By Zach Wilson, The Daily Yonder The greatest challenge in rural education is the utter disregard for place. State and national governments pursue economic growth at the cost of communities, and such disregard is reflected in the way the state approaches public schooling. One of the most ugly and expedient trends in education is the […]
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10 years post September 11: Keeping America free and open
Almost 10 years ago, just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, my wife and I back-packed from near our home in Kalispell, Montana to Waterton Lakes National Park, in Alberta, Canada. For documentation, we carried our driver’s licenses, although I don’t recall anyone asked for much of a look. We just returned from another Waterton vacation. […]
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Attracting attention
By some accounts, the eyes of the world were on my little mountain town on Aug. 23. That’s because Salida, Colo., was the starting point for the first stage of the week-long USA Pro Cycling Challenge race that wends through the Colorado mountains. Competitors come from all over the globe, and so do the TV […]
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Why Washington’s only coal-fired power plant is having a bad year
By Clark Williams Derry, Sightline.org While I was looking for some other information, I ran across the most recent coal consumption stats from the US Energy Information Administration. And from all indications it’s been a very strange, very bad year for the Transalta coal-fired power plant in Centralia, WA. Take a look: The bars represent consumption […]
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Some places are as good as gold
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House “Wilderness, wilderness . . . We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.” Ah, nothing like a little […]
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How federal budget cuts may hurt Indian Country
So far, most of the government”s austerity movement has been theoretical. We know the federal budget is shrinking, but the evidence of that has been slow to surface. Proposals to wipe out the Bureau of Indian Affairs (and replace it with what?) remain little more than spin. Kentucky Sen. Paul Rand’s bill, for example, has […]
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In megaloads battle, has David slain Goliath again?
By Nick Gier, NewWest.net Is there not a cause? Let no man’s heart fail him. —David facing Goliath (Samuel 1:17) Right in the midst of their battle against ExxonMobil, residents along Idaho’s Highway 12 received an email from an unlikely but eminently appropriate source. An Israeli activist fighting gas exploration in the Elah Valley found […]
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The monumental fight over Otero Mesa
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House The decade-long tussle over energy development in New Mexico’s Otero Mesa has been reinvigorated recently, as hardrock mining claims now threaten the region for the first time. The area, sometimes referred to as the “Southwest’s Serengeti,” is a 1.2 million-acre stretch of undisturbed Chihuahuan Desert grassland. The sprawling but sensitive […]
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Rants from the Hill: Ground truthing the “Peaceable Kingdom”
Last night I lay awake in bed listening to the sound of little claws scrabbling inside the walls of our house. Because the sheetrock acts as a drumhead, amplifying sounds within the wall, the scratching is disturbingly loud. It sounds as if there is an angry ferret in the wall, which is how I know […]
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Religious Intolerance Plays Role in Presidential Politics
Judge a person by his character, not his race, color or creed. It seems Americans — liberals and conservatives alike — could use a booster shot on this topic, at least when it comes to the issue of Mormons, or members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. Two men with LDS roots, Mitt Romney […]
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Know your H2O: The review
Editor’s note: David Zetland, is a senior water economist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who trained in California. We cross-post occasional content from his blog, Aguanomics, here on the Range. The Surfrider Foundation sent me this 20 minute video. I liked most of it but had some comments (below). Watch the video and see if […]
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Rural unemployment slightly better in Interior West and Plains than elsewhere
By Bill Bishop, the Daily Yonder (click to view larger) Unemployment in rural counties turned up sharply in June, cracking nine percent for the first time since March. The rural unemployment rates rose from 8.7% in May to 9.2% in June. Unemployment in rural America remains lower than in urban counties or in the nation […]
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Lewis, Clark and Darwin
Charles Darwin wasn’t born until three years after the Lewis & Clark Expedition was over, but evolutionary science is shedding a new light on a question that has perplexed me and other history buffs about their epic journey. Here’s the question: Why were the Indians so friendly to Lewis & Clark? The answer might just […]
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A tale of three women conservationists
In the beginning, there was only water as far as the eye could see, according to the Chemehuevi Indians, who once traversed the rocky peaks and steep slopes of what is now Joshua Tree National Park. Ocean Woman, afloat on a woven boat with wolf, mountain lion and coyote, created the land by rubbing dead […]
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What does it mean nowadays to be a Westerner?
By Steve Bunk, NewWest.net Former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt’s re-entry in the political fray in recent weeks, which he says was precipitated by fears over the future of the nation’s wild lands, brings up the question of what it means nowadays to be a Westerner. To many people, the answer probably would be […]
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BLM issues final EIS for Over the River
The federal Bureau of Land Management has issued a final Environmental Impact Statement for the controversial “Over the River” art installation. Proposed by the artist Christo and his late wife Jeanne Claude, the project would suspend nearly six total miles of translucent fabric in various spots along a 42-mile stretch of the Arkansas River between […]
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Hydropower remains dominant energy source in the West
By Jamie Bedwell, guest writer at NewWest.net ABOUT THIS SERIES: Students from The University of Montana School of Journalism, with the help of American Public Media’s Public Insight Network, reported and wrote stories for New West on the energy economy of the Rocky Mountain region. The project originated as part of the Green Thread initiative […]
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How troubling is ocean acidification?
By Jennifer Langston, Sightline.org This post is part of the research project: Northwest Ocean Acidification Not every commercial fisherman is convinced that curbing carbon emissions is necessary to stop global warming. But the evidence that fossil fuel pollution is making the oceans more corrosive—and removing building basic building blocks of the marine world—starts to get […]
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Naming the wind
Living in the West means living with the wind. Some of our winds even have names like chinook, dust devil, black roller and blue norther. Many of us learned of another name this July, when a “haboob” struck Phoenix. It’s a blinding dust storm, provoked by strong gusts from a thunderstorm. The National Weather Service […]
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Dental boot camp brings services to Alaska natives
BETHEL, Alaska — Conan Murat has a tough schedule. About every other week he packs up a portable dental office, checks his groceries, sleeping bags and other supplies, then he flies to one of his 13 assigned remote villages in the Yukon-Kushkokwin Delta. Then remote is a relative word: Murat’s base is Aniak, some 90 […]