A liberal gun owner finds ‘gun nuts’ on both sides of the debate, an excerpt from Julene Bair’s book ‘The Ogallala Road,’ state and federal agencies feud over predator control in Alaska, California’s water crisis, and more.
The Big Nasty
On garbage and tolerance in the wilderness.
Archaeology’s poisonous past
Most U.S. ethnographic collections are contaminated with toxins. Will new cleaning methods help tribes reclaim artifacts?
Excerpt from “The Ogallala Road”
An author returns to a family farm in Kansas to explore drought and depletion.
The great gun-rights divide
A liberal gun owner finds ‘gun nuts’ on both sides of the debate.
Rain watch
What to expect from the likely El Niño summer across the West.
Alaska’s wildlife war
The federal government pushes back as the state ramps up predator control.
The path of the imagination
Conversations with Barry Lopez: Walking the Path of Imagination William E. Tydeman208 pages, softcover: $19.95.University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. For 40 years now, Barry Lopez has been at the center of the national and international conversation about social justice, and the fate of humanity and the Earth. In Conversations with Barry Lopez, the National Book…
Best use for hayfields
We can argue about who owns the water, yet ultimately the West has a long legal history and an exact answer: We call them water rights for a reason (“What the hay?” HCN, 4/28/14). The owner of those rights – that personal property – should ultimately have the ability to sell the property to the…
Welcome, Brian Calvert!
HCN is delighted to welcome new associate editor Brian Calvert. Brian, a fourth-generation Wyoming native, grew up in Pinedale and graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in 1994 with a BA in English liberal arts and minors in writing and media studies. He has worked as a foreign correspondent, writer, audio journalist, and, most…
Book Review: The Black Place: Two Seasons
The Black Place: Two Seasonsphotographs by Walter W. Nelson,essay by Douglas Preston108 pages, clothbound: $45. Museum of New Mexico Press, 2014 In the 1930s, while driving through northwest New Mexico, artist Georgia O’Keeffe stumbled upon a remote, uninhabited landscape she dubbed “The Black Place” – tall hills of layered sediment, coated in brown and black…
What the president can do for conservation
When a racist rancher in Nevada and his armed supporters can command headlines by claiming to own and control publicly owned lands, perhaps it’s time to remind Westerners about the history of the nation’s public-land heritage. Recall that it is we, the American people, who own the public lands that make up so much of…
Conflict for the sake of conflict
(This is an editor’s note accompanying an HCN magazine cover story, The Great Gun-rights Divide.) When federal land managers confronted by armed protesters abandoned their latest inept attempt to remove Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s illegally grazing cows in April, the rest of the world wondered, not for the first time, “What is up with the…
Drought watch
Drought is dehydrating much of the West, with several states in their third or fourth consecutive year. Southern Oregon, California, southern Utah and western Nevada already have extremely low streamflows and will likely get drier in coming months. Nevada and New Mexico reservoirs were at less than a quarter of their normal levels for early…
Baby birds get wood-chipped and draft horses for heavy dude ranchers.
THE WESTHuge draft horses, those “diesels of the horse world,” as the Idaho Statesman dubs them, are showing up at dude ranches these days, on tap for rugged trail rides because more and more would-be adventurers have supersized themselves. At Chico Hot Springs in Montana, for example, Heidi Saile of Rockin’ HK Outfitters said her…
Ordinary heroes
It was refreshing to read the article “Mind Over Mountain” (HCN, 4/14/14). As one who lives with a spinal cord injury, at first I thought, “Oh no, not another hero story.” There are heroes, and Jon Arnow may be one, but there are thousands who live with similar injuries and who “care about the West”…
Paying for risk-takers
When I was a kid in the 1950s, my dad expressed disdain for people so poor they’d build on riverbanks prone to flooding (“The stages of disaster,” HCN, 4/28/14). High ground was the motto for his dream home, perched on the stable bluffs of the Minnesota River. In 1978, I arrived in Tucson, Arizona, a…
Peak water
Bigger reservoirs and deeper wells won’t end California’s water crisis
Respect your rescuers
Thankfully, “How to get search-and-rescued,” Shaina Maytum’s travel horror story (HCN, 4/14/14), was short. Fixated on what the volunteer rescuers were wearing (Postal Service uniform, jeans, Keds), she neglected to admit what’s important: She’s lucky to be alive. Any sense of personal responsibility was missing, along with any gratitude for the search-and-rescue folks who drop…
The Latest: Utah loses Salt Creek road suit
BackstoryRevised Statute 2477, passed in 1866, allowed settlers to build highways across public land. Western counties later exploited it to reopen and maintain abandoned routes, even in national parks and wilderness study areas (“The road to nowhere,” HCN, 12/20/04). In 2004, Utah and San Juan County filed an R.S. 2477 suit to reopen the Salt…
The Latest: Coal companies seek export terminals beyond the Northwest
BackstoryCoal companies, frustrated by environmental regulations and growing competition from natural gas producers, have long hoped to expand their market by exporting coal to Asia. So far, however, they’ve been stymied by Western opposition, from Montana ranchers battling new rail lines to Washington residents fighting coastal terminals (“Coal-export schemes ignite unusual opposition, from Wyoming to…