Are 21- year-old documents adequate to approve reopening a uranium mine about 15 miles north of the Grand Canyon? The Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Grand Canyon Trust say no, and they’re suing the Bureau of Land Management for giving the go-ahead, claiming the agency is violating multiple federal laws by […]
Blog Post
Posted inRange
Health care reform helps tribes
A generation ago Indian Country wasn’t included in the conversation about health care reform. When Congress enacted Medicaid and Medicare it pretended that the Indian Health Service didn’t exist. It was as if it had never occurred to the government, that it, too, ran a major health care delivery system. Say what you like about […]
Posted inRange
The Pesticide Wars
If the American Farm Bureau Federation has its way, the issue of whether herbicide spraying over water requires a Clean Water Act permit will be heard by the Supreme Court. A coalition of agricultural groups led by the Federation has petitioned the nation’s highest court to reverse an appellate court decision which found that such […]
Posted inArticles
The Pesticide Wars
If the American Farm Bureau Federation has its way, the issue of whether herbicide spraying over water requires a Clean Water Act permit will be heard by the Supreme Court. A coalition of agricultural groups led by the Federation has petitioned the nation’s highest court to reverse an appellate court decision which found that such […]
Posted inRange
Reader Photo – Cowboy Up
This week’s reader photo is a classic Western image from a great photographer who’s shared a bunch of neat shots up on HCN’s Flickr Pool. Check them out and add yours!
Posted inGoat
The law of necessity
Tim DeChristopher won’t be allowed to put global warming on trial when he’s on trial. DeChristopher majors in economics at the University of Utah. Last fall, he went into a BLM auction and successfully bid on 13 drilling leases, also driving up prices for other successful bidders. But he didn’t have the $1.7 […]
Posted inRange
Wyoming – the Uranium State?
They’re calling it a “uranium renaissance.” Wyoming is prepping itself for what is slated to be another boom in uranium mining for the fourth time in 60 years. Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West are all too familiar with energy boom and bust cycles. Just ask all the people who lost jobs in the oil […]
Posted inGoat
Spectrum of sexuality
On the night of June 16, 2001, Fred Martinez, Jr. was walking home from a party when he was chased into a rocky canyon on the outskirts of Cortez, Colo. The 16-year-old Navajo was cornered in the chasm’s nightmarish shadows and bludgeoned to death. Police found his body five days later. The crime shocked the […]
Posted inRange
Saving Tortoises one Student at a Time
“When I saw the night sky for the first time in the Mojave National Preserve I felt like a layer of film had been peeled away from my eyes,” says David Lamfrom, the Barstow based field coordinator for the National Parks Conservation Association. “I want the kids who live in the high desert to realize […]
Posted inRange
A Western Town, Contaminated
Bryce Andrews of the Clark Fork River Coalition, reports from a Superfund Meeting at the Opportunity, Mont., Community Center I drove in just before 7 pm, down a little spur road that headed west a few miles after Warm Springs. Ahead of me the Anaconda Stack, lit up by amber lights around its base, slipped […]
Posted inRange
Reader Photo – Red Aspen Leaves
I pondered featuring this reader photo a couple weeks ago, but ended up with a different choice. Today, though, the sparkling vermilion of these aspen leaves, now blanketing forest floors across the West, brought me a bright remembrance of Colorado’s autumn moments, which I wanted to share with you. Across most of the West it’s […]
Posted inGoat
Snodgrass slowdown
As recently as this summer, it looked like Crested Butte Mountain Resort — a ski area in western Colorado renowned for its extreme terrain — might finally expand onto the forested slopes of uncharismatically-dubbed Snodgrass Mountain (Gusundheit!). The company has been pushing the expansion for decades, and a strong local opposition movement has been active […]
Posted inRange
Big Ag wins big in California
Depending on who you listen too, sweeping water-related legislation recently enacted in California is either a solution to the states water conflicts, a recipe for increased conflict and the domination of corporate water brokers, or a partial step forward that will succeed or fail depending on future legislative and administrative actions. Here’s how Lester Snow, […]
Posted inGoat
Veteran namesakes
It’s Veteran’s Day. A military post, Fort Hood in Texas, has been much in the news of late on account of a tragic mass murder. And I’m a history buff. These threads all came together when I found out that Fort Hood was named for an army veteran — Gen. John Bell Hood. […]
Posted inGoat
An impossible Shangri-la
In August of last year, we wrote about the Jenson brothers’ grand plans to turn a tiny, defunct ski hill in southwest Utah into a posh, exclusive mega-resort (see our story “An unlikely Shangri-la“). In building the Mt. Holly Club, the Jensons hoped to emulate the Yellowstone Club, the ultra-ritzy Montana ski and golf community. […]
Posted inRange
When Consensus Doesn’t Mean Consensus
A few days ago a letter [pdf] written by scientists at Brigham Young University — a traditionally conservative school — plopped onto the desks of Utah’s governor and state lawmakers. The letter is being called a “stinging rebuke” and criticizes how, in a recent session, legislators gave equal value to fringe, skeptical climate change views […]
Posted inGoat
The case of the missing binders
Central Washington’s Kittitas County, hungry for economic uplift since the fall of the timber industry, has been in the limelight a lot lately for scuffles over development. The proliferation of subdivisions there has met sharp criticism from certain corners (see Cally Carswell’s recent article “Death by a thousand wells” on the area’s over-reliance on exempt […]
Posted inGoat
Bluegrass in red rock country
This past weekend, the HCN interns took a road trip out to nearby Moab, Utah, to experience some of the West’s most dramatic landscapes and hear some good ol’ tunes at the yearly folk festival. The sunset faded as we left Colorado, cruising through darkness on I-70 to the Cisco exit. On Utah State Route […]
Posted inRange
Back at the Table, Again
The creation of Washington State’s current logging regulations may have been less spectacular that the infamous spotted owl timber wars of the early 90s (the President didn’t have to intervene, for instance), but they were still righteously complicated. Ten years ago, when salmon hit the endangered species list, stakeholders sat down to create a multi-trick […]
Posted inGoat
“A deeply troubled idea from the start”
In 2000, when the federal government shelled out $101 million to buy what’s now the Valles Caldera National Preserve, it made one thing clear: The government wouldn’t be the preserve’s cash cow forever. But nine years later, the preserve isn’t close to weaning itself off federal funding, according to a recent report by the Government […]