If you have a taste for irony and political dilemmas, this is delicious. We all know how Western Democratic politicians get more popular by coming out for gun rights. They’re packing guns and twirlin’ and shootin’ … partly because some are gun folks, and mainly because it’s good for the image. It differentiates them from […]
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A fine feathered re-do
Over the years, we’ve run a lot of stories about the spotted owl (most recently, Spotted owl or red herring? and Hostile Takeover). The threatened raptor, which depends on old growth forests, was blamed for the decline of logging in the 90s, and timber companies have continually pushed to reduce the bird’s protection. Both enviros […]
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The whites are back in town
Whites are moving back into the city of Denver, and people of color are sprawling into suburbia, according to a case study in the Sunday edition of The Denver Post. Hey, that’s the same story in Washington, D.C. Dubbed “Chocolate City,” D.C. is due to transition from majority black to majority white in 2014, according […]
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The irony of home brew
At first glance, I thought it was an April Fool’s Day joke, the front-page headline in the Denver Post which announced that “Utah to ease liquor laws.” But upon further reading, I discovered that it was no joke. As of July 1, Utah’s liquor laws will resemble those of most other states. You’ll be able […]
Posted inRay
Sage grouse robot video!
Even though today is April Fool’s Day, I think this is not made up. Scientists studying sage grouse behavior in Wyoming have built an amusing but useful grouse robot. The robot looks like a grouse, if you have bad eyesight. It runs on a little railroad track that goes into a lek (mating ground). The […]
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Outlaws with guns
Tomorrow Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will visit Mexico to discuss ways to halt the flow of guns across the border. Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, but its drug cartels are armed with high-powered weapons smuggled over the border from the United […]
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Climate change is easy money
At their worst, carbon offsets are opaque, morally-ambiguous items that reek of guilt, arcane rites of penance and the potential for profiteering. When you buy an offset it’s hard to tell whether your money will actually be used to plant the promised grove of trees or install, for example, a slew of compact florescent light […]
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James Herriot, we need you
How would you like to be a doctor with 37,000 patients? If you’re the lone veterinarian in Washington’s Adams County who treats food animals, that’s how many cows, sheep and pigs await your attention. A fall 2007 survey showed that many counties don’t have even a single vet trained to treat livestock. Three-quarters of newly-trained […]
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A flick of the wrist…
Yesterday, President Obama signed the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009. His signature ensures protection for more than 2 million acres of wilderness nationwide, and sets the long-awaited Navajo-Gallup water project in motion, delivering badly needed infrastructure and acre feet to the Navajo Nation. More than 70,000 people in the Navajo Nation do not have easy access […]
Posted inRay
Was our last wild jaguar euthanized by mistake?
Until today, this was the sad story of Macho B, the last known wild jaguar in our country: The jaguar was snared by accident south of Tucson Feb. 18. Wildlife agents decided to strap it with a radio collar to study its movements. Then they noticed the jaguar behaving strangely for 12 days, so they […]
Posted inRay
Some ‘stimulus’ may be bad for environment
Despite their greenish credentials, Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress are bound to offer a mixed bag of environmental policies. Reality ho. Yes, they’ll push conservation deals like the Omnibus federal-lands package that Congress just passed. They’ll try to address climate change and energy and they’ll try other greenish moves. But it’s already apparent, some […]
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Outlawed…
The fruit farmers in Paonia have been a bit worried about our weird weather. Spring came early, so the trees started budding. And this week, it’s been cold – sometimes freezing. If it gets too frosty, we might be out of luck for the season. Something else that’s on farmers’ minds: H.R. 875, a bill […]
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Newsitos for 3/26/09
Enviros are literally popping champagne corks to christen the Omni federal-lands package. Undercover feds busted several American Indians, charging they killed eagles illegally to sell the feathers for ceremonies. Mormon Church leaders calculated their moves quietly, leading many years of political campaigns against gay marriage, says a Salt Lake City columnist. And as killer bees […]
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Paranoia, helicopters, herbicides
March 25th: An association of Hispanic residents from two Texas barrios near the Rio Grande river file a lawsuit complaining that the Department of Homeland Security has acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. The group, called Barrio de Colores, hopes to stop the Border Patrol from going forward with their plan to apply […]
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Western Repubs remain split as Omni wilderness deals pass
It required additional amazing tricky moves by Democrats running Congress. But finally, culminating more than a year of wrangling, today the House of Representatives approved the substance of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009. The Senate approved it most recently on March 19. President Obama will certainly sign it. Many of the Big […]
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Fire from the faucet
“Shock” and “terror:” that’s how Colorado resident Amee Ellsworth feels about her tap water. The stuff stinks, it causes strange sounds in her toilet and washing machine; and worst of all, she’s afraid it’ll blow up her house. When she turns on her kitchen faucet and flicks a lighter, foot-high flames leap from the tap. […]
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Is the San Andreas slipping?
Fill the water jugs and put the wrench back near the gas valve, Southern Californians, the Big One’s about to blow! Or not. You never can tell with these things. But geologists are watching closely a “swarm” of recent earthquakes on the Southern San Andreas Fault, the largest of which logged in at 4.8 on […]
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Slums and tent cities
Urban planners love the fact that slums are “walkable, high-density, and mixed-use,” as The Boston Globe recently reported about Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums. In the article, reporter Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow says many governments are beginning to “mitigate the problems with slums rather than eliminate the slums themselves.” The general consensus is that informal communities (read: […]
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Salmon and pesticides
Research conducted by NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Washington State University has discovered that common agricultural pesticides which attack the nervous systems of salmon can turn more deadly when they combine with other pesticides. This development is likely to underscore requirements for no spray buffer zones along salmon waterways – a requirement which agricultural […]