This male American Kestrel took off before I could take a decent shot — but I love the blurred movement anyway. It reminds me of how mercurial a March day can be, when a sunny morning gives way to afternoon snow showers, which clears to a star-studded night. The birds and other wildlife are as […]
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Wrestling with wolves
The U.S. Senate last Friday proposed a 350-page budget bill with one particularly furry paragraph: Section 1709. Before the end of the 60-day period beginning on the date of enactment of this division, the Secretary of the Interior shall reissue the final rule published on April 2, 2009 (74 Fed. Reg. 15123 et seq.) without […]
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Mustang management gets an overhaul
Roughly 37,000 wild horses and burros roam the West’s public lands — about 40 percent more than the feds think those lands can sustain. But the Bureau of Land Management’s efforts to round them up and adopt them out have been costly, ineffective and unpopular, with critics charging that horses are unnecessarily harmed and even […]
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Top-Down Land Management
Those who saw the March 1 hearing on Interior Secretary Salazar’s “Wild Lands” order may not have learned much about wilderness preservation’s impact on Western jobs — as the hearing’s title suggested — but they did, at least, witness a brilliant display of congressional snark. “The reality is,” said Congressman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) addressing his state’s […]
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Ozone in the air
Ah, fresh desert air, scented with sage, heady with …. ozone?? This winter, rural parts of Utah and Wyoming with lots of energy development have sometimes had higher levels of unhealthy ozone than big metropolitan areas like L.A.and Salt Lake City. Back in 2008, the Bureau of Land Management released a plan to manage 1.8 […]
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First Signs of Spring
We asked our HCN Facebook community what signs of spring they were seeing (or looking for) in their corner of the West. Several of you mentioned birds, including western meadowlarks — which have already started singing in earnest here in Western Colorado — sandhill cranes and and mountain bluebirds. Beth Pratt, who took the photo […]
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Exploring rural communities, food and environment
With this week’s release of its Atlas of Small Town and Rural America, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has given citizens a nifty tool to explore data on the lesser-populated parts of the country. The interactive atlas provides a nice mix of statistics, combining numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, […]
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Even Tea Partiers are Conservationists
New Mexico’s new governor, Republican Susana Martinez, may have gotten right down to business last month by putting a hold on a rule that would require large polluters to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But if new data on Western public opinion is accurate, then it wasn’t the state’s voters who gave her that mandate. According […]
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Crow Tribe to vote on water compact
Federal settlement could fund reservation infrastructure improvements.
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Missing the subdivisions for the trees
At first it’s hard to tell what we’re looking at. The tiny plane bumps and bounces through turbulence that warns of an incoming winter storm, repeatedly bucking my too-tall self (despite tight seatbelt) into the low ceiling and knocking the lens of my camera against the window. Beyond the smeared glass, rolling mountains spread eastward […]
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Yet another tar-sands hazard
Ever hear of “DilBit”? It sounds like a new kind of snack pickle, or maybe a little cat owned by Dilbert, the geeky cartoon character. Actually, it’s something far less benign – the raw oil extracted from tar sands development in Canada. Diluted bitumen (also known as “DilBit”) … is significantly more acidic and corrosive […]
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The Visual West – Image 7
The west side of the Colorado Rockies has its own unique weather patterns. Winter storms that smother the mountains to the east in dense, gray clouds, often break up over the valleys, leaving seams of clear sky that, at sundown, produce spectacular light shows. This shot includes a lower flank of Grand Mesa above Hotchkiss, […]
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Fish (farm) on
If you dine on salmon in the Rockies, you’re used to having fish travel by interstate to your dinner plate. But even if you live on the coast, don’t be surprised if your next succulent fillet actually comes from the other side of the planet. Unless a menu says “wild,” the seafood special probably grew […]
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Coal in the courts
When environmentalists began taking the climate change fight to the courts, their focus was strategically narrow. In the early part of this decade, most climate-related lawsuits focused on taking out the most immediate threat: new coal-fired power plants. It was a logical approach; had a slew of new plants come online, “they would’ve overwhelmed any […]
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The birds and the blades
Driving through rolling hills into California’s Bay Area on Interstate 580, it’s impossible to miss the thousands of windmills spinning in the incessant breeze off the Pacific. The Altamont wind farm, built during the 1970s oil crisis, was an early example of the West’s clean energy potential. But there’s a startling unintended consequence of all […]
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The Visual West – Image 6
I had never really listened to a body of water talk; but this small reservoir at the confluence of the Uncompaghre and Gunnison rivers in Delta, Colo., insisted on a conversation as its ice-covered skin loosened and shifted under a strengthening Spring sun. It’s voice sounded like the deep groans of whales, punctuated by thunderous […]
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Quieting the Grand Canyon cacophony
In early February, the National Park Service released a draft plan that promises to restore peace and quiet to big chunks of the Grand Canyon by sharply reducing helicopter and airplane tourism. Since 1987, the Park Service has been trying to cut down on noise from sightseeing flights over Grand Canyon and other parks, which […]
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Teaching climate change in coal country
In the Powder River Basin, on a vast, grassy plain between the Big Horn Mountains and the Black Hills, the city of Gillette, Wyoming sits on top of America’s largest coal deposit. So close is the city to the strip mines that students at Campbell County High School can look out the window and see […]
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USDA to farmers: plant genetically modified crops!
The biotech fairy must be whispering a whole lot of sweet nothings (made with genetically-modified sugar) into U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s ear. Or something. In late January, the Secretary announced the USDA’s decision to completely deregulate genetically modified alfalfa, allowing it to be planted anywhere, without restriction. Just about a week later, […]
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“What’s good for the rancher is good for the grouse”
Last spring, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the greater sage grouse deserved listing under the Endangered Species Act, but declined to extend federal protections because resources were limited and other species were in more peril. At the time, the decision looked like the kind of politically savvy, centrist maneuver that has become […]