As spring rolled into campus each year, students at my northern Indiana college would soak up the warmth on blankets outside, surrounded by textbooks and notes. The books on my blanket covered subjects from public policy and economics to chemistry and land management; I never could choose between biology and anthropology. Luckily for me, a […]
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Colorado agencies move water to help a rare bird adapt to climate change
There’s a hiking and biking trail near Gunnison, Colo. called “Sea of Sage.” The name conjures an accurate picture of how the area’s ecosystem looks to most people. But healthy sagebrush habitat is really more diverse than that – even the Gunnison sage grouse, a rare relative of the greater sage grouse, can’t survive on […]
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New tech to trace fracking fluid could mean more accountability
As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency comes under fire for abandoning studies that linked contaminated water to hydraulic fracturing, and oil and gas companies consider how to fix their public image around the issue, states are trying to figure out how much transparency to demand from the industry. Meanwhile, researchers are racing to find the […]
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Deregulation talk shakes up Arizona energy scene
The Arizona energy fight that everyone’s been yapping about lately is the effort by the state’s largest investor-owned utility, Arizona Public Service, to tweak state regulations regarding how the utility compensates homeowners for energy they produce from rooftop solar panels. That show – over the decidedly un-sexy-sounding issue of net metering – has a wacky […]
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First settlement reached in Utah’s contentious road claims
If you’ve spent much time wandering around the rural West, especially in southern Utah, you may have come across an extensive network of highways. You might not have recognized them as such, though — these “highways,” in many cases, are nothing more than cow paths, faint two-tracks, and sandy washes. But an antique Western law […]
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Chilean kayaker kids take notes on Western dams to save their hometown river
Cochrane, Chile, has never been an international hotbed for kayakers. A road first reached the remote Patagonian community 20 years ago, and Internet arrived in the last five. The town, with about 2,000 residents, is surrounded by wide-open ranchland and wilderness, and is a 10-hour, bumpy dirt-road drive from the nearest city. So when local […]
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Sexy wildflower photos remind us to take in life’s details
Tim Crawford – an all-around maverick and High Country News subscriber in Bozeman, Mont. – has been doing photography for conservation groups, magazines, books and other purposes for more than 50 years. Now he’s debuting a series of close-ups of “Wild & Feral Flowers,” including this Mexican hat (also called the prairie coneflower) and musk […]
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Is big desert solar killing birds in Southern California?
The threat large-scale solar developments pose to tortoise in the desert Southwest has been well established, but what about the technology’s effect on birds? The question has been asked before — David Danelski of the Riverside Press Enterprise reported on it in Feburary of 2012 — but it emerged most dramatically last winter during the […]
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Kuwait’s ‘solar leaders’ study renewable energy in Colorado
It reached 115 degrees on Monday, in Kuwait City, Kuwait, which is typical for the desert city whose summer highs regularly peak well above 120. In the relatively cool 90 degrees of Colorado’s Western Slope on the same day, 15 Kuwaitis wearing neon-yellow vests embroidered with “solar leaders” on the backs, gathered around photovoltaic demonstrations […]
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The future of the West’s largest coal-fired plant remains in jeopardy
The West’s largest coal-fired power plant, the Navajo Generating Station in northern Arizona, is in transition. It provides 520 jobs—85 percent of which are held by Navajos—supplies the juice that pumps Arizonans’ share of Colorado River water, and keeps the lights on for millions of people in three states. But the plant also churns out […]
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Impressions of a county fair: heifer rituals, deep-fried pickles and all
It’s so noisy at the fairBut all your friends are thereAnd the candy floss you hadAnd your mother and your dad. — Neil Young, Sugar Mountain. His face was like leather, so much so that the only expression that showed up behind the utterly opaque mirrored sunglasses was a sort of perma-smirk that reminded me […]
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Methane emissions are still a thorn in the side of natural gas production
Burning coal belches about twice as much carbon dioxide as burning natural gas, but the question of whether natural gas is a bridge to renewable energy or just a bridge to nowhere hinges on how much greenhouse gas escapes before it is used. Methane, the main component of natural gas, is 21 times more potent […]
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Can the oil and gas industry fix its public image in Colorado?
Last week, I drove over the mountains from High Country News HQ in Paonia, Colo., to Denver to attend the Rocky Mountain Energy Summit, an annual confab for the oil and gas industry – complete with a balloon drop wherein suited attendees throw elbows as they jockey for prizes — hosted by its powerful state […]
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Wildlife agencies face the limits of sportsmen-funded conservation
June’s edition of Wyoming Wildlife magazine describes how mule deer have been declining in parts of the West for decades. For the Wyoming Range herd, poor habitat conditions, drought, harsh winters, and energy development may all be to blame. But pinpointing exactly what’s harming one of Wyoming’s largest herds requires capturing them by shooting a […]
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Bear hair study in Banff proves animal highway crossings work
For three years, researchers from Montana State University spent their summers collecting bear hair. The samples, collected on both sides of the 50 mile stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway that cuts through Banff National Park, prove what the researchers had suspected: wildlife underpasses and bridges were helping enough bears move back and forth across the […]
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Paonia’s Great Chicken Dump raises the question: what to do with all those old birds?
The news infiltrated the High Country News mothership like a cute animal video (which editors Sarah Gilman and Betsy Marston are particularly fond of) and spread through the North Fork Valley faster than a stomach flu. Soon, from the barstools of Revolution Brewing to the ratty couches of the HCN intern house, the Great Chicken […]
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Climate change is already pummeling energy infrastructure
A massive cold front settled over the American Southwest in the early days of February 2011. The mercury in Albuquerque hit seven below zero; snow birds in Tucson shivered in sub 20-degree temps; and Nogales, on the border with Mexico, reached a frigid 11 degrees. While such temperatures may seem balmy to northerners, they wreaked […]
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‘Camping 101 on steroids’ gets minority kids into the outdoors
On a recent Sunday morning, a dozen young boys splashed gleefully in an alpine stream in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Wearing rubber boots and wielding fine-meshed nets, they reached into the icy water, rolled rocks aside, and scooped up the flotsam released into the current. Then they dumped the contents into plastic trays held […]
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The untouchable sheriff of Maricopa County celebrates a questionable legacy
It costs less than a dollar a day to feed an inmate of Maricopa County’s Tent City. Meals are served without flourishes like salt and pepper, which saves taxpayers a few bucks and reminds inmates that jail is not supposed to be fun, much less pleasing to the palate. So the cake and ice cream […]
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Yellowstone tower reignites debate over cell phones in the backcountry
I’m probably too young to be a good curmudgeon, but I nonetheless subscribe to Ed Abbey’s view of wilderness: it doesn’t need to be safe and accessible for everybody. Put ramps and roads and signs and cell phones into our cities, but please, leave them out of the backcountry. Sure they make it safer, but […]