As the 21st century unfolds, it’s becoming clear that we need more family farmers and ranchers on the land, not fewer. We need them not only for the food they provide, but also for a lesson in how to live on the land. It’s an ironic turn of events. For decades, livestock grazing in the […]
Essays
Posted inWotr
The end of an affair
I hate to say it, but it’s true: I’m in love with my lawn. My love affair began romantically in the promising early days of spring, as regular rain showers turned my backyard in Wyoming into something very Southampton-like. My lawn was worthy of a respectable English cricket game: A cushy playground for bare feet. […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Advice from a rancher: The risks make it fun
The other day I heard a newsman refer to “these perilous times” for businesspeople. No kidding, I thought. The gloomy picture featured rising costs, increased property taxes, deepening recession, employee demands for more insurance and benefits, market risk — the list went on. I thought of the risks we’ve faced in ranching, with more to […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Drilling with Charlie
Drilling holes into the earth is an audacious act with an ancient history. Many centuries ago, the Chinese were drilling wells 1,000 feet deep. In the 1860s, as the giant marine mammals grew scarce, American whalers came ashore and began harpooning the planet, hoping to strike “rock oil.” Earth may resemble a big rock, but […]
Posted inWotr
The next fires will be anytime, all the time
The warm wind of July 14, 1988, signaled the beginning of a remarkable series of fires that burned into Americans’ consciousness. Before that day, the managers of Yellowstone National Park and nearby national forests were confident that their efforts to restore natural fire were a success. After that day, the concept of the natural would […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Measuring Tahoe’s blues
Sediment and pollution obscure lake and light
Posted inWotr
Gas industry secrets and a nurse’s story
This July, an emergency room nurse named Cathy Behr wanted to tell Colorado’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission the story of how she nearly died after being exposed to a mystery chemical from a gas-patch accident. Regulators said she wasn’t scheduled to testify and they didn’t want to hear it. But anyone concerned about natural […]
Posted inWotr
Saddling up for a good cause – at last
I accidentally set my brother, Walt, on fire when I was 3. In fifth-grade, I swiped his buffalo-head nickel collection, blowing it on candy and RC colas. During college, I unintentionally sank a drill bit into his thumb, sending him to the emergency room. After 50 years of my shenanigans, you’d wonder why he still […]
Posted inJuly 21, 2008: A fractured party
Power of the picture
International photographers hit the Wyoming Range to document the effects of energy development — and find that beauty and ugliness walk hand in hand
Posted inJuly 21, 2008: A fractured party
Home is where the guilt is
Sitting here in the stingy shade of a pinon pine, a few hundred feet from a two-lane road on the outskirts of Santa Fe, I can almost picture the house that will soon be built here — my house. It will be smallish but comfortable, faux adobe (a given in “the City Different”), with two […]
Posted inArticles
Don’t call plugging wolves hunting
It’s been about three months since wolves in the Northern Rockies were removed from the protection of the Endangered Species Act. To date, at least 20 wolves have been reported killed in Wyoming, where they may legally be shot on sight. That’s an average of one wolf killed every four and half days. Five of […]
Posted inArticles
An ancient place to wonder about our survival
I’ll never forget losing two clients somewhere in the 164,000-acre Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southern Colorado. On a glorious May morning, the two friends walked too fast ahead of the group I was leading for the Smithsonian Associates Program. The couple disappeared, and the other members of the tour were worried. Anxiously, […]
Posted inArticles
We thought we were safe
I live close to tall trees in Northern California, and on the afternoon of June 12, I held our mare, Millie, and watched wildfire advance toward the draw not 1,000 away where my wife and I had almost finished building our home. We’d been working on the house for almost four years. The wind pushed […]
Posted inJune 23, 2008: Peace on the Klamath
Credo: The People’s West
How citizens and communities can reinvent their relationship with the American landscape Lifelong locals know their home. They understand the land’s intimate cycles from decades and generations of living in place, a miracle of stability and identity. We can never hope to restore or sustain landscapes and watersheds without the cooperation of local citizens. They […]
Posted inArticles
PRO: The Tejon agreement is a true conservation victory
Anyone reading about the Tejon Ranch — California’s largest contiguous private property — has probably heard about the three controversial development projects: Tejon Industrial Park, the Tejon Mountain Village and the Centennial Planned Community. But have you heard about the Tejon Golf and Hunting Resort, or maybe the Whitewolf Village and Shopping Center? People haven’t […]
Posted inArticles
CON: A housing development that’s a tragedy for condors
In recent weeks, several high-profile environmental organizations have been celebrating a deal they call “perhaps the greatest victory for conservation that many of us will see in our lifetime.” If only this were true. Sadly, it is not; the deal in question represents a major setback for conservation. The “deal” does result in permanent preservation […]
Posted inArticles
When choosing a house, think past a lifetime
We’ve had some minor flooding lately in the Gallatin Valley in southwestern Montana, the consequence of a good mountain snowpack and a two-day heat wave, followed by a big rain. It reminded everyone of the way things used to work. Some local landowners, however, were “shocked,” I read in the paper. “I’ve lived here 12 […]
Posted inArticles
A little regulation can be a very good thing
The gas industry won the battle of the stickers that festooned people’s ball caps, chests and arms. Some 2,000 folks had gathered in Grand Junction to tell the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission their feelings about proposed new rules for oil and gas drilling in Colorado. It was easy to see that “Please don’t […]
Posted inArticles
Who you calling terrorist?
The Cold War was hot when I was growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s. It affected our domestic discourse because politicians so often sought to discredit their opponents as “Communist sympathizers” or “comsymps,” people “soft on Communism,” “just a little bit pink” or outright “pinkos.” Something as basic as the integration of public facilities […]
Posted inArticles
Don’t trash Joshua Tree National Park
Which word doesn’t belong with “national park?” Wildflowers, wildlife, hiking, night sky, garbage dump? No doubt you answered “garbage dump,” yet the biggest landfill in the United States may be developed right next to California’s Joshua Tree National Park. Fortunately, a lawsuit filed by the National Parks Conservation Association and others is trying to halt […]