When University of Utah professor Jim Steenburgh and a team of climatologists issued a scientific report on climate change in 2007 to then-Governor Jon Huntsman, they emphasized their “very high confidence” that humans were mostly responsible for recent warming patterns. But many Utah lawmakers didn’t take their word for it. And while the state’s new […]
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Posted inGoat
Resilience, not sustainability
The annual Headwaters Conference at Western State College in Gunnison often presents some concepts worth chewing on, and this year’s gathering (held Oct. 16-18) was no exception. Headwaters, as I’ve come to understand it after 20 years of attending, is something of an idea fair for little mountain towns. For some time I’ve […]
Posted inGoat
Clean(er) coal?
In Alaska and Wyoming, two energy companies just announced plans to burn coal underground to create natural gas, then use the waste carbon dioxide to enhance oilfield production. The process, called “underground coal gasification”, has never been done in the U.S., but is used in Australia and other countries. The Anchorage Daily News reports: As […]
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The high risk of leaving home
Last week, federal agents shot a sheep-killing wolf in Wyoming. That male (266M), from a Montana litter born in 2007, was the sibling of a female wolf (341F) that wandered across Wyoming, Idaho and Utah last fall. This past March, she was found dead near the northern Colorado town of Rifle. Sadly, the littermates’ fates […]
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Can salmon save themselves?
The Northwest’s Columbia River Basin stocks of iconic salmon have been the subject of a heated and expensive court battle for the past decade. Thirteen out of 16 stocks are listed as threatened or endangered thanks to a combination of factors including mining, farming, urban development and most significantly, lots of hydropower dams along the […]
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Tepid statistics as the planet burns
Mired firmly in denial, we seem to be stuck in the first step of Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s five stages of grief about the death of life as we know it on Planet Earth. Adam D. Sacks has an excellent piece on Grist about our lack of urgency about global climate change — and from the […]
Posted inRange
Native voting rights and the West
Of the many findings presented in a recent American Civil Liberties Union report, which concludes that many Indians face discriminatory policies and actions that deny them their constitutional right to vote, poor circumstances facing western tribal citizens tend to stand out. One of the most shocking cases of disenfranchisement highlighted in the report, titled “Voting Rights […]
Posted inRange
Reader Photo: Angel Peak
We’re loving the variety and beauty of the many photos HCN readers are posting up on our Flickr group. This week’s selection was tough, since there are so many amazing images. But the old-timey feel of this image makes it an instant classic – it seems like a snapshot you’d find in an old shoebox […]
Posted inRange
New Pew database tracks government subsidies
The Pew Charitable Trust has launched a new effort and website which “aims to raise public awareness about the role of federal subsidies in the economy. Subsidyscope should be useful to Westerners who want to know the details of where federal subsidies are distributed around our region. it has long been observed that – while […]
Posted inRange
Time for the cows to come home
On October 1st, we trailed 136 cow/calf pairs down Dry Cottonwood Creek and settled them in a stubble field near the Clark Fork River. This cattle drive marked the end of the 2009 grazing season and the beginning of our shift toward winter management of the ranch and herd. Now, with the days getting […]
Posted inRange
HCN Reader Photo: A Still Moment at Navajo Arch
Fall, for me at least, is the time of still moments, of stepping back and watching silently as the light shifts and the colors change. This photo, by Flickr user juliaahbell, while black and white, seemed to capture that feeling perfectly. High Country News picks a reader photo each week (approximately) – join our Flickr […]
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Good reading
If you need to stay indoors because it’s cold, wet and windy outside, or because you worry about being mistaken for an elk if you go outdoors, here’s some good reading. In the New Republic, Jackson Lears provides a thought-provoking essay that combines review of six environmental books, among them an anthology of […]
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Tapping into methane
Last fall, we wrote about the enormous amounts of greenhouse gas vented by coal mines (in the West, methane emissions from mines are equivalent to the emissions from 1.9 million cars). And methane, an explosive gas vented for miner safety, is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of heat-trapping. At many East […]
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The changing face of the West
Last Monday, I drove over McClure Pass to Carbondale, Colo., to join NPR reporter Jeff Brady, Rocky Mountain Community Radio correspondent Bente Birkeland, Aspen Times columnist Paul Anderson, and KDNK community radio News Director Conrad Wilson for a lively (and live) discussion of Western issues and how they play out in Colorado. You can find […]
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Harvesting grievances
All summer long, farmers in California’s Central Valley have complained about their parched fields—one even likened their communities to tumbleweeds about to blow away—and they blame their thirsty crops on fish. Endangered Species Act protections for smelt and salmon in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta limit the amount of water pumped out of Northern California, much […]
Posted inRange
Wolf victory still elusive
A recent opinion piece by Mike Medberry wisely suggested that there needs to be a reasonable middle ground in the deeply polemical attitudes toward managing wolves in the West. Unfortunately, this encouraging argument was followed by much of the same tired, politicized and oversimplified rhetoric, pitting environmental groups against the government and mischaracterizing the premise […]
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Snowpacks melting sooner
Why are mountain snowpacks melting sooner these days? Part of it may be climate change associated with increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but there’s something else in the air — dust (a/k/a airborne particulate matter). Snow reflects sunlight quite well, as evidenced by the blinding glare it produces and […]
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California’s State Parks: No New Closures
In July, after $14.2 million was cut from the California State Parks’ operating budget, it looked like up to 100 parks might have to close to make ends meet. Park supporters have thus spent the last few months anxiously speculating about which parks would fall to Governor Schwarzenegger’s death panels. But today they got a […]
Posted inRange
Center for Biological Diversity shows the way
Thank goodness that the Center for Biological Diversity has given us an example of what a forest partnership worthy of the name looks like. A real forest partnership is NOT about giving up rights under the law; suspending duly established government process or excluding the public from important decisions about the public lands. Real forest […]
Posted inRange
Butte Pacific
From north to south, the pastures of the Dry Cottonwood Creek Allotment are as follows: Orofino, North Fork, Basin, Sand Hollow, Upper Hilltop, Lower Hilltop, and Butte Pacific. The last of these—Butte Pacific—is foremost in my mind today. All the other pastures are named for natural features: Orofino for a creek and a mountain; North […]