The group Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife has helped to protect a lot of Western land and wildlife – while doing its best to kill off as many predators as possible.
Heard Around the West
IDAHO What you surely don’t need when you show up for work is two men walking into your office carrying a goat. Then one says cheerily: “Congratulations, you’ve been goated!” True, the goat is a mini-breed, no bigger than a dog, but it does poop (one goat-handler totes a handy pooper-scooper) and it is, after…
Dear friends
SUMMER BREAK As we do every June and December, we’ll be skipping an issue. Our staff plans to spend the last two weeks of June catching up on the long-term projects that we never quite find time for, enjoying family and friends, and battling the bindweed that’s overtaken our gardens. Look for the next HCN…
Two weeks in the West
Just call it As Interior Turns, the scintillating soap opera set at the U.S. Department of Interior. The newest star in the revolving cast is James Caswell, who’s been named by President Bush to head up the Bureau of Land Management. Kathleen Clarke stepped down from the post in February. Caswell, a veteran forester, currently…
The red, white and blue of ‘red or green?’
New Mexico’s chile industry faces hot competition from global producers
Worth the work
NAME: Jeremias Pink AGE: 24 VOCATION: Graphic designer, nonprofit organizer, bicycle mechanic HOME BASE: Pocatello, Idaho KNOWN FOR: Giving away bicycles HE’S READING: Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing by anthropologist Michael Taussig FAVORITE FOOD: “I eat what I’m told.” HE SAYS: “Whether or not we’re accomplishing our mission…
Blessed to be born Havasupai
John Dougherty’s article “Problems in Paradise” paints an unfair picture of the Havasupai people (HCN, 5/28/07). He and another writer, Annette McGivney in Backpacker magazine, make us sound like a lawless community, with gangs running amok. Supai Village is a community where all of us feel safer letting our children out of our sight to…
Contraceptives not bullets
I believe the deer birth-control program at Point Reyes and other similar public areas is a good approach (HCN, 5/28/07). As someone who has lived with deer my whole life in both rural and suburban settings, I believe there are multiple major problems with allowing hunting in popular public lands, parks, and refuges. First, publicly…
Big dams, big deal
With a title like Big Dams of the New Deal Era: A Confluence of Engineering and Politics, it’s no surprise that this tome is deep on history and long on details. That said, the book is also remarkably hard to put down. It’s well worth the read for those who have ever wondered how structures…
The great American road trip
Long road trips are a guilty pleasure in the era of climate change. It’s one thing to recycle, buy organic, and switch light bulbs, but to give up the car altogether? Travel feels essential to an American’s experience of the world, and for most of us, travel means driving. Author W. Scott Olsen — who…
Lost in the Land of the Ugly Stepsister
Here is a name for it: the Ugly Stepsister Syndrome. In a state known for its beauty and grandeur, its last best place-ness, its Big Sky Country appeal, there exists a place where the citizens feel shortchanged, second-best, S.O.L. in the great economic scheme of things that is the New West. And they want to…
Predator hunters for the environment
Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife has protected a lot of Western land and species. It’s also killed a lot of coyotes (and can’t wait to go after some wolves).
The resurgence of hook-and-bullet conservation
When mule deer populations plummeted across much of the West in the 1990s, some sportsmen took aim at a familiar target. Kill the coyotes, which are adept at finding fawns in the grass, they said, and the herds will rebound. Here in western Colorado, the state Division of Wildlife responded with a five-year study on…
Watershed moment
A former California timber town becomes ground zero in the battle over bottled water