Some people love to travel, but I am not among them. I have the good fortune to live in a town that’s just the right size. Salida, Colo., is small enough that I can walk to conduct most of my routine errands, and big enough for a supermarket, library, bookstore, pharmacy and the like. America’s […]
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One step forward, one step back
“We suck at managing exempt wells,” Michael ‘Aquadoc’ Campana bluntly declared on his blog late last year. Water experts across the West likely nodded in agreement. And last week, even Montana regulators owned up to this shortcoming. The state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation acknowledged that subdivision developers were exploiting a loophole in state […]
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The U.N. comes West
In April, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations announced that the U.S. will conduct a formal review of its position on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), an historic document over two decades in the making. UNDRIP was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in September 2007, with 143 […]
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Spread of Bighorn Sheep Pneumonia Continues
By Jule Banville, NewWest.net guest blogger 8-23-10 The deadly spread of pneumonia in Montana’s bighorn sheep population picked up momentum west of Anaconda, where a hunter alerted Fish, Wildlife & Parks of possible disease in the Lost Creek population. Biologists killed four sheep and confirmed through lab work they were infected. FWP announced the latest […]
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A fast year
Lessons from the Indian Health System A year goes by fast. Way too fast. Thirteen months ago I plunged into my “year-long” exploration of the Indian health system. It’s been fascinating because there has so much activity: Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and included with that bill the permanent authorization of […]
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From payment to prevention
Restoring wolves to their native habitat in the West hasn’t been easy. Some were opposed to the idea from the start, including ranchers who already viewed wild predators as a threat to their livelihoods. That’s why compensating ranchers for losses to wolves was an integral part of promoting tolerance, even before wolves were reintroduced. Wolves […]
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Loving an (artificial) lake
I’m a longtime resident of Arizona. Your reception of this bit of information is likely affected by recent news coverage of my state’s new immigration legislation, isn’t it? Every now and then, the Grand Canyon State wants to reassure the rest of the country that its flaming red-state status is secure, thank you very much. […]
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“Lines Across the Sand”
Edward Abbey’s 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang opened with a definition: sabotage … n. [Fr. < sabot, wooden shoe + -age: from damage done to machinery by sabots]…. From this subtle introduction, the book grew beyond its covers, even beyond the reach of its cantankerous author, and led a whole generation of upset desert […]
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Conservation groups reject deal for Child Nutrition Program
The Capital Press – a western agricultural weekly – is reporting that “conservation groups” are part of a coalition of agricultural and other organizations opposing cutting the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) in order to fund the Obama Administration’s drive to expand child nutrition programs – including the innovative farm-to-school program. […]
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Transportation policy’s third rails
We live in a society of backseat drivers. Or backseat urban planners. Or train engineers. But often, no matter how loudly we clamor, we’re not as right as we think. And that costs all of us, even if our convictions rely heavily on rational critiques of public policy. Think of transportation policy in Los Angeles […]
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Telemocracy #3
You thought he had receded into the bowels of history, relegated to the proverbial footnotes of our politics. Indeed, Dan, of “potatoe” fame, has passed into the relative obscurity of Phoenix sprawlurbia – and yet, the Quayle name lives on … Behold, the second iteration, Ben Quayle. Quayle 2.0 is honoring the spirit of his father’s […]
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Uranium pullback
It looks like Colorado won’t have a functioning uranium mill anytime soon – to the relief of anti-nuclear advocates. We reported in July that Cotter Corp. was planning to reopen its Canon City site by 2014. Legislation passed this spring means that Cotter would have to clean up prior contamination before starting to process uranium […]
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“Government-run” no longer defines the Indian health system
A single phrase is often used to define the Indian health system: “Government-run.” Add those two words to any discussion about health care or reform and most people reach an immediate conclusion about the merits of the agency. Now it is time for the phrase to disappear because it no longer accurately describes the Indian […]
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New Mexico gets most back from Washington
Since this is an election year, it’s time to ponder politics. Let’s ignore policy and platforms for the moment, and look at money. Which state’s congressional delegation is best at delivering the dollars? The champion team is in the West. According to statistics compiled by the Tax Foundation in Washington, D.C., New Mexico’s representatives and […]
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Rants from the Hill: A thousand-mile walk to home
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Three summers ago I blew out a lumbar disc while running a jackhammer in the desert near my house—an accident that was the result of simple bad luck, with the odds perhaps skewed by […]
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Quarry quandary
The limestone that comes from quarries near Durkee, Ore., has more mercury in it than average. As Jeremy Miller reported for HCN last January, when that limestone gets cooked in giant kilns to make cement, the mercury lifts into the air along with other dangerous pollutants like soot, hydrogen chloride, and hydrocarbons. From there, it […]
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National Parks for the Whole Nation
I’ll admit it. There are some environmental topics I just don’t know much about. For example, I first heard of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir when friends living near Yosemite invited me to visit during my move from Los Angeles to Portland (that January trip was itself my first visit to Yosemite). I saw a sign […]
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Who is the California Farm Water Coalition?
Editor’s note: David Zetland, a water economist at the University of California, Berkeley offers an insider’s perspective into water politics and economics. We will be cross-posting occasional posts and content from his blog, Aguanomics, here on the Range. Mike Wade, Executive Director of the California Farm Water Coalition, has often commented (or been quoted) on this blog and […]
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Telemocracy # 2
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” –Hunter S. Thompson, in Rolling Stone, 1974 Who knew that the home of a gigantic desert lake that is mercilessly full of salt could get even weirder? Utahn politics have begotten some truly magnificent works of campaign art this cycle – let’s get right to it.
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From prom queens to dam dialogue
“She kept us out of trouble,” is how former High Country News publisher Ed Marston describes the first intern to take up the post in Paonia. Mary Moran arrived in the fall of 1983, just a month after the organization moved from rural Wyoming to rural Colorado and Ed and Betsy Marston took over as […]