Is there a way through the Wests’s bitter wild horse wars? Also, learning from the Gila wildfire, the “war” on coal, deformed frogs, finding hipsters in Green River, Utah, and more.
Altered amphibians
This August, University of Colorado-Boulder disease ecologist Pieter Johnson made a ghoulish discovery in an Oregon pond: an “octo frog,” with eight hind legs. It was a particularly disturbing example of the kind of amphibian malformations Johnson has recorded in 17 states, six of them Western, since 1996. A common, period-sized flatworm, Ribeiroia ondatrae, plays…
Costly new geothermal technology could edge out fossil fuels
At the northern edge of the Geysers, the world’s largest geothermal complex, which sprawls over nearly 40 square miles north of Santa Rosa, Calif., Houston-based power company Calpine is conducting an experiment. On the surface, not much sets the project apart from the 18 ridge-top power plants and dozens of other drilling platforms here, most…
Is there a way through the West’s bitter wild horse wars?
On a sunny spring day, T.J. Holmes creeps up a dusty arroyo in southwestern Colorado. The 41-year-old former journalist and mountain-bike champ wears beat-up jeans, her blonde curls unfurling from a sun-bleached visor and a big gun slung over one shoulder. The chalky hills of Disappointment Valley look as if they deserve their name. This…
What are a bunch of hipsters doing in Green River, Utah?
Updated 11/14/12 At 3 on a Friday afternoon, Armando Rios and Ashley Ross are distributing fliers for tonight’s art show. Rios sports an ironic Burt Reynolds mustache and purple button-down. Ross, in her tight black leggings and long dark bangs, looks like she stepped out of a coffee shop in the Mission. But this isn’t…
What scientists are learning from wildfire in New Mexico
New Mexico’s Gila National Forest is an ideal place to study wildfire scars. Ponderosa pines on the western cliffs have blackened bark at their bases. On the eastern range, frequent burns keep the grass treeless and nutrient-enriched, so that it stretches for miles like a thick green hide. From a small plane in July, I…
Enough (political stories) already
I was disappointed with what appears to be a new political stance on the part of HCN (“Red State Rising,” HCN, 10/29/12). First came an article devoted to electoral politics in Montana and Denny Rehberg. Now comes the most recent edition on the politics of Utah. While I recognize the essential nature of politics as…
Getting involved with the West
The High Country News Board of Directors gathered in Santa Fe, N.M., in late September to toss around story ideas with readers, discuss HCN’s growing digital audience, and strategize about the future. The context for the discussions was a proposed $2.2 million budget that aims to improve the quality of the magazine and website, while…
Inslee’s opportunity
I hope Jay Inslee wins the Washington gubernatorial race and takes a courageous and legacy-making stand with the governor of Oregon to remove the Snake River dams to restore the salmon runs (“Races where the environment matters. Sort of.” HCN, 10/29/12). The science on this is conclusive. If Jay can win his race, it will…
BLM “ecosanctuaries” unlikely to provide relief for wild horses
On a crisp May morning, Madeleine Pickens, a 65-year-old businesswoman and the soon-to-be-ex-wife of billionaire financier T. Boone Pickens, steps out onto the weathered porch of her old Nevada ranch house wearing taut white riding pants, suede boots and movie-star glasses under glossy platinum hair. She points briskly, using a dachshund mix named Tommy that…
Feds reluctant to kill wild horses
If caring for captive wild horses costs so much, why not just sell them for slaughter? It’s the “simple solution,” former Bureau of Land Management wild horse and burro program chief Don Glenn, now working for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, told a federal advisory panel this spring. “It makes no sense for the taxpayers…
Legend of the gray-headed hunter
“Red sky at morning, hunter take warning,” I told Jimmy Jack Mormon, as we stumbled along a frozen rutted road in the Montana dawn. “Ssshhh,” Jimmy ordered. “You’re warning the deer.” “Oh, they’ve already heard about me,” I whispered back. I’d missed two the evening before. Beautiful does, both, stepping carefully out of a willow…
The bastard child of the range
About 10 years ago, reporter Dave Philipps found himself staring in awe at the thousands of captive mustangs corralled near Cañon City, Colo. He was there to write about wild horses rounded up from public rangelands by the Bureau of Land Management. Some were adopted out, he was told, but most would go into “retirement”:…
A review of On Arctic Ground
On Arctic Ground: Tracking Time Through Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve,Debbie S. Miller,142 pages, hardcover:$29.95.Braided River, 2012. The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is the largest single chunk of public land in the country — more than 10 times the size of Yellowstone National Park and home to caribou, polar bears and large populations of migratory…
The violent story of our first national park: A review of Empire of Shadows
Empire of Shadows: the Epic Story of YellowstoneGeorge Black548 pages, hardcover: $35. St. Martin’s Press, 2012. Whenever my country’s absurd politics wear me out, I remind myself that we were the first nation to have a true national park: Yellowstone. Sometimes, I’ll even drive the four hours or so south from my home to the…
Utah’s utopia, unfulfilled
I found Jonathan Thompson’s article on Utah’s split personality between its politics and economic policies interesting and informative (“Red State Rising,” HCN, 10/29/12). Especially insightful is his observation about the economic disparity between the Wasatch Front and the rest of the state’s communities. If one checks the most recent annual data published by the U.S. Commerce Department, you…
BLM mission fail?
The following comments were posted at HCN.org in response to Jodi Peterson‘s Oct. 16 blog “BLM looks for balance,” which concerned the recent wave of criticism the agency has received for its outsized focus on fossil fuel extraction. I retired after almost 35 years in BLM field offices. I believe the concept of public lands…
Economics, not environmental regs, are battering coal power
This fall, as temperatures cooled down and politics heated up, red, white and blue signs sprouted in Delta County in western Colorado, just down from the North Fork Valley’s three huge underground coal mines. “Stop the war on coal. Fire Obama,” they say. By the time you read this, the world will know who won…
