Last week’s celebration showed how close we are to natural beauty, yet so far from diversifying our national parks.
Opinion
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Meet the man who changed humans’ relationship with bears
Montana biologist Chuck Jonkel, who recently passed away, invented bear spray — and saved bears in the process.
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How bigotry is woven in with our Western roots
Rock Springs, Wyoming, has a largely unrecognized history of racial violence.
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This year’s weird Alaska winter should make us very, very nervous.
It’s time to think of winters like the past three as glimpses into the future.
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No, national parks are not America’s ‘best idea’
There’s potential to alienate people who value ideas more pertinent to them than the parks.
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Inside a town where young people aren’t allowed
Last summer, my wife and I visited our friends, Randy and Abby, at their desert home outside Tucson. They live in a retirement community with age-restriction covenants. Eighty percent of the homeowners have to be over 55 years old and the remaining 20 percent at least 40. Anyone under 19 is out of luck. I […]
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Federal wildlife refuges are not up for grabs
Alaska’s attempt to intrude on federal wildlife refuges has incensed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for good reason.
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On becoming reacquainted with sandhill cranes
I’m on my way south to chase the first harbingers of spring in our High Plains desert home.
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Stop attacking pastoralists. We’re part of natural resource management, too.
A sheepherder speaks out about labor and environmental concerns.
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How Colorado is trying to get beyond zero-sum water wars
The new water plan represents an evolving moral algebra that transcends more primitive water law.
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No, Ted Cruz, Westerners should not follow in Texas’ footsteps
The state’s public lands boondoggle was a historical accident.
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It’s inevitable. There will be bikes in wilderness.
It hasn’t happened yet, but one day, bicycles and baby strollers will be welcome in wilderness. That’s the goal of the nonprofit Sustainable Trails Coalition, which seeks to permit other forms of human-powered trail travel in wilderness areas, besides just walking. Congress never prohibited biking or pushing a baby carriage. Both are banned by outmoded […]
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It’s time to stop development and save the Rio Grande
The rattling trumpet call of sandhill cranes echoed throughout the Rio Grande Valley in central New Mexico this February. The flocks began to make their ascent into the sky, circling to gain altitude and then heading north. The cranes’ early departure — driven by climate change — reveals one of the many challenges of adapting […]
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Ranch Diaries: I’m starting (another) new business. Will it work?
I’ll soon be delivering our grass-fed beef to the processor myself, and connecting directly with customers.
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I inherited an oil field. Now what do I do with it?
A writer faces a moral dilemma: fight the bureaucracy to end oil extraction on family land or give in?
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Fairy tales about the West are fueling public lands conflict
Last month, a federal court indicted the armed extremists who took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon on multiple counts of felony conspiracy, making threats and other serious charges. The property damage they caused, which is still being assessed, will likely be charged to the American taxpayers on whose behalf they claimed […]
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The Colorado caucus system works — sort of
The minuteae of the political process matter and are sometimes based on outdated systems.
Posted inMarch 21, 2016: Making Sense of Malheur
Stop trying to make biking in wilderness happen. It’s not going to happen.
I shouldn’t be writing this, and you shouldn’t be reading it. Far more pressing issues face our public lands. But a vocal minority is drudging up the long-resolved question of mountain biking in wilderness. They have even drafted a bill for somebody to introduce in Congress — the Human-Powered Wildlands Travel Management Act — that […]
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At Malheur, Sally Jewell was missing in action
The secretary of the Interior instead took a trip to Africa to combat wildlife poaching.
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Ranch Diaries: The era of the landless agrarian
I’m part of a generation of young farmers and ranchers who will struggle to ever own the land they work.