Updated 11/30/12 The Indian chief and the timber agent meet near the shores of Port Gamble Bay. The spring air is cool and breezy along this small and sheltered nook of northwest Washington’s Puget Sound. Inside the room where the two men sit side-by-side, the atmosphere is civil, yet tense, as they discuss their separate […]
Joshua Zaffos
Posted inArticles
Abbey’s Road: Retired BLM chief gives one last look across the range
Bob Abbey, director of the federal Bureau of Land Management, retired this May after a total of 28 years with the agency. It was his second — and final — retirement: He originally left in 2005 after eight years as the Nevada state director, returning in 2009 only after a special request from Interior Secretary […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
What the High Park wildfire can teach us about protecting homes
RIST CANYON, Colorado Dave Cantor’s house in the hills outside Fort Collins usually draws friends for barbecue, horseshoes and recreational shooting on July 4. This July 3, though, Cantor sifts through its ashy remains, tripping over a downed power line and catching rotten whiffs from a freezer pried open by black bears. Cantor, who co-owns […]
Posted inJuly 23, 2012: The Hardest Climb
Oregon ignores logging road runoff, to the peril of native fish
Tillamook State Forest, OregonChris Winter stands by a dirt road along the South Fork of the Trask River. The scattered clouds pass for a clear spring day in coastal Oregon, where annual precipitation tops 100 inches. Moss-draped red alder and Douglas fir frame the wide channel, where rocks gleam beneath crystalline water. It’s idyllic, and […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Conservation agreements try to head off endangered species listings
With the arrival of spring in western Colorado’s Gunnison River Basin comes the bizarre mating ritual of the Gunnison sage grouse. In clearings called leks, males gather to show off extravagant courtship dances, slapping their wings against their bodies and filling and popping the two air sacs on their breasts. Spring also heralds another local […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Of cowboys and Indians: Ravi Malhotra helps rural businesses
Delta, ColoradoRavi Malhotra steps from an air-conditioned SUV and inhales the stench from mounds of human waste chips and rows of evaporation ponds cooking in the rising summer sun. This is the CB Industries-Delta Inc. Composting Facility, tucked along a back road among adobe buttes and gullies just outside of Delta, Colo., a conservative agricultural […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Colorado’s green(ish) gas baron
When the sun gets in Ed Warner’s eyes, he turns his chair – and his whole desk, too. Set into the floor in the middle of his home office, a giant turntable from an old mine quarry rotates the entire workspace, including a 7-foot-high wooden cabinet wall. The ingenious setup has appeared in Architectural Digest, […]
Posted inArticles
Picking ranchers’ brains, from Colorado to Mongolia
As a college student in the mid-1980s, Maria Fernandez-Gimenez worked as a seasonal interpreter for the National Park Service. That’s when she was first exposed to the great Western debate over public-lands ranching. She soon became familiar with environmentalists’ gripes about grazing impacts, but realized she knew nothing about the ranchers’ point of view. So […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
Rare-earth reality check
Not far from Devils Tower in the Black Hills of eastern Wyoming, work crews are preparing to drill dozens of new holes amid ponderosa pines and rolling meadows. But they’re not looking for gold. Instead, they hope to strike neodymium, europium and other exotic-sounding rare earth metals — a group of 15 elements, plus two […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2011: Serendipity in the Desert
Utah’s Sagebrush Rebellion capital mellows as animal-lovers and enviros move in
Kanab, UtahOn a crisp June morning in the heart of Sagebrush Rebel country, a steady stream of rental cars, minivans and SUVs flows north from Kanab on Highway 89, heading toward the serene, red-rock walls of Angel Canyon. As the highway curves, the landscape flickers through sun and shadows, the sandstone glowing like embers in […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
A new land grab
The Oglala Sioux are on a path to reclaim their territory and their culture
Posted inJuly 27, 2009: The Most Cooked-Up Catch
Revival or dam-nation?
The push for green power could spawn a rush for small hydropower projects in the Northwest
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
A river runs near it
Western water developers push for kinder, gentler ‘off-channel’ reservoirs
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
On a wing and a prayer
Gunnison grouse must fend for survival without help of Endangered Species Act
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Tribes look to cash in with ‘tree-market’ environmentalism
Carbon banking could help restore forests and fight global warming
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
An ecosystem wanting for wolves
Predators could bring Rocky Mountain National Park back into balance
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
The allure of the gnarled
The lover of nature, whose perceptions have been trained in the Alps, in Italy, Germany, or New England, in the Appalachians or Cordilleras, in Scotland or Colorado, would enter this strange region with a shock, and dwell there for a time with a sense of oppression, and perhaps with horror. Whatsoever things he had learned […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2005: An Empire Built on Sand
The life of an unsung Western water diplomat
Mark Twain once remarked that in the West, “whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting.” But Delphus E. Carpenter, who spearheaded the 1922 Colorado River Compact among seven states, would have disagreed twice over. Carpenter not only abstained from spirits, but believed water problems could be resolved through diplomacy instead of fisticuffs. His life […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Easterners tilt at windmills while Westerners joust with a real foe
While Wyoming ranchers and hunters are facing off with gas companies eager to drill their rangelands and hunting grounds, Massachusetts lobster barons are facing their own showdown with an energy juggernaut. Has the West found an ally in Eastern blue bloods and politicians such as Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.? Not exactly. In Wyoming’s Powder River […]
Posted inWotr
Surprise: Easterners balk at a giant wind farm
While Wyoming ranchers and hunters are facing off with gas companies eager to drill their rangelands and hunting grounds, Massachusetts lobster barons are facing their own showdown with an energy juggernaut. Has the West found an ally in Eastern blue bloods and politicians such as Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.? Not exactly. In Wyoming’s Powder River […]