Enviros are dreaming – not of a white Christmas (which seems unlikely around most of the West, given ongoing drought) but of a greener White House. A president’s re-election often creates an exodus of Cabinet secretaries, as some decide to leave for other opportunities and others are asked to step down. Hencewith, some outright speculation […]
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Dispersing the toxicity
It’s every coastal community’s nightmare. An off-shore oil rig explodes, a tanker runs aground, and the name of their town — Homer, Alaska, say — becomes synonymous with the latest disaster of our oil-besotted age. When such a disaster does happen, oil spill responders are faced with many choices about how to contain the spill […]
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West is best?
A post-Thanksgiving hike should not be too strenuous. It needs to be vigorous enough to help awaken from a food coma but not so tough as to ruin the long weekend. This year, a light stroll through nearby Dominguez Canyon, with a close group of friends, fit the bill. After just a short drive and […]
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When deer attack dogs
I was innocently working away in my office (living room) when the barking began. We live in a medium-sized town in southwestern Colorado, where owning a dog seems to be a prerequisite, and every canine in the neighborhood was going off about something, resulting in a cacophonous symphony. Our dog, Princess (no, we didn’t give […]
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End of an era?
Last Wednesday, to rather muffled fanfare, the Department of the Interior released a new set of rules that will make it easier for tribes and Indian landowners to lease their property for economic development. Native Americans will be able to do the things that private landowners do all the time: apply for a mortgage; establish […]
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A river of rain
Five days before the rain started in Sacramento on November 28, Marty Ralph knew what was coming: an “atmospheric river” was about to hit the West Coast of the United States. On satellite imagery, “ARs,” which carry warm water vapor up from the tropics on a mile-high current, “have a characteristic long and narrow look […]
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Monumental opposition to a monumental proposal?
Obama’s second term has not yet begun and already folks are heaping on environmental demands – things that may have been politically untenable for the centrist president to do in the long run-up to a tough election where the economy and energy policy hogged the spotlight. Last month, the Outdoor Industries Association – a trade […]
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Wilderness trumps sustainable agriculture in Point Reyes
An epic battle over the future of an oyster farm in California’s Point Reyes National Seashore ended last Friday when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar rejected a request to extend the oyster company’s lease. Salazar’s decision effectively evicts the Drake’s Bay Oyster Company, which has operated the farm since 2004, and turns the 2,700-acre Drakes Estero […]
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Gone hunting wolves
By the time you read this blog, I will be on my second day of hunting gray wolves in Montana. An old friend of mine in Livingston introduced me to some ranchers in Paradise Valley to write a story of their hunt. We will be trudging through a wilderness of snow on horseback, hoping to […]
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A monumental danger
Southern Arizona’s national monuments have the uneasy reputation of being good places to smuggle drugs and immigrants. Bureau of Land Management law enforcement rangers routinely find trash bags of marijuana stashed beneath mesquite and paloverde trees, piles of muddy, discarded clothes and Dumpsters-worth of empty water bottles, painted black to make them less visible in […]
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Gas guzzlers
If you’ve been feeling the pinch at the gas pumps, and wondering how drivers in other states are faring, you might be interested in a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council. It looks at what portion of their wallets drivers across the nation empty at the pumps, as well as how states are […]
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Cementing demand for coal
Those who are fighting to keep coal in the ground, and the dirty byproducts of burning it out of the air, must at times feel like they’re playing whack-a-mole. Every time they score a victory, the industry finds a way around it. That’s exactly what’s happening in the southwestern corner of Colorado, where a coal […]
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The bark beetle feedback loop
Trees, you might say, are nature’s ultimate do-gooders. A compound in the bark of Pacific yew trees fights cancer. Dead trees become nurse logs, nurturing forests’ next generation of fungi and vegetation. In the ocean, rotting leaves boost the growth of plankton, fortifying the foundation of the sea’s food chain. Living leaves scrub the air of […]
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Of water and dust
In all the hullabaloo of the Thanksgiving holiday, you might have missed a couple of important developments concerning water use while you were brining a bird or chopping cranberries. Here’s a summary, describing a deal on the Colorado River, and a ruling about California’s Owens Lake. In 2006, the seven states that share water from […]
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Money and climate
Ah, money. During one of the biggest shopping times of the year, after spending Thanksgiving morning rolling stacks of coins with the kids, my thoughts turn to it, naturally. Or maybe unnaturally; what was mostly on my mind was the high cost of doing something to slow climate change. Specifically, I was thinking about carbon […]
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Water wins
Water agencies in three Western states will soon be trading money for water with Mexico, after officials signed a pact Tuesday updating the terms of the 1944 agreement that dictates what portion of Colorado River water our southern neighbor receives each year. At a cost of $10 million, regional agencies in the thirsty states of […]
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For sale: The North Fork Valley
A few weeks ago, a Texas oilman cornered me at the Ouray Brewery. My friend and I were in Colorado’s “Little Switzerland” for a hike, a hot spring and a beer. When some attractive young women from Moab took the table next to ours, a camo-decked, rosy-faced older fellow who had been singing the “Green […]
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The future of campaign spending
Imagine you’re one of the 40,000 people in America with a net worth of over $30 million. That’s enough to have some spare cash to play with. Why not use it to influence politics? Come on. You know you want to. Yet, you’re faced with a problem. According to analyses by the Center for Responsive […]
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Computerized canyon
The Grand Canyon is already a public spectacle, with good reason. Every time I’ve visited I’ve been humbled by the frisson of insignificance I feel when peering into its vast orange depths. Ashamedly, I’ve only done the Canyon-lite tour – driven slowly around the car-accessible parts of the south rim, stopping at the viewing points […]
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Much ado about mutton
Peeking inside the freezer at Paonia, Colo.’s local meat market, you’d never know wholesale lamb prices are nearly at an all-time low. A pound of lamb chops costs $16.48; ground lamb is $10.14. But at the other end of the supply chain, ranchers are bringing in less than 90 cents a pound, far below what […]