It’s not easy being buried green, but here’s how I want it to happen: Someone, preferably an old friend, dresses me in my oldest, softest clothes.Let’s see, how about my favorite and virtually threadbare navy blue flannel shirt and my tatty black sweat pants? If shoes seem important, hopefully they’llgo for my sheepskin bedroom slippers. […]
Patricia Walsh
Posted inWotr
Don’t blame prairie dogs, they’re doing the best they can
First it was the plague, now it’s monkey pox. It seems like prairie dogs take it in the shorts every time a certain primate brings a new disease to this continent. What primate you ask? Well, the variety that includes you and me. In recent weeks I’ve been gritting my teeth every time I heard […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s not succumb to the temptation of biopharming
It’s hard to take issue with a technology that might have been able to save my parents’ lives. But that’s what I’m going to do. I’m talking about biopharming, the process that makes medicine from crops. Take a corn plant or a tobacco plant; inject it with a protein-making gene from humans or animals; harvest […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Ranchers don’t want refugee prairie dogs
SPRINGFIELD, Colo. – Prairie dog relocator Susan Miller climbed the steps of the 70-year-old Baca County courthouse on New Year’s Eve day, thinking she was headed to a private meeting with three county commissioners. Instead, she stepped inside to face dozens of angry cattle ranchers. The ranchers had gotten wind of the meeting and were […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
The slaughter of bison reopens old wounds
When Rosalie Little Thunder first heard about last winter’s slaughter of bison outside Yellowstone National Park, she asked her father what it meant. “He said, ‘It’s an attack on our culture again. It is us they have feelings toward and they’re taking it out on the buffalo,’” said Little Thunder, a Lakota Sioux who lives […]