The author of a new biography of one of the West’s largest landholders speaks with HCN about conservation, capitalism and Cousteau.
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Stand down from Western wildfires
A prominent wildfire expert, reacting to the deaths of 19 Arizona firefighters, says it’s time for a major change in policy.
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Problem-solving in the West
A conversation with Lucy Moore, one of the Southwest’s premier environmental mediators
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EPA’s abandoned Wyoming fracking study one retreat of many
When the federal Environmental Protection Agency abruptly retreated on its multimillion-dollar investigation into water contamination in a central Wyoming natural gas field last month, it shocked environmentalists and energy industry supporters alike. In 2011, the agency had issued a blockbuster draft report saying that the controversial practice of fracking was to blame for the pollution […]
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A long-time defender talks grizzly conservation
A Q&A with Louisa Willcox, who has spent 30 years fighting for grizzly protections.
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Researchers go to Utah to experience another planet: Mars
In March, photographer and science enthusiast Jim Urquhart ventured into the Utah desert to join a team of researchers at the Mars Desert Research Station. He came back with a collection of surreal images both extra-terrestrial and intriguing.
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Federal Helium Reserve faces uncertainty amid global shortage
While browsing the Bureau of Land Management’s website, I found an odd piece of trivia. True or False: Inhaling helium causes your vocal cords to constrict, raising the pitch of your voice. I was surprised. What was the agency in charge of overseeing the dry husks of the West’s open spaces doing with a colorless, […]
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Taking the park to the people
There will be no Fiesta Day this year at Saguaro National Park, a mountainous, cactus- and shrub-studded landscape surrounding Tucson. No mariachi band at the visitor’s center, no spread of tacos and enchiladas, no candy-filled pinatas for the kids to knock down. But the cancellation of the five-year running event, conceived by park officials as […]
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How fish consumption determines water quality
Jim Peters lives near Puget Sound in Washington, and during fishing season his kids eat smoked salmon like candy. Peters is a council member of the Squaxin Island Tribe of South Puget Sound. Fish permeate nearly every aspect of their culture; in the 1850s tribal members gave up most of their land to settlers in […]
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Feds enabled oil drillers, others to cheat Fort Berthold tribes
Editor’s note: This ProPublica story follows up on our 2012 story “The Other Bakken Boom” with additional information on lawsuits alleging that the U.S. government allowed the Fort Berthold tribes to be cheated by energy companies. Native Americans on an oil-rich North Dakota reservation have been cheated out of more than $1 billion by schemes […]
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My low-impact life
My low-impact life did not grow out of my concern for the environment, or anything the least bit altruistic. It sprang from my desire to get an education without falling into debt. Just back from caretaking an isolated Canadian fishing camp, I faced the challenge of finding an inexpensive place to rent in Bozeman, Mont., […]
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Protecting culture in the ancient Sky City
About an hour west of Albuquerque, N.M., a sandstone bluff rises above the high desert floor. For more than 800 years, the people of Acoma Pueblo have lived there, protecting their culture, language and many traditional ways. Archaeologist Theresa Pasqual, the director of the Acoma Pueblo’s Historic Preservation Office, works with state and federal agencies […]
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Photographing migrant foragers
Eirik Johnson’s photographs document the life and landscape of the Pacific Northwest, where he lives. He’s been featured on National Public Radio and in Orion and Audubon Magazine, among others. Johnson’s series of images on the region’s logging industry, Sawdust Mountain, was recently published by the Aperture Foundation. High Country News assistant designer Andrew Cullen, […]
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You can’t keep a cow from water (or Jon Marvel from grazing issues)
In September, the Western Watersheds Project announced that it was seeking a successor to Jon Marvel, its founder and executive director. Marvel, who lives in Hailey, Idaho, began his campaign to end public lands grazing back in the early 1990s, following a dispute with a neighboring rancher whose cattle bedded down on Marvel’s property and […]
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In Montana, Dark Money Helped Democrats Hold a Key Senate Seat
In the waning days of Montana’s hotly contested Senate race, a small outfit called Montana Hunters and Anglers, launched by liberal activists, tried something drastic.It didn’t buy ads supporting the incumbent Democrat, Sen. Jon Tester. Instead, it put up radio and TV commercials that urged voters to choose the third-party candidate, libertarian DanCox, describing Cox as […]
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West of 100: Goodbye, listeners
We hope the seven episodes of West of 100 we’ve produced this year have stimulated your curiosity and warmed your ears. Unfortunately, we’ve decided to discontinue the podcast. We’ve concluded that our small staff can better serve our audience by concentrating our resources on conducting the best in-depth reporting on the American West that you […]
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Rantcast: Goodbye, listeners
Hi podcast listeners. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Rants from the Hill podcast for the past 6 months. We recently decided to discontinue our podcasts due to staffing limitations at High Country News. But never fear, you can still read the Rants from the Hill online, at HCN.org, on the first Monday […]
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That familiar loneliness: a writer’s own relationship mirrors a Stegner novel
During my first full summer in the West, I participated in a rite of passage: I read Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. The first character I fell in love with was the land. The stirrup-high grass near Leadville, Colorado, that “flowed and flawed in the wind, its motion revealed and hid and revealed again streaks […]
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In Montana, ‘Dr. Trout’ battles the planet’s most dangerous diseases
In his day job, Marshall Bloom is the associate director for scientific management at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a cutting-edge federal research campus in an unlikely place: Hamilton, Mont., a town of about 4,500 in the beautiful Bitterroot Valley. Nearly 500 workers in dozens of lab buildings are dedicated to studying “emerging infectious diseases” like […]
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First impressions: an Easterner’s new life in the West
Photographer Andrew Cullen used Instagram to document his summer 2012 move from Maine to Colorado, capturing Western scenes of surprise, wonder, and delight. Click on the gallery view to see the images full size.