The Sonoran Desert homeland of the Tohono O’odham Nation has become a nerve-wracking police state, caught in the crossfire between drug and immigrant smugglers and the U.S. Border Patrol.
Also in this issue:
The Forest Service has overhauled its cumbersome forest-planning process, but many experts say the agency may have gone too far.
The end of ‘analysis paralysis’?
The Forest Service overhauls its forest-planning process — but goes too far
New Mexico’s water rebel
Name: Bill Turner Fond Childhood Memory: Listening to the Lone Ranger radio show: “Good will prevail.” Coffee or Tea: Coffee, black, in a to-go cup with a few cubes of ice Resume Excerpts: Firewall riveter for Navy S2F submarine-hunter aircraft (1958); Peace Corps volunteer and geologist in Cyprus (1963-1964); New Mexico natural resources trustee (1995-2003);…
Even Sacajawea had to wash her socks sometimes
Ed Marston’s review of Alvin Josephy’s new book Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes refers to Bernard DeVoto’s Course of Empire as a “traditional” perspective characterizing the expedition as “one long and heroic act, one close call, one brilliant decision after another.” Having just re-read all three of DeVoto’s Western histories, I must take exception…
Does this mean you’ll renew your subscription?
I congratulate you and author Emma Brown on the recent article “Under the Radar.” Many, perhaps most, of your articles relate controversies that involve high-stakes battles between corporations, government entities, environmental organizations, or landowners. This story is a human one that transcends our differences. This is not a news report that you have published, but…
Easements are too easy
“Two Weeks in the West” noted problems with Colorado’s conservation easement tax credit program. This was just enough information to frighten people, but not enough to help them understand the real nature and extent of the problems with the state tax credit. It is widely estimated that 20 to 25 percent of all easements started…
Ode to a public lands experiment
This could have been just another coffee-table volume full of stunning vistas and images of elk grazing in misty valleys. But by refusing to be yet another pretty book, Valles Caldera: A Vision for New Mexico’s National Preserve better serves the preserve’s long history and complicated beauty. The preserve’s abbreviated history goes something like this:…
A quest for the world’s finest pinot noir
This is no stodgy dissertation on wine and how it’s made. With the very first sentence of The Grail, Brian Doyle uncorks a full-bodied work of enthusiastic storytelling. The Grail delivers on the promise of its subtitle: A Year Ambling and Shambling Through an Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in…
The Land of the Dry
Like many of us who have lived in the West for a long time, I think it’s the best place to be. We have more open space, grander vistas, cleaner air, purer water, more wildlife, and less traffic than those who live at lower elevations. The country itself — all that public land close to…
Heard around the West
THE NATION Molly Ivins, that passionate defender of the underdog, died recently from breast cancer at age 62, leaving behind hilarious books skewering the Texas Legislature and a Texas homeboy named George W. Bush. The word “scrappy” doesn’t begin to describe her style. John Nichols, in a tribute to Ivins in the Nation, called her…
One Nation, Under Fire
Illegal drugs and immigrants pour across an open frontier. The government responds with helicopters and ATVs. And the once-quiet desert homeland of the Tohono O’odham Nation becomes a nerve-wracking police state.
Border Patrol Whack-a-Mole
If you believe that political calculation can’t trump reason indefinitely, you haven’t been paying attention to the illegal immigration debate in the United States, which hasn’t, actually, been a debate. It’s been a disingenuous shouting match, something like the banter between competing barkers at the county fair as they tout the relative virtues of the…
Two weeks in the West
Forests battered by budget cuts
Sans petrol
Grassroots efforts quietly lay the groundwork for a post-oil world
Powered by pond scum
Algae may prove a promising source of biofuel
Dear friends
VISITORS Richard Heede stopped by in early January to fill us in on his Snowmass company, Climate Mitigation Services, which can pinpoint a particular company’s contribution to climate change. In 2003, Heede completed an inventory of ExxonMobil’s emissions between 1882 and 2002. Now he’s expanding the study to the world’s 85 top corporate greenhouse gas…