Environmental issues have barely registered a blip on political radar screens this campaign season. Sure, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney had a notable bickering match about drilling on public lands in their town hall debate. But it devolved into a game of one-upmanship as to who would drill more. Yes, Obama continues to promote clean […]
Politics
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Three Nevada fiction writers make their debut
This year, three accomplished and innovative fiction debuts by young Nevada-raised writers will hit the bookstores, including two novels –– Tupelo Hassman’s Girlchild and Ben Rogers’ The Flamer (reviewed in HCN on Aug. 6) –– and a short story collection, Claire Vaye Watkins’ Battleborn. Girlchild tells the story of Rory Dawn Hendrix, who at the […]
Posted inGoat
Glimpses of moderation this election season
Like a lot of you, I’m feeling depressed in the runup to the November 6 elections. The relentless attack ads demonizing every candidate around the West, and our further fragmentation into hostile camps — six political parties qualified for Wyoming’s ballot alone, a new record for that state, for instance — I’m beginning to think […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Existential nomad: A profile of author Ruben Martinez
In Rubén Martinez’s new memoir, Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West, the author examines the fertility kit that he and his wife had ordered, taking particular interest in its clean hypodermic syringes and needles. It is 2007, and the couple is living beneath northern New Mexico’s famed Black Mesa, in Velarde, […]
Posted inGoat
Bureaucracy and the birds
In 1975, the Department of Interior reassured Native Americans they would not be prosecuted by the federal government for using eagle feathers for cultural or religious purposes. But the “Morton Policy,” as the directive is known, didn’t answer several important questions, leading to confusion on the part of tribal members. For example, was it okay […]
Posted inWotr
Arizona voters face an IQ test on public lands
Arizona voters face two land-related ballot measures this November, and together, they reveal not just the state’s split personality but that of the West as well. You can think of Proposition 119 as a respectable Dr. Jekyll, a 19th century gentleman who wants the state and federal government to exchange land to improve management and […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
The West in my blood: A profile of Eddie Chuculate
Two years ago, on a cool October evening at Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts, Native author Eddie Chuculate read his story “Dear Shorty” aloud. He spoke with a rolling rhythm, peppered by alliteration. With his head cocked, glasses in one hand and the book almost touching his nose, Chuculate held his listeners entranced. […]
Posted inGoat
BLM looks for balance
“We need to be smart. The future of how public lands are going to be managed is going to be based upon how they’re being used today.” — Retired Bureau of Land Management chief Bob Abbey, who stepped down in May, speaking to HCN in a recent interview. Judging by the way much BLM land […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Keep what’s public public
Hats off to Neil LaRubbio and HCN for the quality article on federal land exchanges, which beamed some welcome sunlight into dark corners (“Big Timber games for better ground in Idaho,” HCN, 9/3/12). There is fierce and widespread opposition to the fatally flawed proposed Northern Idaho Lochsa Land Exchange. Friends of the Clearwater, Alliance for […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
On Science and dogma
As a former resident of Colorado’s Front Range, I found Emily Guerin’s fire-science story, about forest ecologists’ disagreement about whether all dry Western forests are to be considered overly-dense and in need of restoration, to be fascinating (“Fire fights,” HCN, 9/17/12). While the article interprets the “controversy” as a lack of consensus among forest ecologists, […]
Posted inGoat
Number games
I’ve always enjoyed the security of numbers, especially the dependable type. Two: the number of feet I have to stand on. Six: the number of months I have to work at the fine establishment that is High Country News. These are figures I can count on. They help me navigate through the world with a […]
Posted inWotr
Budget cuts to natural resource programs hurt more than they help
There is no doubt that our nation cannot continue to plunge deeper in debt while borrowing huge sums each year. Most of us know that addressing this crisis will require cuts in both annual domestic and defense spending, but most critical are significant changes in the big programs like Social Security and Medicare, and reform […]
Posted inGoat
Marijuana politics
Marijuana occupies an unusual place in the legal world. Possessing any amount is illegal under federal law with a jail term of up to one year for first time offenders. But the ill and afflicted can happily use the plant to soothe their pains in 17 states, as long as a willing doctor prescribes it. […]
Posted inGoat
New podcast: Fire & Brimstone
And HCN‘s editorial fellow Neil LaRubbio has a travelogue from his visit to the Gila Wilderness in the wake of the Whitewater-Baldy fire, the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, which burned through the Gila earlier this year. More fires have been allowed to burn in the Gila than in most of our nation’s forests, […]
Posted inArticles
Abbey’s Road: Retired BLM chief gives one last look across the range
Bob Abbey, director of the federal Bureau of Land Management, retired this May after a total of 28 years with the agency. It was his second — and final — retirement: He originally left in 2005 after eight years as the Nevada state director, returning in 2009 only after a special request from Interior Secretary […]
Posted inRange
GOP risks much with its zeal to sell public estate
The Republican Party has formally embraced a policy to sell off America’s chunks of our public lands. That’s likely to prove as welcome as a hornet in a pair of swimming trunks. The GOP 2012 Party Platform espouses a purely market-driven exploitation of natural resources, as opposed to the traditional American system that embraces both […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like
Mark Williams and Bill Baker stand amid ponderosa pines in the mountains west of Fort Collins, Colo., holding a copy of a 19th century land survey. They’re looking for a small pile of rocks with three notches on the east side, indicating that a General Land Office surveyor stopped here to describe the forest. Surveyors […]
Posted inArticles
West of 100: Fire & Brimstone
In this edition of West of 100, we’ve got a couple of stories about wildfire. First, the backstory to Emily Guerin’s piece, “Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like.” We’ll talk with Emily about why the debate over a new study arguing that severe fire may be more normal than we thought […]
Posted inGoat
CU public lands conference turns up a few nuggets
Conferences are often the worst place for journalists to find great story ideas or spontaneous comments – just imagine panelists sitting on a distant stage droning on about abstract topics and you’ll find your eyelids involuntarily drooping. But as someone with a lifelong interest in public lands, the lineup at the Center for the American […]
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
One Sagebrush Rebellion flickers out — or does it?
“No thief who has to pay for what he steals will steal for long.” — Nevada rancher Wayne Hage, explaining to High Country News in 1995 why he had filed a lawsuit against the federal government over restrictions on his livestock grazing. That landmark Sagebrush Rebellion lawsuit, hailed as protecting the rights of Western ranchers […]