Front and center are two peace-seeking, fish-loving, tax-hiking, tree-hugging, jewelry-wearing, long haired hippies. The brains behind the Pearce campaign seem to think that connecting Udall to 1960’s and 70’s-style environmentalism will be enough to discredit him. Whether or not this will be a successful strategy amid the West’s shifting political winds remains to be seen. […]
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Truth – the newest Klamath casualty
Klamath Riverkeeper’s letter in the 7/21 edition portrays PacifiCorp (owner/operator of the Klamath Hydroelectric Project) as an example of “multinational corporations perpetrating underpublicized acts of environmental injustice against rural communities.” Wow! Maybe so; but I am struck by the fact that this is precisely the way many “rural communities” portray Klamath Riverkeeper and other “environmental […]
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On Truth, Fiction and White Guilt
It was good to see HCN publish two long letters commenting on Matt Jenkin’s “Peace on the Klamath” feature in the 6/23 edition. As a Klamath River activist since 1986 I was deeply disturbed by Jenkin’s piece which omits complex Klamath realities in favor of the West’s Holy Grail – “Peace” between cowboys (agriculture) and […]
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Hula in the high country
On the surface, not much remains of Iosepa, a Polynesian settlement of Mormon converts that briefly flourished in Utah’s Skull Valley. A few gravestones and a fire hydrant linger in the desert where once more than 200 Hawaiians, Samoans and other Pacific Islanders settled to be closer to the mother church in the late 19th […]
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Agricultural water pollution on the line
The Bush Administration has been trying since 2005 to change Clean Water Act rules so that agricultural interests can dump polluted water into public lakes and streams without obtaining a permit. Each step of the way, Florida environmentalists represented by Earthjustice lawyers have filed lawsuits to block the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) from implementing the […]
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Denver to vote on impounding immigrants’ cars
The text of Denver Initiative 100, which goes before voters on August 12, uses the phrase “illegal alien” four times. Still, supporters insist it has nothing to do with immigration. The initiative would require Denver police to impound the car of anyone caught driving without a license, unless they believe the driver simply left his […]
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Senate Dems call for resignation of EPA’s Johnson
Back in 2005, the Senate withheld its confirmation of Stephen Johnson as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency when he refused to cancel the Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study, which proposed using human subjects to examine the effects of pesticides on children from infancy to age 3. When he agreed to cancel the study, the […]
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Survival or bust
The Quino checkerspot, a pretty patchwork butterfly native to the scrubland of southern California, is not doing so well. The butterfly has been listed as endangered since 1997 and only a few small populations remain. But a group of biologists have a suggestion for how the Quino—and other organisms on the brink of extinction—might be […]
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Utah fishermen no longer required to levitate
In Utah, as in many states, the public has a right to use the water in rivers for recreation. But the land underneath the state’s rivers is often privately owned. So what happens when someone touches the bottom? The question floated all the way to the Utah Supreme Court thanks to Kevin and Jodi Conatser, […]
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Las Vegas offers rural Nevada the dry end of the straw
Las Vegas is a thirsty city in a state that’s entitled to a measly four percent of the Colorado River’s annual in flow. That means that it’s had to be at turns creative and bare-knuckled in getting the water it needs to keep up with explosive population growth. Lately it’s been leaning towards the bare-knuckled […]
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New hcn.org
For the past 9 months I have been working with the wonderful folks over at ONE/Northwest and the Web Collective, both out of Seattle, on the new hcn.org. Built on the powerful open-source platform Plone, the new site gives us greater control over our content, more flexibility, and simply put, the ability to do more […]
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The many faces of rural America
Rural America is no longer Norman Rockwell’s version, if it ever was. Such is the lesson of a recent report by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, a policy research center that focuses on rural communities. The report, entitled Place Matters: Challenges and Opportunities in Four Rural Americas, makes clear that it […]
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Why Bush promotes drilling ANWR
This morning on the news show Democracy Now! Amy Goodman asked energy guru Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute why the Bush Administration continues to push drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The question was in response to Lovins’ assertion that oil corporations don’t want to drill in ANWR because […]
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One way to look at $4 gas
I just endured the most expensive tank of gas I’ve ever bought in my life, and the next one certainly won’t be any cheaper. Like most Americans, I’m not fond of paying $4 a gallon for gasoline. But while I was watching the pump numbers climb at astonishing rate, and remembering the days of my […]
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Enviros go to court in a last-ditch effort to save the Roan
Cataloguing the wildlife and habitat on the gas-rich Roan Plateau and listing the history of public input asking that it be saved, a coalition of 10 conservation and wildlife groups filed suit today in Denver District Court to halt the Bureau of Land Management’s August 14 auction of 55,000 acres on the plateau west of […]
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A mouse divided
The twisting tale of the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse took another turn yesterday as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the Wyoming populations of the rodent had become adequately viable to warrant their removal from Endangered Species Act protection. This rather protracted controversy has historically centered around the question of whether or not […]
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Utah ultra-conservatives kill a RINO
In what may be a sign of things to come, one of the country’s most conservative congressmen recently lost an election – to an even more conservative upstart. Despite being out-fundraised four to one, first-time office-seeker Jason Chaffetz defeated six-term U.S. House member Chris Cannon by 20 percentage points in Utah’s June 24 Republican primary. […]
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Oregon federal forest bills won’t reduce fire risk or restore forests
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio are each planning to introduce legislation for Oregon’s federal forests. DeFazio has distributed drafts of his bill and has been receiving comments back from environmental and timber interests; Wyden has been less forthcoming. Both members of Congress have indicated that their bills will protect Old Growth […]
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Wanted: Dead or Mostly Dead
“The common understanding of the term ‘live’ is, quite simply, ‘not dead.’” It may sound like something out of a Monty Python movie, but the above is actually a portion of the plaintiff’s argument in a U.S. Court of Appeals case decided last month in the Ninth Circuit. Environmentalists had issued a challenge to salvage […]