In my role as a journalistic curmudgeon, today I’d like to tell you some of the drawbacks of living in a trendy Western town that often makes the Top 10 lists drawn up by the likes of Outside magazine, Entrepreneur magazine, and Livability.com. I’m talking about Bozeman, Montana – and how the conventional wisdom is […]
Blog Post
Posted inGoat
A data junkie’s look back at the West in 2013
’Tis the season of cheer and light and of gorging ourselves and then getting in life-threatening sledding accidents. And, of course, it’s also the season of looking back on the year that has been and futilely trying to learn from all the stupid mistakes we made. Yes, it’s Year-in-Review time. My colleague, Sarah Gilman, wrapped […]
Posted inGoat
The Wilderness Act at 50: In 2014, what makes a place wild?
In December 1960, the iconic Western author Wallace Stegner wrote a letter to a University of California, Berkeley researcher in support of what would become the Wilderness Act. Wilderness is important, he wrote, because it “was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is […]
Posted inGoat
California Energy Commission says no to desert solar plant that could kill birds
It came as a shock last spring, at least to me, when BrightSource Energy decided to suspend its Hidden Hills Solar project near Pahrump, Nev. For starters, I had a story going to press whose conclusions were somewhat tied to the looming specter of Hidden Hills, a large concentrating solar “power tower” project which would […]
Posted inGoat
2013 in environmental news, from the darkest to the most hopeful
A few weeks ago, High Country News contributing editor Craig Childs dropped me a note asking for some help with his annual winter solstice production, Dark Night. Would I write and read a series of poems about descending into darkness – specifically “death, ice, fear, what is inside the deep, blue, scarier crevasses of your […]
Posted inGoat
Peabody mine expansion coincides with Navajo and Hopi artifacts battle
Ten years ago, Jennafer Yellowhorse picked up an out-of-print archeology book titled A View from Black Mesa and read about a vast trove of artifacts unearthed on a lonesome plateau of Navajo land near the Four Corners. “Right in my backyard,” as she says, “but I’d never heard of it; no one had. So I […]
Posted inGoat
A report aims to change the way we think about Native justice
In 1881, a Brulé Lakota man in South Dakota who shot and killed another member of his tribe was sentenced to death by federal officials who thought the tribal punishment of eight horses, $600 and a blanket was too lenient. The case set a precedent that certain crimes committed on tribal lands are to be […]
Posted inGoat
Research shows oil booms can yield long term socioeconomic decline
If an old-timer Denver wildcatter named James K. Munn has his way, there’s going to be an oil drilling boom in Escalante, Utah. Escalante’s a small town in the southern part of the state, placed right smack dab in the center of some of the most spectacular landscape in the West. Naturally, many residents, especially […]
Posted inGoat
States test a new prairie dog plague vaccine
Dressed in long pants, long-sleeve shirts and closed-toed shoes, a team of researchers from Colorado Parks and Wildlife gathered in a sagebrush-grass meadow near Gunnison, Colo. this summer, each with a GPS in hand. Lining up 10 meters apart along the border of a virtual grid, they walked straight lines over a Gunnison’s prairie dog […]
Posted inGoat
What Arctic climate has to do with this Interior West cold snap
The recent cold snap has destroyed low temperature records in the West. In parts of Montana it hasn’t been this frigid since the ‘70s, grape growers in California have been anxious about their vines freezing, homeless shelters have been filling up, and in Oregon it’s been so cold that even a geothermal bathing pool had […]
Posted inGoat
Second Yarnell investigation reaches damning – and tragic – conclusions
As we reported in October, the first investigation of Arizona’s Yarnell Hill Fire, in which 19 hotshots were killed this summer, drew extremely cautious conclusions. No “direct causes” of the accident were identified, no one was blamed. Policies and protocols, the report said, were not violated. It was almost strangely timid, leaving some to wonder: […]
Posted inGoat
Feeding elk – and spreading chronic wasting disease
Imagine taking a horse-drawn sleigh ride among an elk herd numbering in the thousands. At the National Elk Refuge, such an adventure is available to winter visitors from mid-December through early April. (These) rides are the most popular winter activity, allowing riders a unique wildlife viewing experience and an incredible opportunity for photography That’s how […]
Posted inGoat
Could the Tennessee Valley Authority put Colorado coal mines out of business?
The coal train was one of the first things I noticed when I moved to Paonia, Colo., the hometown of High Country News. When it chugged through town, whistle blasting, my bedroom windows rattled like teeth in the cold. If I was on the phone, I would tell the person on the other line to […]
Posted inRange
Senate, House nearing a budget?
This is the week to watch Congress. If all goes well, Senate budget chairman Patty Murray will make a deal with the House budget chairman Paul Ryan that outlines federal spending for the rest of fiscal year 2014 and 2015. What kind of deal? As The Washington Posts Wonkblog puts it: “The budget deal Patty Murray and […]
Posted inGoat
The Grand Canyon, temperature inversion and the worst parenting ever
I have two daughters, ages 12 and 14. They’ve lived in the Southwest for most of those years, and they’ve never seen the Grand Canyon. This, in my wife’s eyes at least, is a sin. My sin. “Why don’t you take them if it’s so important?” “Hey, you’re Mister Southwest guy. I took them to […]
Posted inGoat
Could the fight for Colorado’s Browns Canyon finally be over?
The struggle to protect Browns Canyon, a rugged stretch of the Arkansas River in central Colorado, has been waxing and waning since the area was first studied for wilderness designation in the 1970s. Several attempts to create a new federal wilderness have been floated since then, and though they’ve come tantalizingly close, none have yet […]
Posted inGoat
Negotiations speed up endangered-species listings
In northern Arizona, a tiny cactus, not more than 3.5 inches tall, lifts a creamy yellow flower above the desert rock each spring. Roughly 1,000 of these rare plants still grow, living 10 to 15 years and rising from the earth to flower each season before sinking back after fruiting. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife […]
Posted inGoat
Fracking, public lands, ag bills to watch at the close of legislative year
There are just four days left before the legislative year ends and Congress calls it good – or mediocre, as it may be – for 2013. This Congress passed the fewest number of laws since 1947, earning the unfortunate title of “least productive in history.” So it should come as no surprise that several major pieces […]
Posted inGoat
Will drilling cost the Arctic its wildness?
In the dark of a far-north winter night, amidst 70-mph winds, the nine-member crew of the tugboat Alert released its towline and set the Kulluk oilrig adrift on heaving seas. Loaded with about 139,000 gallons of diesel and 12,000 gallons of combined lubrication oil and hydraulic fluid, the Kulluk ran aground off uninhabited Sitkalidak Island […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Speaking of Wild Horses
Why read the article when you can read the thread instead?