“The Shame of It!” That was the front-page headline of High Country News on Nov. 24, 1972. It was accompanied by a grim photo of a golden eagle that had been killed by sheep carcasses laced with poison by a rancher who was after coyotes. The stark headline proclaimed HCN founder Tom Bell’s unabashed alliance […]
Paul Larmer
Posted inJanuary 11, 2010: Breakdown
Native power in Tucson
On the evening of Jan. 27, a distinguished group of journalists, environmentalists and tribal leaders will come together at the University of Arizona for an HCN-sponsored event entitled “Power Struggle: Energy, Activism and the role of the Media on the Hopi and Navajo Nations.” For more information, see our ad on page 20 and visit […]
Posted inDecember 21, 2009: Wind Resistance
How big is your backyard?
The first time someone called me a NIMBY to my face was more than a decade ago, at a public meeting. The town council was expected to vote in favor of planting a new cell tower at the top of Cedar Hill, my favorite semi-wild place on the edge of town. The mayor at the […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2009: After the Floods
Changing of the guard
We’d like to recognize the dedication and vision of two long-time board members who recently decided to step down. Both hail from Boulder, Colo. Felix Magowan, who joined in 2001, brought substantial publishing and financial expertise to High Country News; he was the founder of Inside Communications, which published Velo News and other outdoor titles […]
Posted inNovember 9, 2009: Roadless-less
How big should we be?
In late September, the board of directors of High Country News descended on HCN’s hometown of Paonia to pass a new budget, look over a new three-year strategic plan and enjoy western Colorado’s beautiful fall weather. At the meeting, a lively discussion broke out over how many subscribers our print magazine should gain in the […]
Posted inNovember 9, 2009: Roadless-less
Power politics, conservation style
The late David Brower, of Sierra Club fame, once said that no environmental victories are permanent. The warning behind his words –– that those who fight the relentless march of development are underdogs in an ultimately doomed war –– has shaped the tactics of generations of activists. That’s especially true in the West, where industry […]
Posted inWotr
An ecological dilemma
It took the power of two flashlights to discover the source of the metallic screech that had been keeping us up nights. There, on the top of a telephone pole, sat a chunky juvenile great horned owl, plaintively calling for its parents to come feed it. But then my attention turned to the ground below […]
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
Rodeo remains a Western spark
About a mile outside of High Country News‘ hometown of Paonia, a stone’s throw from railroad tracks where trains piled high with coal chug by every few hours, sits a small arena. There, on warm evenings around the Fourth of July, my family and I join a few hundred of our neighbors to savor the […]
Posted inWotr
Semi-wild in the new West
The convoy of five cars heads slowly up the mesa through a patchwork of open fields and cedar woodlands. Binoculars around my neck, I sit in the backseat of a well-used Subaru station wagon amid a scattering of stray goldfish crackers and one, apparently unused, diaper. The driver is Jason Beason, a young father and […]
Posted inWotr
Dwindling supplies inflame water wars
I have a classic Western postcard tacked to the bulletin board above my computer. It shows two men in a field holding shovels over their heads, locked in mock battle. Behind them runs an irrigation ditch. The caption reads: “Discussing Western Water Rights, A Western Pastime.” The postcard makes me laugh because I know firsthand […]
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
HCN board meeting – in cyberspace
To save money during these rocky economic times, the High Country News board of directors held its first-ever board meeting via telephone and the Internet on Jan. 30. Not surprisingly, the meeting focused on HCN’s financial condition and what the organization is doing to survive in today’s down market. Before the holidays, a dip in […]
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
Welcome to the era of scarcity
I have a classic Western postcard tacked to the bulletin board above my computer. It shows two men in a field with shovels raised above their heads, locked in mock battle. Behind them runs an irrigation ditch. The headline reads: “Discussing Western Water Rights, A Western Pastime.” The postcard makes me laugh because I know […]
Posted inWotr
The terror and beauty of away games
The mud-spattered school bus hits snow at about 7,000-feet elevation. I’m following in a front-wheel-drive mini-van, and my tires are starting to spin in the gathering slush. Any moment, I expect the bus driver to find a wide spot in the road and retreat back to the high school, elevation 5,300 feet, where it is […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
The HCN miracle
Well, you’ve done it again. Just when we were worried that the worsening economy would seriously cripple our financial condition, you stepped up in December with a blizzard of support. All told, our readers provided $150,000 in Research Fund gifts — a record amount for a single month. The presses (and the electrons at hcn.org) […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
Of an environmental hero and the need for reform
The Bush administration’s most enduring mark on the American West may well be the tens of millions of acres of public lands it has handed over to the oil and gas industry — and the belated backlash the giveaway has spawned. As if to punctuate this legacy, the Bureau of Land Management — which oversees […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
Heeding history’s lessons
The rollercoaster plight of the northern gray wolf — the subject of this issue’s cover story — is a good metaphor for American ambivalence toward the natural world. For more than a century, wolves were simply enemies that threatened cows, sheep, dogs and children. Determined government agencies channeled this fear into a campaign of poisoning, […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
A photographic life
NAME Grant HeilmanHOME Buena Vista, ColoradoVOCATION Professional photographerSUBSCRIBER SINCE 1988 When photographer Grant Heilman came home from World War II, he got in touch with some of his mentors at Pennsylva-nia’s Swarthmore College, from which he’d graduated shortly before being drafted. One of them, Bob Read, was the editor of Country Gentlemen magazine. He’d used […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Evolution of a magazine
Is High Country News a newspaper or a magazine? For the past decade, our staff and board have wrestled with this question. In a sense, the wrestling was unnecessary. Long ago (if you consider 1970 long ago) the question was answered when our founder, Tom Bell, decided that HCN would come out every two weeks, […]
Posted inGoat
Knee high by the Fourth of July
I had a flashback today as I went out to irrigate the field of corn on our small ranch in Western Colorado: It was 30 years ago or so, and I was lying flat on my back in a deeply eroded gully on the campus of my old high school outside St. Louis. Ten feet […]