On the overworked Missouri River, searching for signs that pallid sturgeon haven’t reached the end of their line. Also, superhero scientists unleash new weapons in the fight against invasive cheatgrass, the politics of public health, fire scientists duke it out over what the West’s forests should look like, and more.
Storm on Lava Creek: A season in Yellowstone
By the second mile of my third hike during my first season in Yellowstone, thunder booms near. I wonder if we’ll have time to finish the hike. • • • Ten days ago, my best friend, Alison, and I began our new summer jobs as Xanterra lodging reservation agents at Mammoth Hot Springs, after a…
Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like
Mark Williams and Bill Baker stand amid ponderosa pines in the mountains west of Fort Collins, Colo., holding a copy of a 19th century land survey. They’re looking for a small pile of rocks with three notches on the east side, indicating that a General Land Office surveyor stopped here to describe the forest. Surveyors…
Can pallid sturgeon hang on in the overworked Missouri River?
Chrrrrp, chrrrp: Our headphones echo with the tinny peeps of a radio-tagged pallid sturgeon (Scaphyrincus albus). Dave Fuller, a Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks fisheries technician, maneuvers the jet boat up and down the Missouri River on a beautiful October day. The sapphire sky has yet to succumb to winter’s haze, and the…
One Sagebrush Rebellion flickers out — or does it?
“No thief who has to pay for what he steals will steal for long.” — Nevada rancher Wayne Hage, explaining to High Country News in 1995 why he had filed a lawsuit against the federal government over restrictions on his livestock grazing. That landmark Sagebrush Rebellion lawsuit, hailed as protecting the rights of Western ranchers…
The politics of public health
On August 28, Utah Congressional candidate Mia Love took the podium at the Republican National Convention to riff on “personal responsibility” and the convention’s “We Built It” refrain — a distortion of President Obama’s words about how public infrastructure helps people run their businesses. Love didn’t mention Tropical Storm Isaac, which a few days before…
Only more water will help the Bay Delta
Emily Green’s story, “Tunneling under California’s water wars,” reads as if it were written by Governor Jerry Brown’s office (HCN, 8/20/12). Those who extract water from the Bay Delta want a reliable supply. Unfortunately, that is not possible. We must adapt to a future with less water, not continue to demand more. Merely moving the…
Salvation for our dam nation?
On Washington’s White Salmon River last October 26th, sirens bleated, a man barked, “Fire in the hole!” and a cavity was blasted in the bottom of the 125-foot high Condit Dam. A few suspenseful seconds passed. Then, the reservoir behind the dam erupted through the hole and became a river again, although the water was…
See you in October
A heads-up: High Country News staffers will be taking a much needed two-week publishing break after this issue. We’ll be catching up on work around the office as well as harvesting North Fork Valley produce and watching the aspens change. Look for our special annual books and essays issue around Oct. 15, and visit hcn.org…
Song of loss and redemption: A review of Theft
Theft BK Loren224 pages, softcover: $16.Counterpoint, 2012. Development’s brutal erosion of the landscape is a fact of life in the West. In the hands of lesser writers, it often becomes a cliché — shorthand for the destructive side of human nature and the grief and rage it provokes. Even when tackled by good writers, it…
The great New Mexican juniper massacre
385,000 years: That’s the estimated collective age of old, live junipers illegally cut for firewood between July 2010 and November 2011 on Bureau of Land Management land in northern and central New Mexico. Hardest hit have been the surreally beautiful badlands west of the small town of Cuba, now stippled with freshly sawed tree stumps,…
Grand Canyon floods and native fish
The last time the Colorado River plunged unhindered through the Grand Canyon, swollen by snowmelt to 126,000 cubic-feet per second, was in 1957. Glen Canyon Dam rose soon after, delivering cheap hydropower and reliable water to cities, farms and industry. For native fish, the transformation was debilitating. Most of the river’s sediment — which built…
Pallid’s PR problem
For a large, ancient and extremely endangered species, the pallid sturgeon receives remarkably little respect. The fish is nobody’s poster child. Unlike trout and salmon, it has no real champions among environmental groups; it occasionally gets passing mention, but little direct advocacy, and few are actively engaged in the recovery effort. Pallids spend their entire…
Treadwell can’t have his oil and solve climate change, too
Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell is under the dangerous impression that he can have his cake and eat it too when it comes to Alaska’s non-renewable natural resources (“The U.S. is an ‘Arctic Nation,’ ” HCN, 8/20/12). We all hope for economic recovery, and oil reserves are certainly a fast path to that for Alaska. But…
What about Pebble Mine?
As a recently retired U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist, I’m reassured to know that Alaska Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell appreciates the role of science in protecting the environment (“The U.S. is an ‘Arctic Nation,’ “ HCN, 8/20/12). Many decision-makers don’t. I would have been extremely interested to hear Treadwell’s position on the Pebble Mine proposed for…
Great Basin scientists unleash new weapons to fight invasive cheatgrass
This guy is lovely!” ecologist Beth Leger exclaims, falling to her knees. A tiny, energetic woman in her mid-30s, Leger hovers, bee-like, over a teensy grass with blue-green blades. It is, she tells me, a “cute” native called Poa secunda. It’s early May, and Leger, graduate student Owen Baughman and I are crouched on Peavine…
Native plant growers face many challenges
Up at Jerry Benson’s native seed farm in central Washington, during harvest season, workers walk through fields sticking tiny vacuums up into what looks like a crop of bridal veils. Those veils, made out of a tulle-like netting, keep Benson’s precious phlox seeds — which tend to explode out of their seed cases — from…
Scientific superheroes
Other researchers investigating new tools and tricks to help suppress invasive cheatgrass: Nancy Shaw, U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Boise, Idaho Shaw’s investigation into new seed-drilling tools could mean the difference between success and failure for many native seeds. She’s been testing a minimum till drill, which reduces soil disturbance, compaction and erosion. Using it,…
History through a wide-angle lens
History is conveniently framed in your story about the conflict over Taos land grants (“Troubled Taos,” HCN, 8/20/12). Nowhere is the King of Spain’s right to grant the land in the first place ever questioned. One cannot argue there is a greater good in returning the land grants to Spanish grantees on the basis of…
Home improvement: A review of Sugarhouse
Sugarhouse: Turning the Neighborhood Crack House into Our Home Sweet HomeMatthew Batt258 pages, softcover: $14.95Mariner, 2012. Matthew Batt is a perpetual student, earning his Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah while his wife, Jenae, works — until she finally gets tired of supporting his grad-school habit. “I got home from ‘class’ one night,…