BackstoryFor years, there’s been fierce debate over snowmobile access to Yellowstone National Park. In the early ’90s, as many as 1,900 snowmobiles swarmed the park daily, boosting local businesses but angering environmentalists concerned about air pollution and disturbed wildlife. Under President Bill Clinton, the park began phasing out snowmobiles altogether. But it changed course under […]
Krista Langlois
Krista Langlois is a former High Country News fellow and correspondent, and longtime freelance journalist. From her home on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, she writes and edits stories about biodiversity and the more-than-human world for bioGraphic magazine. Find her on Bluesky @cestmoiLanglois.
Posted inGoat
Will Obama’s climate preparation order force flood planners into the future?
It’s been over a month since rain-swollen creeks tore through roads and flooded homes in Colorado’s Front Range. While the camera crews have long since gone home, the disaster isn’t over for families who suffered property damage. Of the 20,000 single-family homes in the Boulder area, only 3,504 had flood insurance – one of the […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
Cutting class: Alaskan villages struggle to keep schools open
In 15 years, 32 schools have closed because they have fewer than 10 students.
Posted inGoat
Does reality TV change the reality of Alaska?
Four years ago, when I was 25, I went to Alaska to work as a wilderness guide. I bought my first pair of XtraTuf boots and my first set of head-to-toe rubber rain gear, and between seven-week trips in the backcountry, lived above a Laundromat that smelled perpetually of halibut. The first spring, my boyfriend […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
Zombies invade the West!
Well, perhaps not yet, but it’s only a matter of time before the flesh-eating hordes are upon us. And who better to dodge the undead than High Country News? Not only are we well-versed in geography, as publishing industry veterans, we’re proven survivalists. So what’s our advice? This article appeared in the print edition of […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
The Latest: Woodland caribou are in danger of disappearing from the U.S.
Environmental groups file suit over caribou habitat.
Posted inGoat
“Idiot-proof” citizen science results in 16 new diatom species
Loren Bahls is not your typical retiree. After stepping down as head of water quality management for the state of Montana in 1996 – then retiring again from private consulting in 2009 – Bahls finally found time to pursue his real passion: Tiny, glass-walled microbes called diatoms that practically cover the surface of the Earth. […]
Posted inGoat
Pipelines aren’t the only way to ship oil – rail’s on the rise
What do melting sea ice, fiery train wrecks and the Bakken oil boom have in common? No, they’re not part of the latest Hollywood blockbuster – although if I came across a trailer showing George Clooney as a roughneck leaping from a flaming train onto an ice floe with an angry polar bear, you better […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
The Latest: In Oregon, a record number of spawning salmon
BackstorySome 16 million salmon and steelhead once returned to the Columbia River Basin each fall, but impediments like the Bonneville Dam near Portland, Ore., decimated their numbers. Costly recovery efforts and courtroom battles brought only marginal improvements, and populations were largely supported by hatchery stock. In 2006, court-mandated spillovers — running less water through turbines […]
Posted inGoat
Does the Rim Fire leave room for compromise on salvage logging?
Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., might have known that his proposal to salvage burned timber from Yosemite’s Rim Fire would not go over smoothly. Not only is he trying to auction off logging contracts in a national park while his own party’s antics have kept that park closed to citizens, he wants to sidestep the whole […]
Posted inGoat
A family’s mission to document the most isolated spot in each state
Let there be no mistake: Rebecca and Ryan Means don’t hate roads. “We enjoy driving around on them,” Ryan says. “But what we’re saying is we have plenty. Maybe as a country we should think about not laying any more down.” Rebecca, 40, and Ryan, 41, are conservation biologists from Florida, and they’re on a […]
Posted inGoat
Government shutdown hits environmental enforcement
Question: How do the feds close a million square miles of public land in the event of a government shut down? Answer: They don’t. Not for lack of trying. Roads to popular areas like the Grand Canyon boat launch at Lee’s Ferry have been blocked, much to the chagrin of boaters, some of whom travel across […]
Posted inGoat
Stickers, salmon and stocks: Pebble Mine by the numbers
Spend even a short while in Alaska, and you’ll begin to see them. They adorn water bottles and truck caps, laptops and storefronts, boats and banjos. Eventually, you notice them cropping up outside the state too, and soon, even in the shimmering heat of the Utah desert, you can’t escape the white circular stickers slashed […]
Posted inGoat
Add one to the introduced species list: mountain goats in the La Sal Mountains
You’d think we’d have learned by now. But humans, it seems, just aren’t content to let nature well enough alone – especially when hunters with money are involved. That seems to be the main reason why the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources last week released 20 mountain goats into the La Sal Mountains just east […]
Posted inGoat
The wilderness therapy industry seeks to reinvent itself
In the basement classroom where the first Wilderness Therapy Symposium was held in 2002, event director Jim Lavin put out a plate of cookies and a bowl of Doritos and hoped for the best. Today, the event is held at an upscale hotel in Boulder, Colo., and Lavin spends a couple thousand dollars on hors […]
Posted inGoat
Legislators sparring over Land and Water Conservation Fund — again
In the early 1960s, President Kennedy, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and a few other politicians got together and hatched an idea: use money from offshore oil and gas drilling to fund conservation projects and acquire land for all Americans. The result was the Land and Water Conservation Fund, established in 1965. “It’s helped shape the […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Conservation fund turns 50
Friends and foes agree: The 50-year-old Land and Water Conservation Fund needs a facelift. Created to bankroll conservation projects with royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling, the Fund has long been plagued by political wrangling. Congress is authorized to put in $900 million a year, but often appropriates far less. In 2015, the Fund’s […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
The Latest: Mt. Taylor uranium mines still haunt Navajo communities
BackstoryThe controversy surrounding Mount Taylor — a volcano in northwest New Mexico sacred to several tribes — began in 2008, when the tribes sought to protect it from further uranium mining (“Dueling Claims,” HCN, 12/7/09). After contamination from the mines sickened workers, they fought to have 400,000 acres of federal, state and private lands designated […]
Posted inGoat
Woman breaks an all-time fastest Pacific Crest Trail record
On August 9, The Seattle Timespublished a story titled “‘I couldn’t give up:’ Grueling hike for man on a mission,” about vegan hiker Josh Garrett, a 30-year-old fitness coach from Santa Monica, Calif., who broke the speed record for hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Josh hiked with sponsorship (and PR help) from Whole Foods CEO […]
Posted inGoat
Chilean kayaker kids take notes on Western dams to save their hometown river
Cochrane, Chile, has never been an international hotbed for kayakers. A road first reached the remote Patagonian community 20 years ago, and Internet arrived in the last five. The town, with about 2,000 residents, is surrounded by wide-open ranchland and wilderness, and is a 10-hour, bumpy dirt-road drive from the nearest city. So when local […]