Surely, we would feel better if we knew that food companies were doing everything possible to minimize food hazards, and that the government was looking out for our interests and making sure food companies were doing what they were supposed to. In the absence of such reassurance, we lose trust. — Marion Nestle, Safe Food […]
Michelle Nijhuis
Michelle Nijhuis is a contributing editor of HCN and the author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction. Follow @nijhuism.
Posted inApril 14, 2003: Change comes slowly to Escalante county
Change comes slowly to Escalante country
In the BLM’s showcase monument, local grudges and national politics create a nasty quagmire.
Posted inMarch 31, 2003: Tinkering with Nature
The Underground Heart: Return to a Hidden Landscape
I loved the desert when I lived in El Paso, but as a native, I had no environmental concerns. There was no such thing back then. We were too busy growing up in a vast landscape that could never change. — Ray Gonzalez, The Underground Heart Ray Gonzalez grew up on the Mexican border, in […]
Posted inApril 14, 2003: Change comes slowly to Escalante county
The BLM’s conservation kingdom
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Change comes slowly to Escalante country.” The National Landscape Conservation System is a blend of new and old. It includes not only the 15 monuments designated by President Bill Clinton, but also some 800 protected areas that the BLM has managed for as long […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2003: The death of the Super Hopper
Nevada’s desert beauty
On the 400-square-mile playa at the heart of northeastern Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, the terrain is so flat that you’re sometimes better off looking at the GPS unit on your dashboard than at the road in front of you. Though you might run into locals enjoying the obscure sport of “land sailing,” or into temporarily […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2003: The death of the Super Hopper
Dummy up and deal
(Card) dealers are reminded many times … that they are on the bottom of the food chain, where they have to feel fortunate to gather up the crumbs that fall off the table. On the other hand, where else can a person without a high school diploma earn forty to a hundred thousand a year […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2003: The death of the Super Hopper
Road warriors back on the offensive
Christmas Eve announcement reignites controversy over roads in wilderness areas, parks and monuments
Posted inDecember 23, 2002: In search of the Glory Days
Holding open the door to the good life up north
The hour was early, the high desert air was fall-frosty, and the coffee was, well, truly horrible. I’d arrived for my volunteer shift at a Catholic church in the western Colorado town of Delta, and I had a very bad feeling. Five hundred people were already waiting on the sidewalk outside, sipping the acrid coffee, […]
Posted inWotr
Mexican workers in our towns want to legitimize their presence
The hour was early, the high desert air was fall-frosty, and the coffee was, well, truly horrible. I’d arrived for my volunteer shift at a Catholic church in the western Colorado town of Delta, and I had a very bad feeling. Five hundred people were already waiting on the sidewalk outside, sipping the acrid coffee, […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Shadow creatures
SEATTLE, Wash. – It doesn’t seem too difficult to trap a crow. Especially if you’re armed with a remote-controlled, rifle-powered, 25-foot-square net and a heap of stale white bread. Especially if you’ve seen the crow in question almost every day for the past six years. Especially if it lives just a couple of wingflaps from […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Rural residents bring fierce friends
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Even beyond the suburbs, crows dog their human benefactors. In the old-growth forests of the Olympic Peninsula, just across the Puget Sound from Seattle, University of Washington graduate student Erik Neatherlin has found that crows are taking full advantage of the leftovers at crowded […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2002: The Royal Squeeze
Museum collections hit the roof
‘Curation crisis’ could stall construction projects on public lands
Posted inSeptember 2, 2002: Backlash
An inspiring, devastating story
The Navajo grassroots environmental group Dine CARE has worked to protect forests, water and human health on the Navajo reservation for more than a decade (HCN, 10/31/94:’People of the Earth’ stress “natural laws’). When group founders Leroy Jackson and Adella Begaye first started fighting irresponsible logging on the reservation, they thought the battle would take […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
Land or money?
ELKO, Nev. – A panicked starling flaps under the rafters and the Beastie Boys shout from the overhead loudspeakers, but the tribal gymnasium seems as still and serious as a classroom before a final exam. On the edge of the basketball court, a young woman stands at a folding table, resting her forearms on an […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
Can money buy happiness?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Nearly every tribe in the United States has been affected by the decisions of the Indian Claims Commission. The commission, and the claims court that took over its caseload when it shut its doors in 1979, heard more than 600 cases and paid out […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2002: Land or money?
Another way to win back land
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. LEE, Nev. – South of Elko, on the west side of the Ruby Mountains, the shady meadows of the South Fork Reservation are thick with irises. Here, Raymond Yowell, who was appointed chief of the Western Shoshone in 1985 by the members of the […]
Posted inJune 24, 2002: The buzz business
Is this wilderness perverted?
UTAH Create a wilderness, stop a nuclear waste dump: It sounds like a crowd pleaser. Utah Rep. Jim Hansen’s amendment to the Defense Authorization Act would establish about half a million acres of wilderness in western Utah, much of it near an active testing range for military aircraft (HCN, 5/27/02: Hansen pops a wheelie). It […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
Where free trade is more than an acronym
It’s early when Ana Maria and I arrive at the onion fields, so early that we have to use the lights of a growling tractor to guide us along the rows. I stumble through the mud behind Ana, listening to the sounds of slamming doors and shouted saludos drift through the cold, damp air. When […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Finding the words
Can tribes rescue the West’s vanishing languages?
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Dear Friends
Winter break It’s time for our traditional winter break, when we give staffers time to shovel their driveways and readers time to catch up on back issues of HCN.Our next issue should reach your mailboxes around Jan. 21. Covering the bases Writing and editing a cover story can take months, but even with all that […]