The Bush administration throws enviros and hunters some bones
Montana
Posted inJune 21, 2004: A Walk Between Worlds
Fighting for the Rocky Mountain Front: Montana rancher Karl Rappold
DUPUYER, Montana — Montana’s spectacular Rocky Mountain Front is known for its window-rattling winds. But Karl Rappold, a former rodeo cowboy who raises cattle here, says he was still surprised to get blown out of his saddle — literally — while herding stock last year. The winds that day were clocked at over 120 mph, […]
Posted inJune 7, 2004: Wal-Mart's Manifest Destiny
I’ve tried, but I can’t eat the view
I’ve given up on one of the great American dreams — owning a home of my own. Why? Because it’s becoming impossible to find affordable housing in the West, even in the non-resort towns. It’s easy to tell that Missoula, Mont., is still a working-class town. Just check out the traffic on the tree-shaded lanes, […]
Posted inJune 7, 2004: Wal-Mart's Manifest Destiny
Heard around the West
MONTANA How do you test a garbage can to find out if it’s tough enough to withstand the long claws and big brain of a ravenous grizzly bear? Just ask a seasoned hand at product-testing — a half-ton grizzly named Sam — to lend his expertise. Sam and seven other bears are “official product inspectors” […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
The grizzly’s in the house — or at least, the yard
To make it in the wild as a grizzly in the Lower 48, you need an education. But mom may be teaching you some questionable survival skills: how to raid garbage cans, pilfer grain from barns and scavenge birdseed from backyard feeders. As humans spread into prime bruin habitat, some bears are becoming “suburban guerrillas.” […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Filmmakers Filmmakers Dru Carr and Doug Hawes-Davis: Documenting the Evolving West
MISSOULA, MONTANA — Filmmaking isn’t about big budgets, explosions or special effects for Dru Carr and Doug Hawes-Davis, the only full-time employees at the Missoula, Mont.-based High Plains Films. Instead, it’s the tool they use to document — and, they hope, protect — the ever-evolving West. In the early ’90s, Carr and Hawes-Davis were students […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA If Arnold Schwarzenegger has his way, gas-powered cars will be terminated in 10-15 years. The media-savvy governor recently drove a hydrogen-powered Toyota to a press conference in Davis, where he championed hydrogen as a replacement for gasoline, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Schwarzenegger, who has played an unstoppable robot from the future, predicted the […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
The West’s mythmakers are now its newcomers
If you heard about the man who kicked off his campaign for governor by swinging a medieval battle sword on horseback in the middle of downtown Billings, you probably thought, “Only in Montana.” Glenn Schaffer posed at the offices of the local paper in February on a stallion named Big Dog Thunder Horse, and said […]
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Asbestos beyond Libby city limits
Since Andrew Schneider and David McCumber broke the story of Libby, Mont., in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, what began as local news about miners and their families dying of asbestosis has mushroomed into a national health disaster. Now, in their new book, An Air That Kills, they expose the asbestos industry’s deadly impact on the lives […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Should the Forest Service be blamed for a snowmobile wreck
MONTANA About 10 o’clock one February night in 1996, Michigan tourist Brian Musselman was snowmobiling on a groomed trail in Gallatin National Forest near West Yellowstone, when another snowmobiler “blasted over a 17-foot jump” and slammed into him, according to the Great Falls Tribune. The wreck left Musselman with severe brain injuries, and it raised […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
A new look at Yellowstone
“Wholly an unattractive country. There is nothing whatever in it, no object of interest to the tourist, and there is not one out of twenty who visits for purposes of observation this remote section.” So declared one congressman in the late 1800s, dismissing the valleys of Yellowstone. What a difference a century can make: Today, […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2004: Two decades of hard work, plowed under
Yellowstone snowmobilers suffer whiplash
Judge says Interior Department is to blame for last-minute reinstatement of snowmobile ban
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Follow-up
New nukes — as well as old nuclear waste — may soon be headed West: Tucked inside the 2004 Water and Energy Appropriations Bill was $11 million for the Modern Pit Facility, a factory to build plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs (HCN, 9/1/03: Courting the Bomb). Now, it’s up to the Energy Department to decide […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
A cheer for runaway bison and the Rocky Mountain Front
Anyone with a heart had to cheer the bison. One recent snowy day in Great Falls, Mont., three of the half-ton creatures were being loaded off a truck into a slaughterhouse. One of the half-wild bovines busted through a five-foot timber corral and — bingo! — led a buffalo breakout. The three beasts stampeded through […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Butte ponders the power of Evel
BUTTE, MONTANA — This is a town that has stopped at nothing in its pursuit of a buck. It has fouled its water with mining runoff and demolished half its downtown for a gigantic open pit, all for a relentless red harvest of copper. It seems strange, then, that many longtime residents feel Butte has […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Heard Around the West
MONTANA Here’s a story to make you wince: Three mountain lion kittens, all about eight weeks old, tried to cross railroad tracks 12 miles west of Butte. The kittens were wet from crossing a nearby creek, and the air temperature was only 10 degrees. So the kittens stuck fast, one frozen to the track on […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Western patriots are rebelling against the Patriot Act
A quick opinion poll: The mass murders of Sept. 11, 2001, were allowed to happen because: A. Letting airline passengers carry potentially deadly weapons such as box-cutters was a bad idea. B. Airport security is a job too important to delegate to corporations. C. Cockpit doors were either unlocked or missing. D. Americans enjoy so […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Hell’s fires burn in the Northern Rockies
If hell has mountains, they must look like the Northern Rockies. As my fire spotter and I fly an insignificantly small airplane over our territory in western Montana, we weave through brown tendrils of wind-shredded smoke that curl around granite peaks. Sudden explosions of dark ash rise into the air above stands of trees as […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 2003: Courting the Bomb
Digging through the dust of Libby
For decades, the best jobs in Libby, Mont., were to be found at the local vermiculite mine. The work was tough and dusty, but it paid better than anything else in northern Montana. In the 1970s, however, mine workers, their families, and their neighbors started dying of respiratory diseases and rare, painful cancers. Libbyites didn’t […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2003: Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play
Everyone needs a place apart
Some years back, Marypat and I bought 20 acres of land in central Montana, two hours from our home in Bozeman. An unremarkable spot — a sandstone bluff, an intermittent creek, ponderosa pines, views of distant peaks. Beyond building an outhouse and a campfire ring, we have done nothing to develop the place. We go […]