When a racist rancher in Nevada and his armed supporters can command headlines by claiming to own and control publicly owned lands, perhaps it’s time to remind Westerners about the history of the nation’s public-land heritage. Recall that it is we, the American people, who own the public lands that make up so much of […]
Politics
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
The Latest: Utah loses Salt Creek road suit
BackstoryRevised Statute 2477, passed in 1866, allowed settlers to build highways across public land. Western counties later exploited it to reopen and maintain abandoned routes, even in national parks and wilderness study areas (“The road to nowhere,” HCN, 12/20/04). In 2004, Utah and San Juan County filed an R.S. 2477 suit to reopen the Salt […]
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
Out in the backcountry
A profile of a gay ranger in the National Park Service.
Posted inGoat
Obama names newest U.S. monument: New Mexico’s Organ Mountains
President Obama’s record on public lands protection has been spotty – as of January 2013, he’d opened more than twice as many acres to drilling as he’d conserved. Lately, though, the POTUS has been on a bit of a roll. Over the last 16 months, Obama has used the Antiquities Act – the 1906 law […]
Posted inGoat
Tribes now prosecute non-Native offenders, Alaska scrambles to catch up
“I am a Native American statistic. I am a survivor of sexual and physical violence.” So began a 2012 speech by Tulalip Tribes vice chairwoman Deborah Parker supporting the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The man who abused Parker in the 1970s – as well as the men who raped her aunt a decade later […]
Posted inGoat
Utah denied claim to road in Canyonlands National Park
High Country News has been around for 44 years now … and sometimes it feels like we’ve been covering certain stories for darn near that long too. Like the Animas-La Plata water project in southern Colorado, meant to fulfill the Utes’ water rights, or the Central Arizona Project, which supplies Phoenix, Scottsdale and other major […]
Posted inWotr
What the president can do right now for conservation
When a racist rancher in Nevada and his armed supporters can command headlines by claiming to own and control publicly owned lands, perhaps it’s time to remind Westerners about the history of the nation’s public-land heritage. Recall that it is we, the American people, who own the public lands that make up so much of […]
Posted inArticles
A reluctant rebellion in the Utah desert
For ATVers at Recapture Canyon, realpolitik meets out-of-town zeal.
Posted inGoat
Unlikely partnership seeks to end turf wars in western Colorado
The room was a brawl waiting to happen. Horseback riders sat next to mountain bikers. ATV, jeep and motorbike enthusiasts took their seats across from wilderness, hiking and “quiet trail” advocates. Even a survey of peoples’ heads revealed the potential tension: There were cowboy hats and shiny, banker-like pates; spiky mullets and hair flattened by […]
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
Timeline: The BLM vs. Cliven Bundy
A detailed history of the conflict, starting in 1953.
Posted inGoat
Arizonans leverage local resources to prevent wildfire
While last week the federal government predicted a major budget shortfall for fighting wildfire, some groups are looking for innovative ways to fund wildfire prevention at the local level instead of waiting for the feds to pick up the bill. The latest Department of Interior and Forest Service forecasts for wildfire suppression expenditures are higher […]
Posted inArticles
Public Record: Cliven Bundy
Court and federal documents chronicle a long history of grazing battles.
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
The revolt that wouldn’t die
The latest Sagebrush Rebellion flare-up in Nevada was unusually fierce.
Posted inGoat
A new era of clean air regulation is dawning
Court rulings are not typically repositories of poetic prose. But they occasionally contain beautiful little gems, like this quote from the King James Bible, embedded in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s majority opinion in a clean air case the Supreme Court ruled on this week: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound […]
Posted inWotr
This land is our land – until it’s privatized
It’s 6 a.m. on April 8 as I head out for a hike on Mount Lemmon, in Arizona’s Coronado National Forest. Today, the temperature in Tucson will break 90 degrees, so I’m looking forward to the cooler, higher elevations. Passing Rose Canyon, I notice that the campground is still closed. Making a quick decision, I […]
Posted inGoat
After the standoff, what’s next for Bundy and BLM?
With armed militia on one side, armed federal agents on the other, and about 900 cows in the middle, the Bureau of Land Management last Saturday called off its roundup of rancher Cliven Bundy’s “trespass cattle,” releasing the 300 or so cows it had already collected back into the desert. BLM director Neil Kornze said […]
Posted inGoat
Against the grain: Proposed FDA rule has beer-makers foaming
In 2013, New Belgium Brewing, the Fort Collins, Colo.-based purveyor of libations like Fat Tire and Ranger, whipped up exactly 792,292 barrels of beer. Considering each barrel is capable of filling somewhere in the range of 60 six-packs, that production made for plenty of happy drinkers (including, on more than one occasion, yours truly). But […]
Posted inArticles
Photos of a standoff
Armed militia members join a Nevada rancher to protest a cattle roundup from public land.
Posted inGoat
Rancher vs the BLM: A 20-year standoff ends with tense roundup
‘As far as I’m concerned,’ Cliven Bundy says, ‘the BLM don’t exist.’
Posted inGoat
Rare island-dwelling wolf closer to protection in Southeast Alaska
Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island is home to the Alexander Archipelago wolf, an extremely rare subspecies of gray wolf facing a plethora of threats. Environmental groups first petitioned to protect the animal under the Endangered Species Act nearly three years ago. The Fish and Wildlife Service finally announced this week that it will consider a […]