Paul Larmer

A couple of weeks after a dozen or so well-armed white men and women occupied Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, announcing that they were there to help the locals “claim back their lands and resources” from the federal government, I began to wonder: Where were all the folks on the other side — the public-lands […]

On the first truly warm morning this spring, I awoke to the songs of birds. From high in the cottonwood came the clear melodic whistles of a northern oriole, fresh in from the southland. Soon this migratory bird and its partner would find a suitable branch from which to hang their nest, intricately weaving it […]

The professor’s assignment was open-ended: Get together with another graduate student and write about a current natural resource dilemma, one with lots of competing players. Both topic and partner came readily to mind: The Yellowstone grizzly bear intrigued not only me, but also my vivacious, intelligent colleague, Ann Harvey. That was back in 1985. The […]

Forty-five years ago, John Echohawk, a Pawnee who grew up in New Mexico among Navajos, Hopis, Utes, Apaches, Latinos and Anglos, got in on the ground floor of a revolution. While attending the University of New Mexico, he was encouraged to enter a new program focused on training Indian lawyers. It was a novel idea […]

Perhaps the only coherent message to come out of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge debacle in eastern Oregon has been this: Local people, rather than the federal government, should control the land around their own communities. Just “give back” the refuge and other public land in Harney County to those who believe they should rightfully […]

I remember the day, years ago, I first saw them, while wandering through the raggedy wildlands behind our Midwestern neighborhood. Suddenly, they appeared — a pack of dogs at the edge of the woods, looking straight at me. I froze. Surely they would advance, snarling, to take down this slow, weak suburban prey. But they […]

“Vikings’ mysterious abandonment of Greenland was not due to climate change” read the headline of a recent Washington Post story, detailing new evidence that the Norsemen’s departure from the ice-capped island in the 1300s was not spurred by rapidly cooling conditions, as many scientists had thought. New high-tech rock-dating technology has convinced researchers that glaciers […]

Driving in the rural West is a blood sport. During the spring and summer, it’s all I can do to avoid squashing the prairie dogs and rabbits drawn to the weeds along the asphalt, as they invariably dart the wrong way at the last moment. Almost every day I encounter the fresh carcass of a […]

Twenty years ago, I got into an argument with a wildlife biologist over the Endangered Species Act. Environmentalists, he said, were abusing the law in their quest to create an ecologically pristine West devoid of loggers, ranchers and other salt-of-the-earth Westerners. By relentlessly pushing the federal government to protect ever more species and habitat, and […]

The trail less traveled

Bruce Babbitt loves to tell this story: At a White House social function in the late 1990s, Babbitt, who was Bill Clinton’s secretary of the Interior, finally got a brief moment alone with his boss. He used it to pass him a note that read: “TR: 230 million acres, WJC: ??” It was a shorthand […]

I’m always inspired by the stories of the little old lady or gentleman who spends 50 years in a blue-collar job and somehow squirrels away millions of dollars. Like Robert Read, the Vermont mechanic and part-time J.C. Penney janitor, who was found, upon his death, to possess a deposit box crammed with stock certificates worth […]

“I love the land, and it’s different from an environmentalist’s love. We have a deep, abiding love; they have a weekend love affair. Their love is intense and passionate, but it’s not an abiding love. That kind of love comes from making a living off the land.” When Garfield County, Utah, Commissioner Louise Liston said […]

Every week, the editors of High Country News sit in a small, lime-sherbet-colored conference room and debate what stories we should cover. Should we tackle legalized marijuana, since the West is leading the charge, or has that story become too “national?” How about North Dakota’s response to the drop in oil prices — is it […]

As a kid, I relished stories of America’s pre-settlement wildlife abundance: Vast clouds of passenger pigeons darkening the skies for days at a time, buffalo storming across the Great Plains like massive living tornadoes, and, of course, mighty runs of salmon, so densely packed that you could walk across the writhing, red creeks without soaking […]

I’m not a city person. I live just outside a small town of less than 2,000 souls, and I like its gritty, two-block downtown, where you see your neighbors every time you pick up the mail or buy some dog food; I like the quiet so deep that you can hear the wingbeats of ravens […]