Plans to fence as much as possible of the U.S.-Mexico border could derail the return of rare jaguars to the Southwest.

Two weeks in the West

The price of that guacamole you love to snack on is probably going to climb. California’s farmers, already struggling with drought, are facing even drier times, and some avocado growers are hacking down trees to save water.  California has withered under drought for much of the last decade, and this year could end up being…

by Jonathan Thompson

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I listened to elders and medicine people from over a dozen tribes give testimony to Forest Service Supervisor Nora Rasure, explaining to her why snowmaking with treated wastewater was blasphemy (HCN, 9/17/07). I watched middle-aged men bow their heads as tears streaked their faces. None of that seemed to move Ms. Rasure. She told the…

by Mary Sojourner

So much for that doggie in the window

Over the years, the Classifieds section has greatly expanded. No problem there – I’m sure it represents needed income for HCN, and the advertising has been an extension of HCN’s mission to report news of Western resource issues. However, I was quite dismayed with the Aug. 20 ad for the sale of an AKC female…

by Jan Raffaele

The power of pond scum

The article describing the potential use of pumping CO2 underground prompts me to provide an alternative, and perhaps less costly, way of sequestering carbon exhausted from industrial sources (HCN, 9/3/07). I would suggest that the energy producers pump gaseous CO2 through vast transparent vats filled with blue-green algae and nutrients. If the vats were placed…

by Matthew Kaser

Medium-rare, with a side of dead trees

Chalk another one up for the cattle industry and beef consumerism (HCN, 8/20/07). Clear mesquite trees to plant buffelgrass for cattle grazing, and clear more trees for mesquite charcoal to cook the cattle. The inverted cycle of life. I seem to have missed where the “good intentions” apply in this story. Was it good intentions…

by Reggie Nepomuceno

Rhetoric vs. reasonableness

The exchange inspired by Bryce Andrews’ “Living Precariously With Wolves and Cattle,” has revealed a striking contrast in soul and substance on opposite sides of the divide over management of public rangelands in the American West (HCN, 8/20/07). Andrews’ description of killing one wolf and participating, at least indirectly, in the killing of three others…

by Dan Dagget

Bargains with wolves

A common logical error is the “either-or” fallacy. We must either kill wolves or put up with dead and horribly maimed cows. And men so quickly turn to guns. I’m sure there are many solutions in between, one of which is “negotiating” with the wolves. Ann Daum writes about a rancher successfully negotiating with coyotes…

by Kathleen Ochs

Nothing out there can be a very good thing

“You want to go where? There’s nothing out there, you know.” That’s what my friends from the Midwest said about Wyoming 15 years ago, when I bolted the crowds and moved West. To mark that occasion, I recently spent the anniversary of my escape in a vast desert that even Wyomingites forsake for mountains and…

by Julianne Couch

RV Nation

We started the list on Interstate 80, somewhere east of Lovelock but most definitely before the blue-dome skies and dun hills around Dunphy. We passed them, one by one. Dutch Star. The Manor. Wanderer Wagon. The Contessa. The drivers looked down at us while their tailpipes coughed black. Southwind. Four Winds. Trade Winds. Sea Breeze.…

by Evelyn Spence

Heard Around the West

THE WEST If Glen Canyon Dam were a person, says Shaun McKinnon in the Arizona Republic, “it would surely suffer from low self-esteem.” There are several reasons: Environmentalists want to breach the dam to benefit native fish and bring back beaches, the writer Ed Abbey wrote about blowing it to smithereens in The Monkey Wrench…

by Betsy Marston

Bordering on crazy

I’m not going to enter the dispute about whether it was Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin or someone else who first defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. I’ll just suggest that the U.S. government’s program to build miles – and then more miles – of fences along the…

by John Mecklin

Dear friends

A FORESTER, A FARMER, AND A FAMILY REUNION Sara Mattes, a selectman from Lincoln, Mass. (“where Paul Revere was caught”), came in while visiting the Western Slope. She noted that a lot of HCN’s reporting filters down to her advocacy work – including opposing anything that was supported by former Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif. Penny…

by Jodi Peterson