Pam Stout’s first brush with fame came in the spring of 2010 when, after appearing in a New York Times story about the rise of the Tea Party, David Letterman invited her on his show to explain the movement. “I know nothing about the Tea Party,” he said at the outset of the interview. Stout went […]
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Posted inRange
Rhetoric around wolves clouds reality
If you only believed what you read in the papers, blogs or bumper stickers, you might think that hunters in the northern Rockies are revving up for a war on wolves. But when you look at hard numbers, the picture is quite different. Biologists have taught us that looks can be deceiving and unquestioned prejudices […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: How many bars in your cell?
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. The rural pocket of Silver Hills where we live is so remote as to be virtually uninhabited, though I am delighted to be among the virtual uninhabitants here. This status comes with some logistical […]
Posted inGoat
State parks problems
State budget shortfalls have hurt many public amenities – including state parks. Starting in 2009, many Western states cut back on hours, staffing, and maintenance at their parks, and even closed some outright. Just about the only park system that didn’t suffer was Oregon’s, which uses lottery money to fund its parks. Now, in California, […]
Posted inRange
Oh, give them a home …
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Imagine the nerve of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) suggesting that wild bison be managed with the use of wildlife management areas (WMA). That was the message they got last week at a meeting in Shelby, Mont., where local ranchers told an FWP representative that bison were […]
Posted inRange
Enjoying the aspens despite what may come
For weeks I’ve looked forward to a short stay — working vacation, really – at my tiny cabin in southeastern Utah. September is a brutal, blazing hot month in the Phoenix area, made worse by frequent reminders in the news and elsewhere that nearly every other part of the U.S. is experiencing the beginning of […]
Posted inGoat
Return of the corn
The roads that wind across the Taos Pueblo reservation pass through a cultural and environmental mosaic of a type common in the rural West, where natural beauty and human poverty overlap and sometimes blend. Here is a thicket of wild plums growing up along a lush irrigation ditch, the Sangre de Cristo mountains rising up […]
Posted inGoat
U.S. House attacks Clean Air Act
Even in these politically polarized times, one might be forgiven for presuming that breathing clean air could muster bipartisan support in Congress. But a quick look at what the House of Representatives has been up to roundly dispels such a quixotic notion. Two bills aimed at delaying new air pollution rules on cement kilns and […]
Posted inRange
It pays to be walkable
One of the things I like best about living in Salida, Colo., is that this town of 5,500 offers a good pedestrian environment with narrow streets and wide sidewalks though much of town, Although it’s not quite so easy as it used to be, we can still manage most of life’s routine commerce on foot. […]
Posted inGoat
Weighing water
Updated 10-19-2011 For the past 20 years, U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger was a chief arbiter of many California water disputes, parceling water to farmers, urbanites and sensitive fish species. Appointed in 1991 by President George H. W. Bush, Wanger made more than 90 decisions in regard to California’s water before stepping down Sept. […]
Posted inGoat
Demise of the housing growth machine
In 2008, the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University released a report called Megapolitan: Arizona’s Sun Corridor. It predicted that the corridor, stretching from Nogales in the south to Prescott in the north, with Phoenix and Tucson at its heart, would more than double its population by 2040, requiring some 3.7 million […]
Posted inGoat
Feds crack down on “new California gold rush”
If you live in one of the 9 Western states where marijuana has been legalized for medical use, you may have noticed that there suddenly seem to be an awful lot of bright-faced, completely healthy twenty-somethings who claim to have chronic pain or glaucoma. While many people use the drug to help deal with real, […]
Posted inRange
Breaching the Elwha dams: A time lapse video
By Alan Durning, Sightline.org My hobby this week has been watching the demolition of the two dams on the Elwha River via webcams. The long awaited dam removal is opening the pristine waters of the Elwha inside Olympic National Park to wild salmon for the first time in a century. I cobbled together video of […]
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Too much poop can be hazardous to your health
Should large quantities of manure from giant commercial farms be considered hazardous waste? They’re not right now, and at least 14 members of Congress want to keep it that way. The group, which includes Idaho Representative Mike Simpson (R), recently signed on to the Superfund Common Sense Act, a bill that would prevent the Environmental […]
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Resource plans rescinded for sage grouse
Wildlife advocates won a round against energy development and grazing in Wyoming and Idaho last week, when Idaho Chief U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill overturned two Bureau of Land Management resource management plans in favor of the Hailey, Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project. The nonprofit conservation group argued the BLM was too hasty in development […]
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The urban wild
In the beginning was the bat. Roger, Isolde,* and I sipped margaritas on a warm August evening in their Boulder condo. Suddenly, Roger slammed down his drink, pointed to the ceiling and screamed, “Look out!” As a black, papery blur fluttered around the living room, I dived to the floor and slithered under the table. […]
Posted inRange
Down with the “National Insecurity and Federal Lands Destruction Act”
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Updated afternoon of 10/5/11 to reflect recent changes to the bill. I was cruising along the shoreline of Upper Waterton Lake a few years back, crossing from Canada to Goat Haunt, Montana. It was around the time of the sixth anniversary of 9/11 and, as we crossed the international […]
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A feel good ferret story (mostly)
Last week, or maybe it was the week before, a familiar sound drifted over from the hay field abutting the property where I live. Pop! Pop! Pop! My boyfriend and I looked at each other: “Prairie dogs,” we said in unison. Another few bite the dust. Our neighbors don’t seem to like the rodents, and […]
Posted inRange
Why rural communities deserve investment
By Chuck Hassebrook, the Daily Yonder We cannot build a strong nation on a foundation of crumbling communities. Even the sound elements are weakened by those not maintained. So it would be a mistake to write off rural communities and suspend federal investment in their future, as advocated by some in the September […]
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The middles of nowhere
Crossposted from the Last Word on Nothing As someone preoccupied with odd, mysterious places, I have a longstanding appreciation for an odd, mysterious organization called The Center for Land Use Interpretation. Equal parts arts organization, archive, and amateur detective agency, the Los Angeles-based CLUI (rhymes with gooey) has a particular interest in the forgotten spaces of the […]