In the 1980s, when ecologist Brian Linkhart first started digging around in old woodpecker holes in Colorado for flammulated owls – fuzzy, black-eyed creatures weighing just one to two ounces – his research was all about the birds. He wanted to understand if and where the secretive little animals were breeding – questions he pursued […]
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Boldt ruling to let Natives manage fisheries is still vastly influential, 40 years later
The Boldt Decision turned 40 this week, marking four decades since tribes of the Pacific Northwest were granted a 50-50 share of salmon and steelhead fisheries and co-manager status over their natural resources. Just this week, Washington state legislators are expected to decide on a bill that would pardon the dozens of activists arrested in […]
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Of mice and myth: Colorado flood recovery the latest chapter in Preble’s mouse saga
The Preble’s meadow jumping mouse makes for an unlikely villain. It’s an unassuming, nocturnal rodent that spends its life scurrying through streamside brush, gnawing on bugs and seeds. When imperiled, as it often is by owls and foxes, it can leap three feet in the air. Sixty percent of its body length is tail. And, […]
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Policies and pollinators: How the feds deepen the precipitous decline of monarchs
The numbers are in from Mexico, and they ain’t pretty. Every fall, monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles from the Great Plains to their winter grounds in central Mexico, where they’re scrupulously counted by the World Wildlife Fund. In 1996, the overwintering monarchs blanketed 45 acres of forest. This year, they cover only about 1.6 […]
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Troubleweeds: Russian thistle buries roads and homes in southeastern Colorado
J.D. Wright pauses to check in with his wife of 51 years. “Do you remember, Mama, when that wind was?” After a few minutes perusing her cellphone photos, she reports back: Tumbleweeds first buried the house on November 17. The gusts screamed up and there they were, piled so deep over the doors and windows […]
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With Gila River deadline looming, New Mexico debates its water options
In the Colorado River drainage basin, where states and cities routinely wrestle over limited water, and where a 14-year drought may portend long-term scarcity, new water sources are rare and precious. Thanks to a decade-old settlement, New Mexico has access to just such a resource. But, after years of debate, and with just months before […]
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A wildfire forum takes radical approach to protecting wildland-urban interface
Wildfire in the West is getting more severe all the time – burning longer, hotter and more frequently, destroying more homes, stretching federal funds to the limit, endangering more firefighters. Rising temperatures are driving the trend, and there’s no indication things will change course. Faced with these dire circumstances, 20 of the West’s most influential […]
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Service problems and pilot shortages plague rural air service
Long-time residents of Cheyenne, Wyo., might remember the days when Frontier Airlines flew cushy commercial jets out of the city’s small regional airport. That was back in the 1970s and earlier, when the Federal Aviation Administration required airlines to prove they were servicing rural communities in order to keep their certifications. When the FAA deregulated […]
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Slew of public lands and sportsmen’s bills debated on Capitol Hill this week
It’s been an exciting year for public lands geeks. After nearly five years in which Congress failed to designate a single acre of wilderness (the first Congress since 1966 to earn that dubious distinction), the House this week is taking action on a slew of wilderness, public lands and recreation bills. But while it’s tempting […]
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Enviros and industry agree: Keystone XL means more oil. Why does the State Department disagree?
It’s hard to know where to begin unpacking the U.S. State Department’s Final Environmental Impact Statement on the controversial Keystone XL, the transcontinental pipeline that has been proposed to transport heavy crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. On one hand, the document admits that from “wells to […]
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Closed roads remind Silverton and the West of our dependence on transportation
Since Jan. 12, rocks have been raining down on Highway 550 on the north side of Red Mountain Pass in southwestern Colorado. Cold nights and warm days created a freeze/thaw cycle that pried loose a huge chunk of the rocky mountainside, which then broke into thousands of boulders. In order to stabilize the rocks to […]
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Rants from the Hill: The Great Basin Sea Monster
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Last Saturday around noon I was still feeling desperate for more alone time when my daughters Hannah (age 10) and Caroline (age 7) asked if I was finally ready to play with them. I […]
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‘Ag-gag’ law that thwarts investigations on factory farms is challenged in Utah
Last year was a good one for whistleblowers on factory farms: not one of the 11 “ag-gag” bills introduced across the U.S. in 2013 became law, and so far in 2014 two such bills, in the New Hampshire and Indiana legislatures, have been defeated by animal rights activists. What agribusiness calls farm protection laws – […]
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New farm bill still favors big ag
We’ve been following the glacial progress of the latest Farm Bill for three years now. This massive bill, passed every five years, doles out nearly $1 trillion for food stamps and school lunches, farm subsidies, and conservation programs. The Farm Bill got its start during the Dust Bowl years, when it was meant as temporary […]
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For better or worse, feds’ Columbia River Salmon plan stays the course
There’s no arguing that salmon and steelhead in the Columbia and Snake Rivers have had a tough century. Habitat loss, overfishing, and, most of all, dam construction have reduced the prodigious runs, which once averaged 16 million fish per year, to a fraction of their former glory. What’s up for debate is whether the federal […]
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Preserving ancient art in land marked for solar energy development
Like a great eye of reflective silicon, the largest utility-scale power plant in the United States is rapidly materializing in the Mojave Desert. According to company officials, when fully complete, the BrightSource Ivanpah Solar Power Facility will come on line early this year, supplying nearly 400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 140,000 homes during […]
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Union Address: Climate change still real, federal action still lacking
For any American who believes that climate change is not only real but one of the most pressing issues of our time, it’s oddly invigorating to hear one’s President declare the debate “settled,” as Obama did last night in his State of the Union address. “Climate change is a fact,” he followed. It’s exciting to […]
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BLM considers grassroots land use plan that would limit drilling in western Colorado
Mark Waltermire squints in the winter sunlight, craning his neck to take in the view from his vegetable farm in Hotchkiss, Colo. He jabs his finger toward a mesa: “There,” he says. “And up in there.” Palm to the sky, he makes a sweeping gesture, encompassing the flat-bottomed valley, the staggered mesas; the patchwork of […]
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In a new study, megafauna more likely to feel climate impacts than smaller species
Climate change has always picked winners and losers from the animal world. Some, like unbearably cute, mountain-dwelling pikas are already retreating from lower, warmer elevations in places like Yosemite National Park, and heading for cooler heights. Beyond existing research on how climate change is responsible for certain species, like pikas or polar bears, shifting elevation, […]
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Vegas’ new water czar has a tough row to hoe
John Entsminger has his work cut out for him, to put it mildly. He will soon be responsible for keeping Las Vegas and its associated sprawl from drying up and evaporating back into the desert. Current Southern Nevada Water Authority director Pat Mulroy, notorious throughout the West for her water-grabbing ways, hand-picked Entsminger to be […]