Editors Note: This piece is cross posted from Mother Earth Journal, where reporter Terri Hansen writes about indigenous people and the environment. Extreme weather events forced an awareness of urgent climate disruptions this year, with July 2012 being the hottest month on record – hotter even than the Dust Bowl’s July 1936.The science tells us climate changes would […]
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Will Utah clean up its sale of public wildlife?
For years now, well-connected hunting groups in Utah have figured out a way to make big bucks off big game. Now news reports indicate sportsmen in Utah are getting fed up. Will Utah’s lawmakers put a spotlight on these transactions? Here’s the deal: Every year, two sportsmen’s groups, Sportsmen for Fish & Wildlife and the […]
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Desert solitaire: Las Vegas bets big on rural water
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House A water mining project that’s been a quarter-century in the making took a major step forward last week, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recommended approval of a plan for diverting groundwater from three counties in eastern Nevada to Sin City. In its final environmental impact statement (FEIS), the […]
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Digital detox in the high Cascades
Turns out, I’m so far behind the curve in the electronic media I’m cutting edge. Years ago, I realized my basic neo-Luddite constitution did not square with making a living in the modern communication industry. So I learned to download and up-link. I “blog” and “friend” as verbs. I’ve got desktops, laptops, tablets and a […]
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Rants from the Hill: Beauregard puppy
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a FREE podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. […]
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Harvesting versus hunting
One interesting effect of spending three weeks in the bottom of the Grand Canyon is the fresh view you bring to the “rim world” outside the canyon afterwards. Some of the novel experiences are pleasing (“oh yeah! Getting around is so convenient!”) while others are puzzling. One such moment occurred while I was catching up on […]
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Wheels of change
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Many people who’ve hiked or run on mixed-use trails have experienced that moment when, lost in your mind, a mountain biker comes tearing down the slope from behind, scaring the spit out of you. I’m not fond of that particular sensation but, while I’ve been on umpteen trails […]
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Disney’s Unlikely Heroine: The Huntress
For decades, Disney cartoons have reliably produced two stereotypes: brutish, cruel hunters and dizzy, passive princesses. But, holy daughters of Diana, times have changed. Maybe Disney’s anti-hunter bias is just the natural result of having a cast full of talking animals. But think about it: there’s Clayton, the evil hunter who nets Tarzan’s family of […]
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Seeing the (overcrowded) forest for the trees
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House I was wandering around Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) last week, absorbing the cooling sight of snowfields and the 30-degree temperature drop earned by more than doubling my elevation from Boulder. On my way along Trail Ridge Road, I stopped at the Farview Curve overlook on the west […]
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Rants from the Hill: I brake for Rants
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. I’ve […]
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Putting the West on a low-carb(on) diet
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House The day after the University of Colorado Law School’s annual summer conference — “A Low Carbon Energy Blueprint for the American West” — had ended, I was walking in downtown Fort Collins, when something above the foothills caught my eye. The dense white puff looked like a blooming […]
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Enjoying the wilderness
Only five days left. Amidst the turmoil of final preparations – checking and re-checking gear, packing, food-shopping – I’m engaging in a little psychological battle with myself regarding the object of all this activity: a 19 day, 16 person, DIY rafting trip on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. For those of us who […]
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Aging mining law handcuffs the American West
Two of my favorite western cities, Tucson, Ariz., and Boise, Idaho, share some common blessings and one common curse. The blessings include lovely mountain backdrops, vibrant universities and increasingly diverse economies. The shared curse: badly misguided mining claims upstream. I was a newspaper reporter in Boise for a short spell and when I return, I […]
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Don’t be too self-righteous
Many years ago, in an interesting turn of events, I found myself in the same truck (mine) as a famous environmental writer. I can take no personal credit for her presence there; she was speaking that evening at a literary event sponsored by a local college. A good friend of mine was organizing the event […]
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Water to the people
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House I hadn’t realized until I got an (en masse) email from Senator Mark Udall recently, that we’re celebrating water in Colorado this year. He and Sen. Michael Bennet introduced a resolution in May recognizing 2012 as the “Year of Water.” The declaration piggybacks on governor Hickenlooper’s “Colorado Water 2012” initiative which, […]
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Rants from the Hill: Sorry, Utah
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. […]
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Arizona, unpredictable as always
This month, all U.S. citizens have cause to celebrate: Arizona’s Republican governor, Jan Brewer, vetoed Senate bill 1332, which authorized the state to seize federal lands within its borders. Of course the whole notion was nuts, not to mention unconstitutional – although this didn’t prevent Utah governor Herbert from signing a similar bill awhile back – and Brewer deserves some […]
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Make anglers allies for endangered species
The prism of clear river water can distort and magnify the size of a fish, an effect amplified by adrenaline and nostalgia. Still, I remember one fish big enough to shake my whole view of the world. I was of that tender age when one believes one’s father to be capable of anything except failure. […]
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Treaty tribes dedicate final replacement fishing site
DALLESPORT, Wash. – On April 25, 2012, representatives from four tribes, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Army Corps of Engineers all stood by the Columbia River to mark the end of a construction project both useful and symbolic. It was the completion of the 31st — and final — fishing access site on […]
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Debate over what makes a road rages on in Utah
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House This spring, to fulfill a friend’s birthday wish, we traveled from Colorado into Utah, dropped south off of I-70 near Green River on Utah Highway 24, and drove about 30 miles before leaving the pavement. Our destination was the West Rim trailhead in the Horseshoe Canyon Unit of Canyonlands National Park. […]