Participating in politics doesn’t usually seem all that inviting in Wyoming, with its one congressional representative and part-time citizen Legislature. That’s especially true for Democrats in this state that is as red as it is square. Non-Republicans in Wyoming can be akin to a rare species of toad — a curiosity that is easily squashed […]
Politics
Posted inWotr
Don’t starve the Forest Service
A whole lot of Rocky Mountain Westerners are concerned about President Bush’s recent proposal to cut the U.S. Forest Service budget. Out our way, the land is not an abstraction. The numbers in the Forest Service budget aren’t abstractions, either. They mean something real to our land and to our lives, and a cut of […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
I was a closet environmentalist
NAME Roger Muggli Age 59 Vocation Farmer/Feed Plant Operator Elected Position Secretary of the Tongue and Yellowstone Irrigation District (third generation) Handle Water Dog (H2OK9) Home Base Family farm east of Miles City, Montana Life Passion Water He Says “Wouldn’t it be grand if our kids and grandkids could float down the Yellowstone and still […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
We’re in a land of Lincoln
The bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth isn’t until Feb. 12, 2009, but we could easily spend the next year considering how our 16th president defined the American West. Lincoln, who was born in Kentucky, never traveled west of his adopted state of Illinois. Yet he, and the Republican Party he helped found, took a deep […]
Posted inArticles
Primer 1: Politics
From the outside – and even for many in the West – the West’s politics are usually seen as swaths of unbroken primary colors. The coast is blue (which in today’s color coding means Democratic) and the interior is Republican red, dotted here and there with liberal bastions such as Aspen, Boulder and Santa Fe. […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
The Chaparralian
California’s raging fires fuel one man’s fight for the much-maligned “elfin forest”
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Where do you draw the line?
As a journalist, I’ve watched many forms of civil disobedience in the West. I’ve known EarthFirst! tree-spikers and interviewed armed, tax-evading Freemen. I’ve seen “green” grandmothers lie down before bulldozers to stop the blazing of new logging roads across public land, viewed the carcasses of dead grizzly bears and wolves shot down by opponents of […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Tackling Utah’s trash
NAME Issa Hamud AGE 48 HOME LIFE Married, eight kids. DRIVES 2004 Ford F-150. HOBBY Four-wheeling with friends. NEXT PROJECT Hamud hopes to build an Environmental Education Center on the site of the current landfill once it closes. It will feature a glass wall exposing a cross section of the landfill to its 30-foot depths, […]
Posted inArticles
The Year of Ignorance about the West
This was supposed to be “the year of the West” in national politics. States that had been reliably Republican were suddenly competitive. Two Westerners — Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Republican, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat — were credible candidates for the presidency. The Democrats are holding their national convention in Denver […]
Posted inWotr
Idealism wakes up in America
I am one of the thousands of returned Peace Corps volunteers that Chris Matthews of MSNBC predicted would support Barack Obama after he lit the fuse in Iowa. But I had already been tapped by Harris Wofford, a Kennedy-era warhorse and director of the Peace Corps program in Ethiopia, who is now stumping college campuses […]
Posted inWotr
The West remains a mysterious region
This was supposed to be “the year of the West” in national politics. States that had been reliably Republican were suddenly competitive. Two Westerners — Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Republican, and, until he dropped out, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat — were credible candidates for the presidency. The Democrats will hold their […]
Posted inWotr
Where do you draw the line?
As a journalist, I’ve watched many forms of civil disobedience in the West. I’ve known EarthFirst! tree-spikers and interviewed armed, tax-evading Freemen. I’ve seen “green” grandmothers lie down before bulldozers to stop the blazing of new logging roads across public land, viewed the carcasses of dead grizzly bears and wolves shot down by opponents of […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2007: Last chance for the Lobo
Tireless and tenacious storytelling
NAME: Lori Edmo-Suppah AGE: 48 HOME BASE: Shoshone-Bannock Tribes’ Fort Hall Reservation, Idaho DESCRIBING HERSELF IN A NEWS STORY: “She enjoys her job even though she gets grouchy at her computer when fonts don’t work or files get corrupt. Her camera was stolen at the Festival last year … However, she says life goes on and she’ll eventually […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2007: Last chance for the Lobo
Last chance for the Lobo
Mexican wolves caught in the crossfire of the battle over public lands.
Posted inDecember 10, 2007: Rebels with a Lost Cause
Jim Detterline to the rescue
NAME Jim Detterline OCCUPATION Rocky Mountain National Park ranger NUMBER OF TIMES STRUCK BY LIGHTNING Three MOST TURTLES EVER OWNED AT ONE TIME 80 (When Detterline was a kid) DEGREES Master’s in vertebrate zoology, Ph.D. in invertebrate zoology HOBBIES Plays the trumpet Jim Detterline is a man of average size, lean, but not small. Still, […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2007: Rebels with a Lost Cause
Wake up to the West, wannabe presidents
The Democratic presidential debate in Nevada this November was promoted as a chance for candidates to engage with the West and its concerns, but it might as well have been held in Anywhere, USA. The moderator, four journalists and most of the audience ignored every critical issue that’s central to our region. The first issue, […]
Posted inWotr
Wake up, wannabe presidents
The Democratic presidential debate in Nevada this November was promoted as a chance for candidates to engage with the West and its concerns, but it might as well have been held in Anywhere, USA. The moderator, four journalists andmost of the audience ignored every critical issue that?s central to us here. The first issue is […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2007: Beetle Warfare
Two weeks in the West
November is the most political month, for better or worse, even in odd-numbered years. Thus we’ve just learned that two more of the West’s top Republicans are quitting: Wyoming Rep. Barbara Cubin and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo both announced that they won’t run for re-election when their terms expire next year. They’re joining a crowd […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2007: Beetle Warfare
Stretching the notion of neighbor
Seven years ago, Rev. Peter Sawtell took a leap of faith. He founded a nonprofit organization in Denver called Eco-Justice Ministries and became one of a small handful of Westerners working full-time on faith-based environmental issues. Nearly a decade later, the United Church of Christ minister is busy consulting with clergy, preaching to congregations around […]
Posted inWotr
One small voice against blundering into another war
On television recently, I heard Norman Podhoretz, an advisor to Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani, advocate the bombing of Iran, and it was clear that a drumbeat of opinion was pushing us toward another war in the Middle East. I mentioned this to a Portland friend who follows politics closely, and he told me to […]