The feature story in the November 10th edition of HCN – Still Howling Wolf – asked: Will Westerners finally learn to live with Canis lupus? The article looks for the answer in the attitudes of a variety of Northern Rockies residents in light of a lawsuit that returned the gray wolf to federal Endangered Species […]
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Bush’s last days
Accelerating oil shale development across 2 million acres, okaying an auction for gas drilling by three national parks, weakening endangered species protection, allowing more mining waste in rivers and streams, and exempting factory farms from air pollution reporting…just a few of the 53 “midnight regulations” President George W. Bush has launched in the past three […]
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Southern Utes discover a new kind of crude
The Southern Utes mean business. Their investment company, the Southern Ute Growth Fund, manages more than $1 billion in assets, including a set of real estate development companies and an oil and gas drilling business. Just this week, they opened a new high-end casino on their reservation south of Durango, Colorado. But the Utes are […]
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Recession in the gasfield?
Last weekend, the family and I drove over to Grand Junction, Colo., about an hour away from here, to run some errands. GJ, as we call it, is the metropolitan and service center of Colorado’s Western Slope. In other words, it’s awash with malls, big boxes, strip malls and fast food chains, not to mention […]
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Mambo like only bureaucracy can
Continuing a tradition of relatively strong stands on environmental degradation caused by natural gas drilling and other forms of development, the Rocky Mountain region (Region 8) office of the Environmental Protection Agency is now questioning a proposal to divert flows from Colorado’s only wild and scenic river: the Cache la Poudre. The agency contends that […]
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Mrs. T. Boone Pickens to the (horse) rescue
We’ve chronicled the sad story of the horse glut in the United States, brought on partly because of the slaughterhouse ban enacted two years ago, partly because of the rising cost of fuel and hay, and partly because of the failing economy. It all comes down to the unpleasant fact that there more horses than […]
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Already one Westerner gets job in Obama admin
Jim Messina — born in Denver, raised in Boise, with a University of Montana bachelor’s degree in political science — will be a deputy chief of staff in Barack Obama’s White House. Messina worked his tail off to get there. He was chief of staff for Obama’s campaign, and his political experience stretches from Alaska […]
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Administration publishes final oil shale regs
The Bush administration has a little more than two months left in office, but those two months promise to be an exciting — and probably distressing — time for those of us interested in federal land policy. The administration hopes to change a number of administrative rules before it rides into the sunset, and none […]
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Dam deal advances Bush’s Klamath River agenda
This week the Bush Administration, Warren Buffett’s PacifiCorp and the state governments of Oregon and California announced an “Agreement in Principle” to remove four of the five dams on the Klamath River. If all goes according to their plan, removal of four dams would begin in 2020. A fifth dam – Keno in Oregon – […]
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Public land for sale?
Given the size of the federal debt, $10 trillion and growing, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are proposals to reduce it. And why go through the pain of raising taxes or reducing spending when the federal government could just sell some public land — abundant in the West — and apply the proceeds […]
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Move over, chickens!
Wyoming’s industrious animal husbanders – who raise everything from cattle to pigs to yaks – will soon have yet another creature to cultivate. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission is now formulating rules for sage grouse farming. It all began with State Senator Kit Jennings, R-Casper, who initially proposed a $50,000 pilot program for farming […]
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Anticlimax
Over the past couple years, it’s looked like the region would see a resurgence in hardrock mining, thanks in large part to China’s booming economy. As recently as late summer, copper prices were well above $3 per pound; molybdenum hovered over $30 per pound. Towns like Leadville, Colo., which was devastated when the Climax molybdenum […]
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A grizzly situation
Bad news for grizzly bears, in Montana and Yellowstone. During the past decade, wildlife managers killed 58 of the federally-protected bruins in northwestern Montana. That makes biologists the biggest source of human-caused grizzly deaths in the region, ahead of train or car strikes (46), illegal shooting (34), and self-defense (20). The “management removals” happen when […]
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Big money used to bring Musgrave down
Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave was the Richard Pombo of the 2008 election, targeted by the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund and others for her anti-environmental votes (the League of Conservation Voters gave her a 15 percent rating this year, in 2006 she had an 8 and in 2005, a zero). The Defenders spent a total of […]
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Water Banks, the ESA and the Public Trust Doctrine
Matt Jenkin’s article “Liquid assets” in the October 27th edition is a good introduction to Water Banking – a concept which westerners are likely to hear used increasingly if predictions of diminished water supplies resulting from climate change are accurate. But the article only scratches the surface of a subject which West-watchers will want to […]
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The pundits are wrong
The news chatters with suggestions that some Western Democratic governors will take jobs in the new cabinet being formed by President-elect Barack Obama. Montana’s Gov. Brian Schweitzer … ! Arizona’s Gov. Janet Napolitano … ! Wyoming’s Gov. Dave Freudenthal … ! New Mexico’s Bill Richardson … ! Any of them would be good as the […]
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Ed Marston loses commissioner bid
Yes, Colorado turned blue. But in western Colorado’s Delta County, the GOP prevailed, giving the nod to the McCain-Palin ticket. Democratic congressman John Salazar fared best, getting about 45 percent of the vote. Not one Democratic candidate won here, from the top to the bottom of the ticket. I know something about being a Democrat […]
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Mormon Church wins on gay marriage
Swayed by an alliance of the Mormon Church, evangelicals and Catholic bishops, voters decided yesterday to use two states’ constitutions to ban marriage for gays and lesbians … … even though, I’ll interject, constitutions are normally intended to ensure the civil rights of minority groups. California’s Proposition 8 was the most intense gay-marriage battle ever […]
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Green state defeats green(ish) ballot measures
California’s raft of green ballot measures this election looked like the start of an enviro-revolution. Almost. Proposition 7 would have required California to generate 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050, and Proposition 10 would have authorized a $5 billion bond issue to promote alternative energy and alternative fuel vehicles, with about […]
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Republicans seem tougher in Northern Rockies
As the Barack Obama wave swept much of the West, carrying fellow Democratic candidates to many victories, the Republicans in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming proved to be more resistant. John McCain won the presidential races in all three states. In the Congressional races, the Democrats apparently took one House seat that had been held by […]