For years now, well-connected hunting groups in Utah have figured out a way to make big bucks off big game. Now news reports indicate sportsmen in Utah are getting fed up. Will Utah’s lawmakers put a spotlight on these transactions? Here’s the deal: Every year, two sportsmen’s groups, Sportsmen for Fish & Wildlife and the […]
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Posted inRange
Desert solitaire: Las Vegas bets big on rural water
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House A water mining project that’s been a quarter-century in the making took a major step forward last week, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recommended approval of a plan for diverting groundwater from three counties in eastern Nevada to Sin City. In its final environmental impact statement (FEIS), the […]
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Help us cover the New New West
Dear Reader, I need your help. No, I’m not asking for money, or even a couch to crash on or your extra ramen noodles to dine on during reporting trips. I’m just looking for your ideas and observations. When I was brought on as High Country News’ senior-editor-at-large number two in July, it was with […]
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Don’t let it burn
A long plume of red smoke covered the sun as I drove back from Gunnison, Colorado on Sunday afternoon. The East Coal Creek Fire, started by lightning two days earlier, had torched 100 acres of Douglas fir by the end of the weekend. As it grew, it headed deeper into the West Elk Wilderness, away […]
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Dam that methane
Updated 8/13/2012 10 a.m. Last summer, visitors to Lacamas Lake, a reservoir outside the town of Vancouver, Wash., may have seen some strange devices floating on the reservoir’s surface. “It look(ed) like an alien lander,” says Washington State University doctoral student Bridgit Deemer. The mysterious objects were traps designed to catch air bubbles spurting up from the […]
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Get on the bus
One of the first things we did when we moved back to my quasi-rural hometown of Durango, Colo., this summer was ride the “trolley.” It’s actually a bus that is made to look like an old street car, complete with wood benches for passengers, but it’s mass transit, and it’s free, and it gets you […]
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Pipe conflict
For over 20 years the vision of a nearly 300-mile long pipeline that would pump groundwater from rural valleys in eastern Nevada to the city of Las Vegas has floated, mirage-like, over the arid state. For the Southern Nevada Water Authority and its powerful general manager, Pat Mulroy, the project is a way to moisturize […]
Posted inRange
Digital detox in the high Cascades
Turns out, I’m so far behind the curve in the electronic media I’m cutting edge. Years ago, I realized my basic neo-Luddite constitution did not square with making a living in the modern communication industry. So I learned to download and up-link. I “blog” and “friend” as verbs. I’ve got desktops, laptops, tablets and a […]
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The cloud seeding believers
They might not know it, but golfers in Los Angeles, farmers in the Imperial Valley and retirees in Phoenix are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on cloud seeding in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. Until I attended the Colorado Water Workshop in Gunnison, Colo. this past July, I had no idea either. Making rain may […]
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Global warming, local politics
“I was a victim of the snow,” former Chicago mayor Michael Bilandic told Chicago Magazine in 2000, referring to his failed 1979 reelection bid. Bilandic replaced the first Mayor Daley, who died in 1976, in the midst of his sixth term, and he was expected to glide back into office. He was the Democratic “machine’s” chosen one post-Daley, […]
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Talking mean with Hugh B. McKeen
While on assignment for a story on wildfire in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, I called up Catron County commissioner Hugh B. McKeen to see if he’d meet up and discuss the recent 297,000-acre Whitewater Baldy Fire that burned through the wilderness and forestland nearby. I had heard a bit about Catron County’s anti-government charm, […]
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Rants from the Hill: Beauregard puppy
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a FREE podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. […]
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Report from Outdoor Retailer
The Summer Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake City is a gearhead’s dream. I wandered through its hundreds upon hundreds of booths on Thursday, Aug. 2 in a breathable waterproof daze, along with 27,000 other people ogling the very latest in toys and accoutrements for every kind of outdoor adventure. The goods on display ranged […]
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Birkenstocks and Stetsons
I have spent all of my adult life in Maine, where there are only two kinds of people: Mainers and people from “away.” If you weren’t born in Maine, you’ll never be a Mainer, and I’ve even heard purists say that your parents have to be from the state to gain insider status. “Just because […]
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Buzz of the Undead
If you were a honeybee, you might scare your children into obedience with tales of the phorid fly, a creature whose depravity sinks to deep depths. Picture this: you’re going about your business, pollinating flowers and the like, when one of these devils swoops in, clamps down on your abdomen and, using a spiked injector […]
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Price matters
Last winter, the Bureau of Land Management gave its approval to a large natural gas drilling project in northern New Mexico. Under the Middle Mesa plan, WPX Energy would drill and frack 53 shale gas wells on a mesa overlooking Navajo Reservoir over a five year period. The company can drill year-round, too, since the […]
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From art as elegy to art as action
How do we grieve? How do we grieve for all that disappears into the insatiable maw of human appetite? How do we grieve for the eventual loss of something as beautiful and terrifying as the polar bear? The small, white-haired woman’s voice broke as she stood to ask her impossibly difficult question, the other audience […]
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Are big, severe wildfires normal?
The conventional wildfire wisdom goes something like this: Western forests are out of whack due to past fire suppression and logging practices. Forests that used to be open and free of undergrowth have turned into dense “dog hair” thickets of young trees that burn like kindling. Combine that with millions of acres of trees killed […]
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West Coast trawlers spare the little fish
Last year, fishermen on the West Coast who trawl for groundfish — species like cod and sole that live on or close to the sea floor — started fishing by a new set of rules. The National Marine Fisheries Service introduced a system that, to date has succeeded in reducing the number of discarded fish […]
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Harvesting versus hunting
One interesting effect of spending three weeks in the bottom of the Grand Canyon is the fresh view you bring to the “rim world” outside the canyon afterwards. Some of the novel experiences are pleasing (“oh yeah! Getting around is so convenient!”) while others are puzzling. One such moment occurred while I was catching up on […]