When the Bureau of Land Management announced last month that hundreds of thousands of acres of Utah’s redrock country would be up for oil and gas leasing, the agency made something of an end-run around public process. It announced the sale on Nov. 4, when everyone was distracted by the presidential election, and it failed […]
Sarah Gilman
Sarah Gilman is an independent writer, illustrator and editor based in Washington state. Her work covers the environment, natural history, science and place. She served as a staff and contributing editor at High Country News for 11 years.
Posted inGoat
Real ecoterrorism
Back in 1998, the group Earth Liberation Front (a.k.a. ELF) set a series of fires at Vail ski resort in Colorado and caused $12 million in damage. Authorities at the time called it the most expensive “ecoterrorism” to date. Burning stuff down is not an activity I personally condone (unless we’re talking about Burning Man), […]
Posted inGoat
That dam economy again?
There may be no direct connection, but it’s hard not to speculate that the dismal state of the economy (and the massive sums the government has spent to shore it back up again) played a role in the feds’ decision this week to kill a reservoir proposed for Washington state’s fertile Yakima Valley. In 2003, […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Going underground
For the past few years, it looked like the West would see a resurgence in hardrock mining, thanks in large part to China’s booming economy. In late summer, copper prices were around $4 per pound; molybdenum hovered over $30 per pound. Towns like Leadville, Colo., which was devastated when the Climax molybdenum mine shut down […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Nonprofitable times
Conservation groups hunker down for the economic crisis.
Posted inGoat
Mambo like only bureaucracy can
Continuing a tradition of relatively strong stands on environmental degradation caused by natural gas drilling and other forms of development, the Rocky Mountain region (Region 8) office of the Environmental Protection Agency is now questioning a proposal to divert flows from Colorado’s only wild and scenic river: the Cache la Poudre. The agency contends that […]
Posted inGoat
Anticlimax
Over the past couple years, it’s looked like the region would see a resurgence in hardrock mining, thanks in large part to China’s booming economy. As recently as late summer, copper prices were well above $3 per pound; molybdenum hovered over $30 per pound. Towns like Leadville, Colo., which was devastated when the Climax molybdenum […]
Posted inGoat
Green state defeats green(ish) ballot measures
California’s raft of green ballot measures this election looked like the start of an enviro-revolution. Almost. Proposition 7 would have required California to generate 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050, and Proposition 10 would have authorized a $5 billion bond issue to promote alternative energy and alternative fuel vehicles, with about […]
Posted inGoat
California still true blue
The pundits may have waited until the last possible second on election night to call California, along with Oregon and Washington, and pronounce Democrat Barack Obama the 44th president of the United States, but there was never really any doubt that the electoral-vote-heavy-weight Golden State would embrace the Illinois Senator by a wide margin. With […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
While you were voting …
Bush administration races ahead with environmental policy changes
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Scrimpfest in the West
The posh St. Regis Resort at Monarch Beach in Southern California offers pregnant couples a lavish package vacation called the “Last Hurrah.” But in late September, that moniker might have been better applied to the $440,000 weeklong retreat American International Group held there for some of its top sales agents — less than a week […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2008: Back to the future
Wildlife wars
They’ve loped to the southern edge of Wyoming’s Wind River Range, and straggled into northwestern Colorado. They’ve filled Montana forests near Missoula, Helena and Bozeman. They’ve crossed the Idaho Panhandle, padding into north-central Washington and eastern Oregon. And despite disease outbreaks and being shot by the feds for devouring the occasional cow, every year since […]
Posted inGoat
Bureau of Land Ravagement?
Just days after the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation raised serious concerns about the Bureau of Land Management’s plan to open up rock art-rich Nine Mile Canyon to 800 more gas wells, the agency is under the scrutiny of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office for its extensive use of categorical exclusions to permit energy […]
Posted inGoat
The East is fracked
The interior West has long been a source of raw materials for the rest of the nation. Copper mines gauge the hills of Arizona; long trains run day and night hauling low-sulfur coal from the massive mines of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin and Colorado’s West Elk Mountains to the East Coast; gasfields on the Pinedale […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
On the ballot: “Clean” coal and moose stew
“In 30 seconds, I can have one of those cut out of a 4Runner and get a couple hundred bucks.” —Josh Sorenson, an Ogden, Utah, junked-auto dealer, on turning over a catalytic converter (which contains palladium and platinum) in this age of sky-high metal prices and rising metal theft. From the Salt Lake Tribune. Updated […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Two weeks in the West
From sprawling estates in Colorado’s tony Roaring Fork Valley to parched ranches on Montana’s high plains, conservation easements protect millions of private acres of open space in the West. Next to all that, a 2002 decision by Johnson County, Wyo., to terminate an easement it held on the 1,043-acre Meadowood Ranch just east of Buffalo […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Living deep in place
Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic AlaskaSeth Kantner240 pages, hardcover: $28.Milkweed Editions, 2008. Shopping for Porcupine is a book that weaves between worry and worship, to borrow a phrase from its author, Seth Kantner. The autobiographical essays collected here offer a glimpse of Kantner’s life in his native north Alaska, portraying a harsh landscape […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Going to the gasroots
Oil and gas companies mobilize from the ground up in a changing West
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Drilling, wolves, guns and plutonium
“Drill here, drill now,” has become something of a political mantra in this election-year summer of high gasoline prices and frustrated consumers. Tack on “pay less,” and it’s the bumper-sticker slogan for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s national campaign to expand domestic energy production. Many Republicans now running for Congress hope their enthusiasm for drilling […]