If you live in one of the 9 Western states where marijuana has been legalized for medical use, you may have noticed that there suddenly seem to be an awful lot of bright-faced, completely healthy twenty-somethings who claim to have chronic pain or glaucoma. While many people use the drug to help deal with real, […]
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Too much poop can be hazardous to your health
Should large quantities of manure from giant commercial farms be considered hazardous waste? They’re not right now, and at least 14 members of Congress want to keep it that way. The group, which includes Idaho Representative Mike Simpson (R), recently signed on to the Superfund Common Sense Act, a bill that would prevent the Environmental […]
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Resource plans rescinded for sage grouse
Wildlife advocates won a round against energy development and grazing in Wyoming and Idaho last week, when Idaho Chief U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill overturned two Bureau of Land Management resource management plans in favor of the Hailey, Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project. The nonprofit conservation group argued the BLM was too hasty in development […]
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The urban wild
In the beginning was the bat. Roger, Isolde,* and I sipped margaritas on a warm August evening in their Boulder condo. Suddenly, Roger slammed down his drink, pointed to the ceiling and screamed, “Look out!” As a black, papery blur fluttered around the living room, I dived to the floor and slithered under the table. […]
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A feel good ferret story (mostly)
Last week, or maybe it was the week before, a familiar sound drifted over from the hay field abutting the property where I live. Pop! Pop! Pop! My boyfriend and I looked at each other: “Prairie dogs,” we said in unison. Another few bite the dust. Our neighbors don’t seem to like the rodents, and […]
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The middles of nowhere
Crossposted from the Last Word on Nothing As someone preoccupied with odd, mysterious places, I have a longstanding appreciation for an odd, mysterious organization called The Center for Land Use Interpretation. Equal parts arts organization, archive, and amateur detective agency, the Los Angeles-based CLUI (rhymes with gooey) has a particular interest in the forgotten spaces of the […]
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Fish fight on the Elwha
On Sept. 15, an excavator tore the first chunks of concrete from the Glines Canyon dam on Washington state’s Elwha River. It was a historic moment, kicking off the largest dam removal in U.S. history. When the dams are gone, salmon will swim up the Elwha for the first time in nearly 100 years. Seventy miles […]
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Pearls of discontent
Last week, The National Park Service released a draft environmental impact statement that assesses the impacts the commercial shellfish company has on the estuary where it’s based–particularly its impacts on eelgrass, water quality, and wildlife–and evaluates the pros and cons of issuing a new permit that would allow the company to continue operating.
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The business of banking
Early this August, 12 branches of a bank serving rural Washington state — the Colfax-based Bank of Whitman — shuttered their doors for good. The closure is just one more in a long series of bank failures stemming from the financial crisis. The vast majority of banks are community banks, making up 98 percent of […]
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The long and winding road…
If you’re familiar with the Klamath River Basin, which straddles the Oregon-California border, you’ve likely heard the story. Leafing back through the High Country News archives, we’ve certainly told it enough times. It goes something like this: It was, in a word, a meltdown. But the disaster also helped catalyze the “peace” that Jenkins wrote […]
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Creatures of the Monsoon
This summer, southern Arizona – like much of the Southwest — experienced what weather mavens call a “meteorological singularity,” a weather event that happens every year around the same time. The phenomenon is the Arizona monsoon, a seasonal shifting of winds that moves moisture northward from the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico in July, August, and […]
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Friday News Roundup: Bison and borders
A final answer to where wild bison can roam won’t surface until Montana develops a statewide conservation strategy for the mighty rangeland beasts. In the meantime, bison need a temporary home, and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks is discussing where to put them. They say that may be Fort Belknap and Fort […]
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A small victory for Libby
Rarely has good news emerged from Libby, Mont., in recent decades. Hundreds of residents of the small town have died and thousands more have been sickened from exposure to asbestos fibers, which spread from a local vermiculite mine throughout the community, ending up lodged in people’s lungs. Kids used to play in mine waste, and […]
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Calories and economics on public lands
Back in the glitzy ’80s, uber-designer Diane von Furstenberg gained notoriety for telling women “you can never be too rich or too thin.” Turns out she was wrong on both counts. But those central obsessions of Americans, weight and wealth, have become a lens through which to view the benefits of a surprising array of […]
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Bill Koch, coal, and political cash
The cynic in me hardly batted an eye when I read recently that Republican House Speaker John Boehner is raking in coal-stained cash. Nor did I spill my coffee when I noticed that one of Boehner’s big new donors is a Koch brother. My interest was piqued, however, when I saw that it wasn’t David […]
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The costs of climate change
From California beachside communities to remote villages in subarctic Alaska, the impacts of climate change are becoming ever more tangible, as shown by two government studies released this week. “Sea-level rise is here and we need to start planning for it,” said Philip King, associate professor of economics at San Francisco State University, in the […]
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Learning curve
If the wildlife news of the last few months is any indication, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is on the road to enlightenment, or at least, loitering on the sidewalk. In particular, three of their recent actions suggest the agency is learning from its mistakes. Lesson 1: No otter is an island On Monday, the […]
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Pity the Green Pioneer
Back in the early part of this decade, when I spent the last week of every August at Burning Man camping in a village called the Alternative Energy Zone, I got a valuable lesson in the intricacies of renewable energy development. I had been trying for some time to coax a couple of electric scooters […]
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Bugs abound at summer’s end
_____________________________________________________________________________ Colorado’s summer is drawing to a close. But the season’s remaining dog days still hum with the coda of hungry insects rushing to fill up before the coming fall. The other weekend, I happened upon one such bug, the pleasing fungus beetle (Gibbifer californicus), as it searched the hilly forests south of Denver for […]
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Economy vs. environment?
The state legislative universe is famously sluggish. Moves toward significant change tend to ooze at the pace of cold honey while lawmakers waste time bickering over bills that everyone knows won’t go anywhere. CEQA — which was inspired by the National Environmental Policy Act and itself inspired similar laws in other states — requires state […]