If you’re concerned about the effect your food choices have on the environment, you might want to reconsider cheeseburgers. A recent study shows that beef and milk products are the world’s most polluting foods, thanks to the greenhouse gases released by cows. Meanwhile, in what has to be awkward news for locavores, the study, reported […]
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Believe it or not: Ranching has something to teach us
As the 21st century unfolds, it’s becoming clear that we need more family farmers and ranchers on the land, not fewer. We need them not only for the food they provide, but also for a lesson in how to live on the land. It’s an ironic turn of events. For decades, livestock grazing in the […]
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The end of an affair
I hate to say it, but it’s true: I’m in love with my lawn. My love affair began romantically in the promising early days of spring, as regular rain showers turned my backyard in Wyoming into something very Southampton-like. My lawn was worthy of a respectable English cricket game: A cushy playground for bare feet. […]
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The next fires will be anytime, all the time
The warm wind of July 14, 1988, signaled the beginning of a remarkable series of fires that burned into Americans’ consciousness. Before that day, the managers of Yellowstone National Park and nearby national forests were confident that their efforts to restore natural fire were a success. After that day, the concept of the natural would […]
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Gas industry secrets and a nurse’s story
This July, an emergency room nurse named Cathy Behr wanted to tell Colorado’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission the story of how she nearly died after being exposed to a mystery chemical from a gas-patch accident. Regulators said she wasn’t scheduled to testify and they didn’t want to hear it. But anyone concerned about natural […]
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Saddling up for a good cause – at last
I accidentally set my brother, Walt, on fire when I was 3. In fifth-grade, I swiped his buffalo-head nickel collection, blowing it on candy and RC colas. During college, I unintentionally sank a drill bit into his thumb, sending him to the emergency room. After 50 years of my shenanigans, you’d wonder why he still […]
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Too many elk and not enough tough love
I took my first sleigh ride around the National Elk Refuge recently, and after observing the artificial-feed buffet for elk, the calf hoof-rot and all the willows nibbled to the nubs, all I could think was: “I have a feeling we’re not in Wyoming anymore.” Isn’t Wyoming supposed to be the state where the federal […]
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Native Americans walk the talk across America
Native Americans began their 3,600-mile walk across America at Alcatraz Island Feb. 11, and soon they’ll conclude in Washington, D.C. I’ve accompanied them on the Northern Route, co-hosting a Web radio program as they crossed the freezing Sierra Nevada Range, plodded through a hailstorm in western Utah and walked over the cold Rocky Mountains of […]
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My love affair with dandelions
It’s spring, and after a long, cold, dreary winter in New Mexico, I’m ready for it. And even though we’ve had a couple of late snowstorms and the trees are only just now beginning to get leaves, dandelions are already growing in the cracks of the rock wall next to my sidewalk. I call them […]
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Democrats could play the donkey card in Denver
It’s been said that burros, beans and brawn won the West. Now, organizers of the Democratic National Convention are weighing whether iconic images of the Old West should be used to market the event in Denver this summer. The debate is not without significance. Democrats, who have been unable to gain a foothold in Southern […]
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When you’re rich, you can dream
The last great boom that lit up Wyoming’s economy happened 25 years ago. The predictable bust followed, and it was the mid-1980s when oil prices crashed, nationwide demand for energy plummeted, interest rates soared and, overall, many get-rich dreams that had been hatched during the heady days turned to nightmares. Now, we are in the […]
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A beekeeper hopes for the best in spring
They all survived. My honeybee hives somehow managed to survive another winter. With all of the gloom and doom in the press about colony-collapse disorder, I had expected that at least one of my six hives would be pitifully empty or dead. Thankfully, I was wrong. Each of the hives has a different story, similar […]
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How not to save salmon
For centuries, killing predators was to fish and wildlife management what leeches were to medicine. By the mid-20th century, even the dullest minds in government had figured this out. But duller minds were yet to come. Enter the administration of George W. Bush. In 2008, it is hawking control of salmon-eating birds, fish and mammals […]
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All Westerners are stalwart (and other tall tales)
Western humor is all about adversity, braving the elements, surviving the landscape and stretching the truth. Call it polished prevarication. Not lies, exactly; more like embellishments. Stories that should be true, even if they’re not. Pioneers came West, and over time each group told its own jokes — cowboys, loggers, Lycra-clad bicyclists – and everyone […]
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Predator control looks a lot different on the ground
The extremists who are on a mission to eliminate the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services would do well to spend time with ranchers who live and work on our Western landscape. There, they might gain an on-the-ground perspective other than their narrowly defined agenda. As the old Greek shepherds — echoing the ancient Greek philosophers […]
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The ugly economy of killing wildlife
Most Americans have never heard of the federal agency euphemistically known as Wildlife Services. Yet it was a major force in eliminating wolf and grizzly bear populations in the early 20th century, and today spends over $100 million each year using mostly taxpayer dollars to kill more than a million animals — primarily birds — […]
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Coffee with the ladies
This morning, I saddled a dependable horse and headed for morning rounds at the calving meadow. I want to finish checking on the cows a little early so I can drive up the road to my neighbor’s house for the Shell Ladies’ Coffee. (Shell itself may boast a population of only 50, but we’ve had […]
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How to adopt a garden
The pioneer archetype looms large in the West. Strong and largely fictional, this heroic frontiersman delivered a calf at midnight in the blowing snow, mended fence all day and still had time to ride home into the sunset. Yet while one pioneer tended the herd, you can bet another was tending the garden, making applesauce, […]
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Tribes make a controversial deal on salmon
After three Columbia River tribes decided to stop pushing for the breaching of four federal dams on the Snake River, many critics spoke the ugly word “sellout.” The tribes will receive $900 million in new salmon projects in exchange for halting their court battle for the next decade. However, the Warm Springs, Yakama and Umatilla […]
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These are the West’s good old days
When I was younger, I was sure I’d been born into the wrong century. Everything I read about America in the 1800s made me wish I’d lived along that expanding Western frontier where people lived adventurous lives. My life seemed stale and predictable in comparison, with all the excitement sapped out of the West, buried […]