Note: This editor’s musing accompanies a main story profiling Sonoran rancher Carlos Robles Elías and a sidebar describing many conservation efforts in Northwest Mexico. “150 Miles of Hell”: That’s the scorching headline over a typical story about the U.S.-Mexico border, in the April issue of Men’s Journal, a New York City-based monthly with a circulation […]
Ray Ring
Posted inFebruary 6, 2012: Can evolution help snowshoe hares adapt to climate change?
High Country News welcomes new interns
Two new editorial interns just joined us for six months of “journalism boot camp” at our Paonia, Colo., office. Danielle Venton was born in Petaluma, Calif. Early backpacking trips sparked her curiosity about the natural world, which eventually led her to study biology at Humboldt State University. Unlike her classmates, Danielle couldn’t settle on just […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Salt Lake City, UtahDriving around Salt Lake City on a pleasant day last June in a plain white city government car, Doug Dansie pauses at the corner of two streets, 1300 South and 300 East. This is a residential neighborhood where old trees tower over the houses. But there’s no house on this particular corner […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Billboard corporations and other big industries make their own rules
There were rumors of night-time guerrilla activity when I lived in Tucson, Ariz., during the 1980s. Under cover of darkness, people scurried around using chainsaws and flammable liquids to destroy billboards. Ed Abbey, the edgy desert author of the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, was reportedly among them; so were some other founders of the […]
Posted inWotr
An Obama-Huntsman ticket would get my vote
Here’s a dramatic way we might break through the partisan gridlock and mutual demonization that dominate our politics these days: President Barack Obama, the top Democrat, should ditch his vice president, Joe Biden, and recruit a reasonable Western Republican — Jon Meade Huntsman Jr. — as a running mate. As unlikely as it sounds, there’s […]
Posted inGoat
Video of trapped bobcat riles Las Vegas
If you’re interested in how animals struggle when they’re caught by trappers — and how trappers think and act — here you go: This video was made by Tracy Truman, a lawyer and longtime trapper who serves as an adviser on “wildlife matters” to the Clark County government (around Las Vegas) and the Nevada Wildlife […]
Posted inGoat
Amid scandal, a top Alaska wildlife official quits
Alaska’s politically-charged system of wildlife management — detailed in a 2011 HCN cover story — is looking disgraceful now. Corey Rossi — the controversial director of wildlife conservation, within the Alaska Department of Fish and Game — has been charged with 12 counts of violating hunting regulations. Rossi, 51, has resigned — and many of […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Jon Huntsman Jr. — a pragmatic Westerner for the White House
For proof that Western politicians, at their best, have a pragmatic nonpartisan streak, check out the only one seriously trying to win the presidency in 2012: Jon Meade Huntsman Jr. Not only is Huntsman the best-qualified candidate in the Republican primary, he’s also seeking to revive fact-based, reasonable Republicanism. As Utah’s governor from 2005 to […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
A ‘ragtag team’ of scientists, rangers and citizens works to save whitebarks
Our management of whitebark pine has a melancholy history, shaped by ignorance and mistakes as well as by the determination to rescue a species we have sent into a downward spiral. Foresters accidentally introduced white pine blister rust, an Asian fungous disease, to North America around 1900, by importing infected pine seedlings for tree plantations. […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Inside the world of whitebarks
The climbers Whitebark pinecone-pickers are working in at least 19 national forests, three national parks and some wildlife refuges, as well as some Canadian forests, in the hope that the seeds they obtain can be used to grow whitebark pines that are resistant to white pine blister rust — and perhaps, if the research progresses […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Why do people yearn to possess wolves and other wild animals?
I’m hazy about some of the details, because it happened about 25 years ago, but the essence of what I saw is seared into my mind. As I was driving cross-country on a lonesome two-lane through New Mexico desert, I came upon a forlorn-looking roadside zoo. I saw the sign, felt curious, pulled into the […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2011: Omens from a Vanished Sea
Western voters love ballot initiatives — and sometimes make a mess
When Colorado voters go to the polls in November, they’ll consider Proposition 103, a ballot initiative that would raise taxes to help fund public education. It’s an attempt to fix some of the huge problems created by previous ballot measures that strangled education funding. It’s also a messy habit: For decades, Colorado voters have repeatedly […]
Posted inWotr
The real side effect of medical marijuana
My father died from an addiction to a dangerous drug when I was 13. The pushers who sold it to him remain in business, and the federal and state governments seem to like that fact. I’m not bitter, but whenever I hear the arguments against medical marijuana in Western states, I’m struck by the hypocrisy. […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
Relying on Navajo guides
Twenty-some years ago, I joined a gaggle of other semi-adventurous tourists in Canyon de Chelly National Monument on the Navajo Reservation. We climbed onto the open bed of a big “deuce and a half” — an old Army surplus two-and-a-half-ton truck — and took rudimentary seats. The driver shifted into gear, and six tires (on […]
Posted inArticles
Rocky Mountain wolf recovery leader was not your average bureaucrat
Ed Bangs has long been a lightning rod for the controversy around the return of wolves to the U.S. Northern Rockies. Based in Helena, Mont., he led the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s wolf-recovery effort from 1988, when the region had only a few naturally occurring wolves, through the reintroduction of Canadian wolves in 1995 […]
Posted inArticles
Montana’s top gun-rights advocate has a national impact
Guns are Gary Marbut’s life. A self-employed, self-sufficient jack-of-all-trades who lives outside of Missoula, Mont., Marbut says that if he didn’t cast his own bullets, he couldn’t afford to shoot as much as he does: 10,000 to 15,000 rounds per year. He shoots in both rifle and handgun competitions, teaches concealed weapons classes (he’s had […]
Posted inJune 27, 2011: Hydrofracked?
A lonely crusade
In many ways, it’s a sad story: The groundwater a Wyoming couple relies on to sustain their little farm suddenly turns foul. So Louis Meeks embarks on a six-year crusade to discover how it happened, suspecting that nearby natural gas wells are somehow involved. He battles corporations and governments and alienates many of his neighbors, […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Park Service finally drafts a solution to conflicts over canyon flights
Hermits Rest, Grand Canyon National Park At the end of the road along the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, past Hermits Rest, a famous rock cabin built in 1914 that’s now a rustic souvenir and snack shop, there’s an inviting rock outcropping where you can stretch out in solitude and gaze across the canyon. On a […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
The key player: Elling B. Halvorson
Born St. Paul, Minnesota, 1932 Education Oregon’s Willamette University, 1955 bachelor’s degree concentrating in economics and engineering Big break Founded a construction company specializing in work in difficult locations, such as remote mountainsides and the Alaska bush. That led to him building a water pipeline from the North to the South Rim of the Grand […]