A sunken-eyed old man dressed in stiff, black Puritan clothes stalks a suburban neighborhood. The TV turns on by itself. A toy phone rings and rings — tinny and off-key — in the dead of night. A little blond girl crawls out of bed. Lifts the receiver to her ear, pauses, turns. Then, in a […]
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Petroglyph protection, at last
The world’s longest outdoor art gallery will finally get some protection from the gas drilling that threatens it. Eastern Utah’s Nine Mile Canyon, some 78 miles long, contains hundreds of homesteaders’ cabins, stage stops, cliff dwellings and granaries, and more than 10,000 Anasazi and Fremont petroglyphs. For two decades, conservationists and historians have sought protection […]
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Walking with Sawdust
For a few months a couple of years ago, my daily dog walk usually involved joining two old-timers — Lloyd “Sawdust” Wilkins. then 82, and his blue-heeler Cindy, who was about 70 in dog years. Sawdust walked his daily mile — it was on doctor’s orders — slowly with a cane, but he […]
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Just in Time for Christmas: Itsy-Bitsy Solar PV
One of the big obstacles to industrial-strength solar power is space: photovoltaic technology used in solar panels, which transforms sunlight into an electrical current, takes up valuable real estate. And one of the biggest obstacles to portable solar power is also size: Who wants to haul around a 2-pound PV panel just to charge a […]
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There’s gold in that there test-tube
Ten years ago, we ran a story about green groups suing the National Park Service over its plans to allow “bioprospecting” in Yellowstone. Private companies have made millions from heat-resistant microbes they’ve collected from the park’s thermal features (for example, Thermus aquaticus produced an enzyme used in DNA fingerprinting). Now, the Park Service is proposing […]
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The picture of forest health
Rich Wininger, a Weyerhaeuser manager in the Northwest, recently wrote us in response to our Nov. 9 feature story “Roadless-less“, which included a photo of clearcutting on Weyerhaeuser forest lands (unfortunately we don’t have permission to reproduce that photo on our Web site).
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Well wars
With water rights dating to 1865, you wouldn’t expect Joseph Miller to worry about the security of his water supply. But to Miller, the new homes and subdivisions popping up in Montana’s Gallatin Valley, where he owns a 500-acre ranch, are plenty of cause for concern. Miller suspects those developments, which pump groundwater from permit-exempt […]
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An official state microbe
Colorado may not hold the record for “Official State Whatevers,” but it’s got to come close with both a state rock and a state gemstone, two official state songs, a state insect and a state reptile, as well as the usual flower, bird, fish, tree, mammal and the like. But Wisconsin may […]
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Feels like teen spirit
Yesterday, the High Country News interns (Ariana Brocious, Cally Carswell and I) trekked to nearby Delta to speak to a journalism class at the local high school. After getting lost in the “big city” (Delta has about 6,500 residents to Paonia’s 1,500) we were greeted by five bright and eager young journalists. Well, sort of. […]
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Climate change by any other name …
In towns from Pocatello, Idaho, to Las Cruces, N.M., local governments are responding to the West’s changing climate. They’re cutting energy consumption, insulating homes, reducing water usage, and more — but often without ever mentioning “global warming” or “climate change”, loaded terms that can trigger heated debates. Instead, they’re promoting their policies under the auspices […]
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Desert Rock on hold
The proposed Desert Rock power plant on the Navajo Nation near Farmington, N.M., will need to find a new source of cash after the U.S. Department of Energy denied a $450 million stimulus funding bid for carbon-capture controls last week. The funding would have covered about 43 percent of the cost of those controls. The […]
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A golden ruling
It’s not often that the world’s largest gold mining company doesn’t get what it wants, especially in the nation’s largest gold-producing state. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that Barrick Gold’s proposal to dig a 2,000-foot deep open pit at the Cortez Hill mine on Mount Tenabo lacks sufficient environmental review. The […]
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The fight over cap and trade
The carbon emissions trading scheme known as cap-and-trade is on the global table as the United Nations Climate Change conference gets underway this week in Copenhagen. Cap-and-trade is also a feature of the Waxman-Markey bill currently being reshaped by the U.S. Senate after passage in the House in June. Hailed by supporters as “an important […]
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A new line of defense
The attorneys for Tim DeChristopher, the University of Utah student who made bogus bids at a BLM drilling-rights auction last year, have come up with a new line of defense: selective prosecution. DeChristopher is charged with such federal felonies as interfering with a government auction and making a false representation. If convicted, he […]
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Doggone it
The black-tailed prairie dog won’t be protected under the Endangered Species Act, the feds announced today. Despite the fact that the ‘dogs now occupy about 3 percent of their original habitat, and despite plague, poisoning and “varmint hunts”, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service says populations are increasing. That’s good news for farmers, ranchers, and […]
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Nuclear Nevada
“Some of you have been inconvenienced by our test operations,” the Atomic Energy Commission wrote to residents living near the Nevada Test Site, in Nye County, in 1955. “At times some of you have been exposed to potential risk from flash, blast, or fall-out. You have accepted the inconvenience or the risk without fuss, without […]
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Down on copper mine
Plans to move forward with what would be the third- or fourth-largest copper mine in the country have been shelved for another year. The U.S. Forest Service has postponed an environmental impact study for a proposed copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains, 30 miles southeast of Tucson, Ariz., until April 2010 (see our 1997 […]
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Keeping uranium out of the Grand Canyon
Are 21- year-old documents adequate to approve reopening a uranium mine about 15 miles north of the Grand Canyon? The Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Grand Canyon Trust say no, and they’re suing the Bureau of Land Management for giving the go-ahead, claiming the agency is violating multiple federal laws by […]
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The law of necessity
Tim DeChristopher won’t be allowed to put global warming on trial when he’s on trial. DeChristopher majors in economics at the University of Utah. Last fall, he went into a BLM auction and successfully bid on 13 drilling leases, also driving up prices for other successful bidders. But he didn’t have the $1.7 […]
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Spectrum of sexuality
On the night of June 16, 2001, Fred Martinez, Jr. was walking home from a party when he was chased into a rocky canyon on the outskirts of Cortez, Colo. The 16-year-old Navajo was cornered in the chasm’s nightmarish shadows and bludgeoned to death. Police found his body five days later. The crime shocked the […]