If you paid any attention at all to national forest issues during Bush’s tenure, you heard the name “Mark Rey” a lot. Appointed Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment, Rey oversaw the Forest Service for eight years. From the start, environmental groups were wary of Rey’s logging-friendly record, while his supporters praised Rey’s […]
Politics
Posted inGoat
The line is busy
Back in 1991 when the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment set up the call center to process people who need unemployment benefits, it seemed like a good way to increase efficiency and prevent long lines at the office. Back then, there were about 400 calls a day. Fast forward to 2009. “What we’re seeing […]
Posted inGoat
Watts or Wildfire
Here’s a new angle on fire in the west: one large southern California utility is trying to convince ratepayers that some regions of its service area are too fire-prone for uninterrupted electricity. Or at least, that’s the implication behind San Diego Gas and Electric’s proposal to unplug portions of its grid when there’s a high […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
Champions go both ways
Obama’s federal appointees share a green streak
Posted inGoat
Waste, fraud and abuse
Those who have lived for any amount of time in a western ranching community will not be surprised by news that the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), an agency of the US Department of Agriculture, overpaid landowners for “conservation” benefits. According to a report in the Capital Press, a western Ag weekly reporting on a […]
Posted inGoat
Score one for Grand Staircase-Escalante
Thirteen years ago, when outgoing President Clinton designated Grand Staircase-Escalante a national monument, the outcry from some southeast Utah residents was deafening (and HCN was there to write about it). Angry ranchers called their representatives and demanded repeal, locals burned Clinton in effigy, billboards saying NO MONUMENT! went up along the highways. Garfield and Kane […]
Posted inGoat
Tea Party Day is coming
Even here in the boondocks, far from any place that Fox News has ever covered, it’s impossible to escape the publicity about the impending “Tea Party on Tax Day.” First came a robocall on Saturday; a husky male voice advised me to “show that you care about our country” by “attending a Tea Party on […]
Posted inApril 13, 2009: The Desert That Breaks Annie Proulx’s Heart
Nonprofits reap the profits
Green, Inc. – An Environmental Insider Reveals How a Good Cause Has Gone BadChristine MacDonald288 pages, hardcover: $24.95.The Lyons Press, 2008. Inflated executive salaries. Top brass hobnobbing at expensive getaways. Questionable side deals negotiated with no concern for the everyday folks affected by them. These problems aren’t just native to Wall Street. They also occur […]
Posted inApril 13, 2009: The Desert That Breaks Annie Proulx’s Heart
Avalanches for dummies
NameHomer HometownBozeman, Mont. OccupationExtreme-sports guinea pig Best LookPowder beard A man leans on a bamboo pole high above the slopes at Bridger Bowl near Bozeman, Mont. From a distance, he appears remarkably calm, even as ski patrollers throw explosives onto the snow-loaded slope directly above him. There’s a loud blast and a fracture forms in […]
Posted inRay
Battle for justice in Libby might collapse quietly
Environmental groups send me many press releases. And I read many news stories about environmental issues — news framed by the groups. The influential groups are busy designating more wilderness, and filing lawsuits to protect wolves, and pushing Congress to reform mining law, battling coal, battling oil and gas, battling off-road drivers etc. etc. But […]
Posted inWotr
Ranchers now have a way out
The years-in-the-making Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 finally became law last month. The act designates more than 2 million acres of new wilderness, plus 1,100 miles of new wild and scenic rivers, and it also includes an increasingly popular model for resolving grazing conflicts on public lands. In two Western states — Oregon […]
Posted inApril 13, 2009: The Desert That Breaks Annie Proulx’s Heart
A ghost of the 1970s
Bipartisan politics reappeared in Washington, D.C., in March. It felt like a ghost from the golden age of the environmental movement, the 1970s, when Republicans and Democrats worked together to pass major environmental laws. The new Omnibus Public Land Management Act assembles 166 deals related to conservation and natural resources (plus an unrelated 167th for […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s remember the children
As dollars from the Economic Stimulus Act arrive here in the eight Rocky Mountain states, most Westerners seem to be talking about spending that money on shovel-ready jobs. The projects we hear about are intended to repair our crumbling schools, bridges, roads and sewers, or to restore our abused landscape. We know, too, that money […]
Posted inRay
Montana wrestles nation’s boldest gun-rights bill
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 […]
Posted inGoat
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 […]
Posted inGoat
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 […]
Posted inWotr
Environmentalists must learn to compromise
Desalination plants are necessary to quench the West’s thirst
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 […]
Posted inGoat
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 […]