With firefighter safety and the West’s changing fire ecology on everyone’s mind right now, it’s a good time to broaden our view with a trip into the HCN archives. Below are links to some of the in-depth stories we’ve done on these issues. Firefighter fatalities and safety The Fiery Touch: Wildfire arsonists burn forests, grasslands […]
Politics
Posted inGoat
Yarnell Hill fire fatalities, in context
A good friend of mine who is a wildfire medic was in the airport yesterday, en route to his next assignment, when I called to ask him, in that helpless way we do, to be safe, and to see how he was handling the tragic news from Arizona, where 19 hotshots lost their lives Sunday fighting […]
Posted inWotr
Learning to live with wildfire
The enormous column of black smoke towered before me. As the Hammer Fire closed in on the backcountry workstation that I call home in the summer, fear spread from my hard hat to the soles of my fire boots. I was on a trail-crew turned fire-crew, suited up to help protect the historic Forest Service […]
Posted inGoat
What’s the matter with Colorado Springs?
When the so-called Black Forest Fire ignited near Colorado Springs on June 11 and quickly spread across 14,000 acres of forested neighborhoods — destroying more than 500 houses, killing two people and forcing thousands to evacuate — it was an obvious tragedy draped in orange flame retardant. But let’s keep in mind, a political disconnect […]
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
If a tree falls in the forest, who talks about it?
As a fourth-generation Oregonian whose family has only minimally depended on the forest-products industry, I often find myself drifting far from zero-cut environmentalists on the one hand and industry cheerleaders on the other (“A New Forest Paradigm,” HCN, 4/29/13). It’s all too obvious to me how the industry and its dependent towns got into the current […]
Posted inGoat
Big Brother’s big data is coming to Utah
Last year, with a great deal of prescience, Wired magazine published James Bamford’s long form story describing Bluffdale, Utah where “Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors,” and where, off of Beef Hollow Road, construction was underway on a building five times the size of the U.S. Capitol. The building, which Bamford describes […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Is the Violence Against Women Act a chance for tribes to reinforce their sovereignty?
Victims’ advocates joined legislators at the North Dakota Capitol in Bismarck on March 26, to discuss the recently reauthorized Violence Against Women Act. The meeting began on a celebratory note: The federal law restored to tribal courts the right to prosecute non-Indians for abusing or assaulting Native American women on Indian land — something the […]
Posted inGoat
Will Nevada force mining companies to pay their fair share?
The Nevada State Legislature wrapped up its biennial legislative session last Tuesday morning with a number of “good, bad or just plain weird” bills, as the Las Vegas Sun put it, headed to the desk of Gov. Brian Sandoval for approval. The Governor has already vetoed some of the proposed laws, including one that would […]
Posted inRange
Collaborative brings good news to Clearwater Country
Idaho is a paradoxical state. In some places it’s desert and sand dunes, in others, ferns and red cedar. Its people are also a complex mix of rugged individualists with strong churches and communities, of urban professionals and backwoods blue-collar workers. Those contradictions can pull the state apart or bring folks together. One of those […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Of Muir and Pinchot
In “A New Forest Paradigm,” Nathan Rice refers to “John Muir’s preservationist ideals” and “Gifford Pinchot’s utilitarian forestry” (HCN, 4/29/13). Muir certainly fit the mold of a preservationist, believing nature should be preserved for its own sake. But many would argue that Pinchot was more of a traditional conservationist rather than a utilitarian. The latter […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Saving the real old growth
I read with interest Nathan Rice’s excellent article “A New Forest Paradigm” (HCN, 4/29/13). I was around in the 1970s, when the last of the old-growth giants were being felled in Oregon and Washington. I deplored what was happening then and cheered any means of saving those venerable trees, some of which were over 500 […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Word watch
The new buzzword in the woods is “ecological forestry,” to replace “new forestry,” which academics advocated and promoted in the 1990s. I applaud the desire to provide ecosystem management that somewhat mimics nature, but I often question motives (i.e., “to get the cut out”). What “A New Forest Paradigm” fails to acknowledge is that every […]
Posted inGoat
Dying to come to the USA
Cochise Stronghold rises abruptly from the desert outside Tombstone, Ariz., a craggy nest of pink granite spires and domes. Rock climbers like me flock to the area for its tall, coarse slabs, weird rock formations, epic sunsets and remote backcountry feel. Although it’s never happened to me, many climbers I know have encountered tattered backpacks, […]
Posted inWotr
Once there was an effective governor and a middle ground
It’s sobering to recall that, not that long ago, the West wasn’t labeled Blue or Red, but rather a shade of beige. Just a generation ago, centrists like Mike Mansfield, Cecil Andrus, Frank Church, Scoop Jackson, John Melcher and progressives like the cousins Morris and Stewart Udall represented Westerners in Washington. Today, if a Western […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
How right-wing emigrants conquered North Idaho
If anyone in Kootenai County could have predicted the Democrats’ downfall, it was Dan English. He had spent most of his life in the Idaho Panhandle and monitored more than 100 local elections in his 15 years as county clerk. The first ballots he counted, in 1996, revealed tight contests between Republicans and Democrats, but […]
Posted inGoat
Save our gauges
In the spring of 2011, a big, fast-melting snowpack, along with ice-jammed rivers and persistent rain brought intense flooding to Montana. Miles City, in the southeastern part of the state, declared a flood disaster after part of its levee system eroded away, and the town’s stream gauge on the Yellowstone River measured the third highest […]
Posted inGoat
The other Cannabis legalization story
There were obvious ways to avoid being drafted into combat during World War II: Be a woman. Or a man younger than 18. Or a man of prime age who was somehow “physically, mentally or morally” unfit. And then there were less apparent avenues. For instance: grow hemp. The government would not only allow you […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
The trouble with original claims
I am excited about the Río Grande del Norte National Monument. However, I work for one of the tribes in New Mexico, and given my familiarity with Native issues, I always find the position of the Hispanic community in New Mexico to be rather hypocritical. When they state that they have a claim to the […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
Token protection?
It’s wonderful that people from many cultures in northern New Mexico recognized the economic benefits from heightened federal recognition of the Río Grande Gorge near Taos. National monuments are powerful economic drivers, and we welcome President Obama’s action. Yet the language of the Río Grande del Norte proclamation offers little additional environmental protection beyond status […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Seeking balance in Oregon’s timber country
“Now, that is an old-growth tree!” shouts Jerry Franklin on a September day in the hills above Roseburg, Ore. A mammoth Douglas fir towers 10 stories above, dwarfing everything around it. Sunlight filters down through the thick canopy to a group of about 20 University of Washington students. “You can really see who the veterans […]