When I was preparing to move to the Four Corners town of Cortez, Colo., to take a job as a newspaper reporter, I did some background research to learn more about my future home. I’m well connected with the gay and lesbian community, so one of the first stories I heard was the tragic tale […]
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Friday News Roundup: Wolf hunts and Wyoming refinery woes
Idaho and Montana’s wolf hunting seasons kicked off without much of a howl last week. This is the second year of hunting; the 2009-2010, was held after the Rocky Mountain gray wolf’s removal from the endangered species list. Idaho and Montana have wolf hunting seasons that last four and 10 months, respectively — part of […]
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Industry Pot Calls Enviro Kettle Black
Environmental groups like the Center for Biological Diversity and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation are notorious targets for media label makers that live to pigeonhole with prose. But if the USFWS is the enviros’ legal whipping boy, then the Environmental Protection Agency is industry’s. A report released this week from the Government Accountability Office — a […]
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Hummer Syndrome
A few months ago, while scouring Wyoming’s Powder River Basin for evidence that the West had gone global, I drove my little rental car into Gillette, a once humble little burg that has ridden a coal mining and methane boom to become one of the state’s biggest cities. I saw my share of strip malls […]
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Let it smog
“Mush from the wimp.” That’s how Paul Krugman summed up President Obama’s recent decision not to set tougher ozone standards, which would have helped force places like gas fields and cities nationwide to de-smog. In HCN‘s editorial bullpen, we too were scratching our heads when we heard the news last Friday. EPA scientists have recommended […]
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The Visual West: Last Flight of the Insects
Dozens of dragonflies zoom through my vegetable garden this time of year. Like hunchbacked sprites, they perch on the hog wire holding up the ever-heavier tomato plants, waiting for an unsuspecting fly or a particularly attractive mate to zip by. In the shallows of mountain lakes and irrigation ponds, blue damselflies, wings folded behind (unlike […]
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Friday News Roundup: Of Fuel and Frogs
TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline — the world’s largest — has dominated the news this past week. Last Friday, the State Department issued a final Environmental Impact Statement for the pipeline — which would run oil from the Alberta tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries — that concluded the project would not significantly impact the […]
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Illegal trailblazing as negotiation tool?
If you build it, the federal land agencies will include it. That’s what Montana mountain biking enthusiast Ron Cron counted on when he embarked on a three-day, illegal trail-making frenzy in the Flathead National Forest in May 2009, complete with jumps and other technical features. Illegal trail building is ubiquitous on Western public lands, plaguing […]
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Speculating on solar
When the Bureau of Land Management’s Southern Nevada office sent out a letter last week rejecting Goldman Sachs’ applications to develop renewable energy on public land, you had to wonder: What was an investment bank doing in the Nevada desert? And you wouldn’t be the only one asking. The Associated Press reporter who broke the […]
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A bear of a season
The developed Yellowstone campground where John Wallace set up his tent last Wednesday probably made the national park seem relatively innocuous to the 59-year-old Michigan resident. It’s peak season, after all, and the place was likely humming with human activity, cars, chatter — those signs of weird, woodsy civilization peculiar to the West’s iconic natural […]
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Methyl iodide’s toxic saga continues
California’s approval of a dangerous and controversial agricultural chemical, methyl iodide, came further into question last week when new documents showed the fumigant’s registration process was flawed. The documents, which were made public as part of a lawsuit challenging the state’s approval of the chemical, show the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation cut and pasted […]
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Utahns oppose Las Vegas’ Snake Valley water grab
In August 2009, the state of Utah sacrificed its western flank in return for development opportunities in its southern bounds. At least, that’s the way many residents in Western Utah’s Snake Valley perceive a water agreement the state inked with Nevada. In that deal, Nevada received rights to the majority of available groundwater in the […]
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California desal plant irks enviros
Updated 8/26/2011, 4 p.m. The Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit group that works to protect oceans and beaches, just renewed its longstanding fight against a southern California desalination plant. The group has long contended the plant would kill marine animals on account of how it uptakes ocean water. But in June, the San Diego Superior Court […]
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The Perils of Playing Favorites
When it comes to imperiled species that get the shaft, invertebrates — in all their backboneless-glory — often top the list. And of those invertebrates, insects, with exception of the ever-adored butterfly and economically-key bee, have a particularly tough time garnering societal sympathy. People tend to be suspicious of or “grossed out” by insects or […]
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A shift in the gas debate?
When, at the direction of President Obama, the Department of Energy appointed a panel to come up with recommendations to improve the safety of natural gas development, environmentalists didn’t expect much. Watchdog groups worried the panel was weighted to favor industry. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group called for its chair, John Deutch, to step down […]
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Making room for flycatchers
The endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher may get an additional 1,300 river miles of critical habitat set aside for it in 6 Western states, according to a new proposal from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The six-inch-long, olive and yellow bird nests in the dense vegetation along Southwestern waterways. In 2005, the agency set aside […]
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Wilderness for ANWR?
After decades of wrangling over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a draft federal plan for the first time includes a “preliminary recommendation” to protect the disputed Arctic coastal plain as a designated wilderness area. Home to expansive caribou herds, musk ox, polar bears and grizzlies, the coastal plain holds an estimated 4 […]
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EPA gets poor grade on keeping drinking water clean
The Environmental Protection Agency was recently reprimanded for its regulation of drinking water and the selection process it uses to select candidates for contaminant regulation. On the bright side, the agency is trying to ensure rural water systems pass muster. The Government Accountability Office just gave EPA officials a scolding for their inabilityto assess which […]
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Ancient Fish Gets Techno Boost
In 1999, the U.S. Navy approached the University of Washington’s Applied Physics lab with a mission: develop a tool that could help harbor surveillance teams detect DIDSON was the lab’s techno-fabulous answer. The advanced sonar technology works much like an ultrasound—converting reflected sound waves into visual images—but relies on a special acoustic lens that creates […]
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Reporter’s notebook: How to snag a grizzly
“Salmon carcass, cattle blood and time. In a barrel.” That’s the rank concoction that biologists in Washington state are using to coax rare carnivores in for a candid photo shoot, and to snag a few precious hairs. “Burns the nostrils,” says Aja Woodrow, a biological technician with the US Forest Service, wincing as he pours […]