When I read Tasha Eichenseher’s recent Land Letter article (sub reqd) about fracking’s use of water, I was alarmed by the numbers. In Colorado, alone, hydraulic fracturing operations use about 4.5 billion gallons of water per year. That’s expected to increase to more than 6 billion gallons over the next few years. The takeaway is […]
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Green Revolution 2.0? Using molecular markers to speed up Mendel
In agricultural technology circles, when talk turns to plant breeding as a way to boost crop yields, combat plant diseases, and adapt to a hotter, drier world, genetic modification has frequently dominated the conversation. This includes the Roundup-ready suite of crops, resistant to herbicides, or BT corn and soy, which are modified to manufacture their […]
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Good news for pine, bad news for spruce
For years now, towns in the Mountain West have watched as the green needles of their surrounding lodgepole pine forests turned a burnt orange. That orange signifies the tree’s death from pine bark beetle, a native pest whose populations have been boosted by climate change, resulting in the killing of enormous swaths of trees across […]
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Friday news roundup: reporter spies and Bryce Canyon coal mine
Annals of paranoia Vigilantes in Nevada cracked an alleged Los Angeles Times spy network last weekend, revealing the identity of an undercover ‘reporter,’ Ashley Powers. Disguised beneath her press pass issued by the Clark County GOP and madly scratching words in a suspicious yellow notepad, the proud, alert citizens of Nevada precinct #1721 properly “uncovered” […]
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Seal Stories from the Pribilof, middle of everywhere
Stiff winds blow over the treeless islands of St. Paul and St. George, over 300 miles from mainland Alaska. The Pribilof Islands, breeding grounds to the northern fur seal in the middle of the Bering Sea, seem unlikely actors in world events. “People come and say, ‘It’s in the middle of nowhere,’” says Aquilina Lestenkof, […]
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Martinez making her mark
updated 2/9/12 “New Mexico Governor Rushes to Undo the Agenda of Her Predecessor“ That headline ran in the New York Times last August, about eight months after Susana Martinez, a republican, took the helm from Bill Richardson, a democrat. Martinez had just sold the gubernatorial jet for a cool $2.5 million, and in one of […]
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The buzz on bees
Since 2005, the nation’s honeybees have been on a fast track to oblivion. Thousands of once-thriving, humming hives of pollinators have become empty husks, their inhabitants vanished. Scientists have been racing to pin down the culprits behind what’s known as Colony Collapse Disorder. So far, they’ve implicated a parasitic mite, an immune deficiency disorder, and […]
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Friday news round up: Romney in Nevada, Glacier thief in handcuffs
As we slip from January to February, allowing a few more New Year’s resolutions to fall by the wayside, we’re rallying our strength as spectators: both for the Superbowl this Sunday, and the drawn out GOP presidential drama. Amid the hustle, bustle and bluster of the week, a few headlines caught our eye. PUBLIC LANDSOn […]
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Beyond control
Let’s say you don’t want an oil and gas drill operating 250 feet away from your kitchen window. The 1000-megawatt lights keep your Yorkie in an extraordinary state of duress, and your kids won’t stay off the dang fence. What can you do? El Paso and Arapaho counties, on the Front Range of Colorado, have […]
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EPA grilled over Pavillion report
The opening act of yesterday’s hearing led by the House subcommittee on Energy and the Environment was uncommonly action-packed: Josh Fox, documentary filmmaker and director of “Gasland,” was lead from the room in handcuffs, on the grounds he did not have the right credentials. Earlier, a camera crew claiming to be from ABC news was […]
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Monopolies march on
Pity the antitrust regulator. As the Obama administration pacifies its way toward the 2012 elections, those bureaucrats charged with protecting small businessmen from monopolies are dropping like flies. Take J. Dudley Butler, the head of the soporific-sounding Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration. Butler, a lawyer who built a career fighting powerful, giant poultry companies […]
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Why industry doesn’t like “fracking” and neither do I
(updated 1/30/2011) I recently read that the energy industry hates fracking. Of course, they actually love fracking — as in hydraulic fracturing to crack rock and release all those juicy hydrocarbons. What they hate is the word itself: “fracking.” I hate it, too, though I suspect for very different reasons. Energy flacks abhor “fracking,” according […]
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Friday news roundup: industry grows and species croak
Updated 1/27/2012 Breaking: Presidential candidate Marvin E. Quasniki, from the Henson Company, kicked off his Nevada tour this week. He’s a puppet from Nevada, a turquoise farmer from Tonopah and a crude entrenchment of old ideas whom you don’t completely trust speaking around your children. ENERGY Water’s a key element of the nuclear energy equation. […]
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Snow fight on the slopes
A tussle over water rights has broken out between the ski industry and the U.S. Forest Service. And, like the conditions this winter, things are a bit nasty. The dispute is over a new clause in ski area permits that prohibits ski companies from selling or transferring some water rights to cities, farms or other […]
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Obama’s energy love fest
1: number of times President Obama said the word “environment” in his 2012 State of the Union address 23: number of times he said “energy” 8: number of times he preceded it with “clean” 1: number of times he preceded it with “renewable” 1: number of times he mentioned “climate change” A word cloud of […]
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(In)secure rural schools, once again
Many struggling Western counties will find themselves in even worse financial shape if an expiring federal law isn’t renewed soon. Since 2000, local governments in 41 states have received billions of dollars from the feds to compensate them for reduced revenue from timber sales. Especially in logging-dependent states like Oregon and Washington, which saw federal […]
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Friday news roundup: Defense goes solar and helicopter bear shooting goes legal
While presidential opponents dropped like flies, news affecting lands west of the 100th meridian continued to spit and sputter out onto the interwebs, mimicking the sleet-snow we got here in Paonia this weekend. Here’s a roundup of the important news of the week: ENERGY President Obama announced his rejection of the Keystone XL project on […]
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Dead man working
There are plenty of ways for roughnecks to kill themselves fast. Working as a roofer in Deer Lodge, Montana, they’d repeat that old joke that’s been amended for every blue-collar occupation in which I’ve ever been employed. “If you fall off the roof, you’re fired before you hit the ground.” “I want to (expletive) kill […]
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Sheep vs. bear, agency vs. agency
In many ways, the tale of Yellowstone’s grizzly bears is one of remarkable success. When the species was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, there may have been as few as 136 of the bruins wandering in and around Yellowstone National Park. By 2006, there were more than 500, and in […]
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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 […]