updated 7/13/2011 The Yellowstone River oil spill is a stark reminder of something we often forget: oil spills aren’t just for coastal folks. In case you missed the news, here’s what happened: On July 1, the Silvertip pipeline, an underground conduit for ExxonMobil, split open, spewing some 42,000 gallons of oil into the Yellowstone River […]
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A walk in the (burned) woods
The largest fire in New Mexico’s recorded history, the Las Conchas, is 45 percent contained; its footprint covers 146,000 acres (not all of that land has been charred, though, since wildfires burn in patches). The blaze started on the afternoon of June 26 when an aspen tree fell onto a powerline southwest of Los Alamos. […]
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The Visual West — In Praise of Skunk Cabbage
On a recent trip to the Grand Mesa in Colorado, my eyes kept returning to the amazing stands of what many locals call skunk cabbage unfurling from the recently snow-covered meadows. The species, Veratrum tenuipetalum, is not related to the Eastern skunk cabbage. Other folks call the plant corn lily, though it is not a […]
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Doing the unspeakable
Can the U.S. take a big bite out of its greenhouse gas emissions without muttering the words climate change? The Obama administration is betting it can. And it’s testing the political waters with a new round of vehicle emissions rules to cover cars made between 2017 and 2025. From the Washington Post’sJuliet Eilperin: Heather Zichal, […]
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Can YOU carry a concealed weapon without a permit?
“Starting Friday, Wyoming will join three other states in allowing individuals to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.” Which inspired me to make this flow chart to help you decide if YOU can carry a concealed weapon without a permit. Can you? Read the flow chart to find out… View the flowchart in its […]
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The crow knows your nose
Cross-posted from The Last Word on Nothing. Crow diving at a masked researcher in Seattle. Photo by Keith Brust I have a running joke with my husband’s cousin, Roger. At family reunions, I tell him how much I like crows. He tells me how much he likes to shoot them. Hilarious, right? Here’s the satisfying […]
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New Mexico wildfire poses a double threat
Although I don’t live in New Mexico, I worked as a journalist in Colorado’s part of the Four Corners region for a while, and spent a fair bit of time in the northern part of the Land of Enchantment. This connection is perhaps one reason why, on Monday, I became obsessed with the Las Conchas […]
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The wacky world of immigration
I love the printed word, love having something informative and solid and paper at ready in my hands when I recline on my patio with a nice IPA. But as a magazine writer, I have to say: There are serious drawbacks to being constrained by a tight print schedule. Sometimes, right after your story goes […]
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Spotties get a new plan
The gigantic Wallow fire now searing Arizona and New Mexico has burned a lot of things, including several thousand acres of habitat for the threatened Mexican spotted owl (not to be confused with its more notorious cousin, the Northern spotted owl, once blamed for the demise of logging in the Northwest). Now, the U.S. Fish […]
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Subsidized crop insurance: the next ag boondoggle?
Over the past few weeks, the House of Representatives has been hacking away at the budget for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The dollars cut and kept in these negotiations set a baseline for the spending in the 2012 Farm Bill debate, and since the farm bill is the primary way agriculture policy is determined […]
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Reclaiming TSCA, One Chemical at a Time
In 1976, when the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) passed Congress and grandfathered-in some 60,000 untested chemicals, any regulatory hold the EPA could have had on manufacturers slipped quickly from their fingers. Simply by the sheer volume of substances already used in the United States, the agency fell far behind on reviewing the chemical inventory […]
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Here comes Huntsman
Updated 6-21-11 Courtesy Twitter and the Huffington Post, we’d already heard former Utah governor, ambassador to China, fluent Mandarin speaker, businessman, climate change moderate and Mormon extraordinaire Jon Huntsman Jr. was going to throw his hat in the Republican presidential ring. And on Tuesday he did just that. Slate has the story on how the […]
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The pulse of the river
For a journalist, sitting through last week’s conference on the Colorado River, hosted by the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado, was a great way to take the river’s pulse — to get a sense of how the river’s water czars, academic wonks, scientists and other minders are thinking about the basin’s […]
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Antelope as indicators
When the first winter storms buried northeast Montana last November, the thousands of pronghorn antelope that spent the summer around the state’s border with Alberta and Saskatchewan started making their way south. Normally, they move into the north side of the state’s Milk River valley and find enough sagebrush sticking out of the snow to […]
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Why Babbitt’s advice to Obama doesn’t quite hit the mark
It was constructed as some advice for President Obama, a call to action for the executive branch, “the best, and likely only hope for meaningful progress” on the environment. But former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s speech to the National Press Club on June 8 seemed to serve a higher purpose: To educate the press and […]
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Northwest coal port ignites controversy
Bellingham, Washington is no stranger to industry. The seaside college town in the northwesternmost corner of the country was founded on coal and timber in the 1800s. But after the downtown Georgia-Pacific pulp mill shut down in 2007, the city has been more focused on cleaning up the toxic mess left behind than bringing big […]
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Fire and ice
Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice. Those opening lines of the old Robert Frost poem seem to apply to the West’s public lands this spring. As out-of-control wildfires scorch the Southwest, more northerly regions are still waiting for the snow to finish melting; both problems are shutting down forest access. […]
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A Westerner too reasonable for the White House?
Why would a two-term former governor of Utah, the third most conservative state in the Union, be viewed as too liberal for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination? In the state’s legislature, Republicans in the House outnumber Democrats 2-1. Its Senate is even more lopsided, with a 3-1 ratio. Yet despite former governor Jon Huntsman Jr.’s […]
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When is a Jeep trail not a road?
A popular redrock canyon in Southern Utah is the latest proving ground in the undying Western debate over roads on federal public land. Last Friday, a U.S. District Court ruled that an old jeep trail up Salt Creek in Canyonlands National Park is not a “highway,” thereby upholding the park’s 2004 decision to officially close […]
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New Indian Energy Policy Draft Rewrites Bush-era Law
Several months ago at the State of Indian Nations address in Washington D.C., Jefferson Keel, President of the National Congress of American Indians, implored Congress and the Obama administration to dispose of the hurdles that have kept tribes from tapping their own energy resources. Since then, many more tribal leaders have come before the House […]