that we understand at least some of the characteristics that make this place […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2010: Mobile Nation
See you in Spring
In our 22-issue-per-year publishing schedule, we’ll be skipping the next issue. Look for HCN in your mailbox again around April 12, and in the meantime check our Web site, hcn.org, for news and commentary. SMALL-TOWN DISCOVERIESIntern Nick Neely had only been working at High Country News for three weeks when he happened to stroll past […]
Posted inGoat
No ESA for sage grouse
You might be all in a tizzy about whether Avatar or Hurt Locker will win the big Oscar on Sunday. But a lot of folks in the Interior West — and enviro wonks from all over — were focused this week on a much bigger announcement: Will the greater sage grouse get federal protection under […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
It’s the population, stupid?
On my desk sits a stack of manila folders. Each one contains an essay that argues, essentially, that all of our problems — especially the environmental ones — are caused by one thing: overpopulation. We get a lot of this sort of thing. Most of it comes from a guy named Frosty Wooldridge, who has […]
Posted inGoat
The trouble with monuments
Last week, Western conservative congressmen found a great excuse to get all worked up, apoplectic, and downright angry in the gleeful way that Western conservatives seem to have a premium on. President Obama, they said, was ready to make a massive land grab that would turn huge swaths of Western states into federal fiefdoms, off-limits […]
Posted inGoat
Thumbs up for Wyo’s wind tax
Wyoming has some of the world’s best winds for generating power. And wind energy developers salivate over all those big, wide-open, unpeopled spaces. It’s no surprise then that turbines have been sprouting in those spaces at a rapid rate over the past year or so, upping the state’s total wind generating capacity by more than […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Think a shock collar’s cruel?
COLORADO/DOWN UNDER Don’t like your dog chasing wildlife, but think a shock collar is cruel? A trip to Australia just might teach him a lesson. A Jack Russell terrier, owned by a Colorado couple on work assignment Down Under, tangled with a giant lizard. The lizard was fine; the dog was a bloody mess. But […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Housing hullabaloo
UTAH We’re not sure if Utah can help Arizona with its biblical interpretation skills, but it’s got a great idea for those empty mega-homes. The Beehive State is faring better than Arizona financially, but it’s still feeling enough pain to have some vacant McMansions. Rather than leaving them all to the rats, however, at least […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Witches and rifles
COLORADO Should the Urantians face persecution for their religious beliefs, they could always consider buying real estate in another part of the West, namely Colorado Springs. There, the U.S. Air Force Academy has set aside an outdoor worshipping area for “Pagans, Wiccans, Druids and other Earth-centered believers,” according to the Associated Press. The academy has […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
AZ End-o’-days
The Divine Administration’s headquarters sits on 165 acres in the Santa Cruz River valley south of Tucson. There, according to the Arizona Republic, Gabriel of Urantia oversees a religious order of about 100 followers, who believe that Adam and Eve were aliens placed on Earth – or Urantia – 38,000 years ago to help earthlings […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 2010: Prodigal Dogs
The paradoxical call of the wild
Dogs Vamped by She Wolves Are Leaving Homes. This was a headline that ran — not on the cover of Cosmo, describing some new coupling trend between more-than-foxy older women and ugly younger guys — but in Western newspapers in 1924. It was meant literally, and it gives insight into the battle against wolves that […]
Posted inJanuary 11, 2010: Breakdown
Water war, or peace?
As 2009 came to an end, I asked readers of our HCN Commons e-mail newsletter what they thought the West’s big issues would be in 2010. The predominant response wasn’t all that surprising: Water, water and water. Several people agree that this could be the year when water agencies finally acknowledge the natural limits of […]
Posted inDecember 21, 2009: Wind Resistance
The messy mix of energy and sage grouse
Will turbines deal a deadly blow to the imperiled bird?
Posted inDecember 21, 2009: Wind Resistance
Wind Resistance
Will the petrocracy — and greens — keep Wyoming from realizing its windy potential?
Posted inDecember 21, 2009: Wind Resistance
Battle for the core of Wyoming
Sage grouse concerns have pitted fossil fuels against wind