All the info you need to decide whether you love or hate that the Forest Service uses concessionaires.
Politics
Posted inArticles
Concessionaire Campgrounds: An Explainer
The Privatization of public campgrounds | Create Infographics
Posted inGoat
Is the Clean Water Act under attack?
Big Ag wants rollbacks in fundamental legislation.
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
The man behind a New Mexico county’s fracking ban
Last year Mora became the first county in the nation to permanently ban oil and gas development.
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
A false divide
Dan Baum’s recent article would have us believe that gun violence prevention is a deeply divided, polarized issue. It is not. The fringe of the gun-rights movement, who are a small proportion of gun owners, and their deep-pocketed backers in the NRA would like us to believe this narrative, because it foments fear and helps […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Wannabe gonzo drivel
The false-equivalence tagline ” ‘gun nuts’ on both sides of the debate,” plus the Hunter S. Thompson wannabe photo should have been warning enough, but I went ahead and read Dan Baum’s article (“The Great Gun-Rights Divide,” HCN 5/26/14). It didn’t fail to disappoint. While not nearly as amusing as Thompson’s gonzo journalism, it was […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Which tributaries should be protected like the rivers they feed?
New rules may help regulators enforce an ambiguous law.
Posted inArticles
Border patrol runs roughshod on public lands
In its quest to secure the U.S./Mexico border, the U.S. Border Patrol is running roughshod over huge swaths of desert wilderness with complete immunity from U.S. environmental laws. That’s what Ray Ring, a senior editor at High Country News, discovered on a recent reporting trip to the border for his feature story “Border Out of […]
Posted inGoat
Sons of Wichita: understanding the enigmatic Koch brothers
The Koch brothers have become a household names in the past decade. Three out of four brothers are major players in energy development in the West and across the country. Two are powerbrokers for the conservative right and have been at the forefront of bringing libertarianism into the political mainstream. In the energy and political […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Border out of control
National security runs roughshod over the Arizona wild.
Posted inGoat
Is immigration reform an environmental issue?
The question of whether humanity can expand indefinitely without running roughshod over the very environment it depends on once stood at the center of the American environmental movement. Public concern reached a fever pitch after the Sierra Club published Paul Ehrlich’s bestselling The Population Bomb in 1968. Within that debate quietly lurked questions about how […]
Posted inGoat
The West’s crucial 2014 U.S. Senate races
The big question of the 2014 midterm elections — other than, “Eric Cantor lost?!” — is which party will emerge with control of the U.S. Senate. A number of Western states will host Senate races this year – Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Alaska – but only three will be hotly contested, […]
Posted inGoat
Infographic: Hey, Wildlife Services — what did you kill?
Earlier this month, Wildlife Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture division responsible for animal control, released data indicating that it killed over four million creatures in 2013 — a million more than it did the previous year. The agency, whose stated mission is to provide “leadership and expertise to resolve wildlife conflicts,” undertakes plenty of […]
Posted inGoat
Wildland firefighting takes funding from other vital programs
A new federal report this week shows how dollars meant for forest restoration and wildfire preparedness often get diverted to fighting wildfires. It’s been that way for years, and as fires get bigger and more expensive to fight, the problem only gets worse. As we reported last summer: “Just a few days before (the Rim […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Crazed ‘patriotism’
Concerning the Sagebrush Rebellion timeline, (“The BLM vs. Cliven Bundy, HCN, 5/12/14), et tu, High Country News? “After a tense standoff between armed militiamen and federal agents …” Somehow these bullying military-armed lawbreakers have convinced the media, including HCN, to associate them with the Second Amendment and the “well-regulated militia” delineated there. These confused and […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Federal generosity
With the U.S. District Court of Nevada giving Cliven Bundy 45 days to remove his cattle from federal grazing land, land the Bundy family had occupied for nearly six decades, it came to mind that Gen. O.O. Howard didn’t give the Nez Perce such a generous amount of time back in 1877. They had just 30 […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
The Latest: Obama designated his largest national monument yet
BackstorySince 2009, Congress has grid-locked around three dozen bills that would protect new acres of public land. Even locally grown, something-for-everyone wilderness bills, like Montana’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, are rotting in a legislature plagued by dysfunction and public-lands phobia (“Wilderness bills languish in legislative limbo,” HCN, 3/5/12). Public-land advocates are turning to President […]
Posted inGoat
EPA’s first CO2 emissions regs for existing power plants
While President Barack Obama’s landmark CO2 emissions regulations for existing power plants will certainly have its losers, in the long-run, the winners are in the majority. Dubbed the Clean Power Plan, drawn up by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act, the regulations mark the first time the government has imposed national-scale […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
The great gun-rights divide
A liberal gun owner finds ‘gun nuts’ on both sides of the debate.