On July 12, a gang member brutally attacked a female police officer on the Oglala Sioux’s Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The officer was forced to shoot the suspect and is now in hiding with her family, said John Mousseau, chairman of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, at a hearing in D.C. last month. […]
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Posted inRange
On the upper Clark Fork River
Summer is in full swing on the Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch—the birds are chirping, the mosquitoes are plentiful, the hay is cut, and the cattle are grazing. Since hiring on in June as the Clark Fork Coalition’s Ranchlands Program Manager, I’ve had a chance to get a feel for the day-to-day operation of the ranch, […]
Posted inGoat
A bear ate my old landlord?!
The title of this blog has a horror movie ring to it. It even sounds a little too ridiculous to be real. But for High Country News staffer Tammy York, it’s the truth. This isn’t the sort of thing we usually report on, but it’s a pretty incredible (and tragic) story to have so close […]
Posted inGoat
Natural gas, the miracle fuel!
Geez, it seems like it was just a few months ago that the natural gas boom was busting and the drill rigs were sent a-packin’. Natural gas prices cratered, thanks to the general economic malaise, and big shale gas plays in other parts of the country really dug into the West’s drilling boom. Meanwhile, all […]
Posted inGoat
Stimulus funding targets irrigation efficiency
Drought intensified this summer throughout California and most of the West. Already over-allocated, water supplies are short across most of the West prompting irrigation cutbacks, dewatered streams, endangered species conflicts and protests in irrigation-dominated areas like the west-side of California’s San Joaquin Valley. Drought also exacerbates water quality problems; less streamflow means more concentration of […]
Posted inGoat
Don’t feed the animals
Sad proof that it’s not wise to feed wildlife: Last week, a housekeeper found the partially eaten body of 74-year-old Donna Munson outside of Munson’s Ouray County, Colo., home. Munson regularly fed nine bears, and had been repeatedly warned by officials to stop. Authorities have since determined that Munson was killed by a 394-lb male […]
Posted inRange
Welcome to the Grange!
I can still remember attending Grange suppers when I was a kid. Back then — that would be three decades or more ago — Grange halls were pretty ubiquitous in the rural West, especially farming country. They were usually simple buildings, almost stark; places where far-flung farmers could get together for dinners and to catch […]
Posted inGoat
A Solar Plant a Tortoise Could Love
On the Web site of GreenBiz.com, Mark Gunther describes Bill Gross as “a serial entrepreneur” and “one of the most interesting business people I’ve known.” Gross is the guy who gave Google its paid-search idea. He likes robots. He has Google’s money invested in his electric car project (only fair, right?). He also may be […]
Posted inGoat
Bribery slips under the border
It starts with a $50 bill. Then $5,000, just to look the other way at the port of inspections. Suddenly the formerly-loyal U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer has become yet another link in the chain of corruption, bribery, contraband and violence that plagues the southern border. And he’s not the only one. An Associated […]
Posted inGoat
West Nile figures trickling in
The Centers for Disease Control say that only 35 cases of the West Nile virus have so far been reported in the United States this year, but the season is just getting started: late summer and early fall are the times when most infections occur. Of the 35 cases, 19 are in the West and […]
Posted inGoat
A pleasing discovery
In general, I think it is no coincidence that the words “travel” and “travail” have the same root — the Latin word “tripalium,” a three-pronged instrument of torture. But on occasion, there are pleasant surprises. It was time for Martha and me to visit our daughters (and grandson) in Oregon. In the past, […]
Posted inGoat
HCN’s favorite Tweeple
You may be one of those people who thinks Twitter is some kind of narcissistic echo chamber. That it’s a place where folks broadcast their breakfast to the world in 140 characters or less. Well, yeah. Still, even the social media skeptics here at the High Country News have gotten swept into the Twittersphere and […]
Posted inGoat
“Impossible to remain silent”
When Laura Amos of Silt, Colo., was diagnosed in 2003 with a rare adrenal condition, she began to suspect that it had something to do with four natural gas wells less than 1000 feet from her home. After EnCana Corporation drilled the wells in 2001, the family’s tap water resembled fizzy, gray soda pop. Amos […]
Posted inGoat
The rural West, on clearance
Statistics released by the USDA yesterday paint a sobering economic portrait of the rural West. The agency reported declines in agricultural land values across the country for the first time in more than 20 years. And it’s the Mountain states that have been clobbered worst of all. Montana farmland values fell a whopping 22.2 percent […]
Posted inGoat
California sun and spray
California’s farmworkers support an $11 billion industry, making the state the nation’s leading agricultural producer and exporter. But their working conditions are often difficult – they’re exposed to harmful pesticides and dangerous levels of thirst and heat. Now, the LA Times reports that the state is considering approval of another hazardous pesticide, and it’s facing […]
Posted inGoat
Crossroad at the foot of a mountain
Lilacs bloomed on the corner next to the hostel. A freight train rumbled through the little downtown, the third one in the past hour; the swirling clouds of railroad noise carried echoes of Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie. A block south of the tracks, a black Irish beauty from New York stood in front of a coffee shop, […]
Posted inGoat
Fire and Smoke
Back in June of this year I did a GOAT Blog post on the wildfires that burned during the summer of 2008 in Northwest California. In October of 2008 I posted a commentary on reasons why western wildfires are getting larger. Included in the June report was the controversy that arose in Northwest California last […]
Posted inGoat
Let it burn?
Despite wildfires smoldering across the West in recent weeks (outside of Denver, in Southern California, and near Arizona’s Kitt Peak Observatory), one Colorado town is backing off on wildfire protection. Breckenridge, Colo., a mountain resort town about 80 miles southwest of Denver, this week revoked an ordinance requiring homeowners to thin vegetation and remove trees […]
Posted inRay
Obama enviros
My list of 37 influential environmentalists who are in — or very close to — the Obama administration (updated most recently on Sept. 10, 2009): I’m not saying environmentalists run everything now — far from it. But most commentators focus on industry people who gain political power, so I’ll contribute something original by tracking enviros. […]
Posted inGoat
The latest buzz
It’s been more than two years since HCN reported on the West’s disappearing honeybees (see “Silence of the Bees”). Since then, parasitic mites and a mysterious syndrome called colony collapse disorder have killed off thousands more hives. Honeybees pollinate 80 percent of the fruits and vegetables we eat, and many wild species essential to ecosystems. […]