Welcome back to my coverage of “race-to-the-bottom 2012,” wherein I gripe futilely about this year’s toxic politics (see past editions here and here), which appear to be completely allergic to anything that protects the environment or public health. Our story today begins in March of 2009, when Congress passed the landmark, years-in-the-making Omnibus Public Lands […]
Politics
Posted inGoat
Burn baby burn
Nearly every Western ecosystem needs fire. Flames thin overly-dense trees, disperse nutrients and stimulate new growth. But decades of logging, grazing and fire suppression have left many forests, especially in the dry Southwest, prone to fierce, high-severity burns that do more harm than good. In their aftermath are scorched, blackened moonscapes with powdery ash sifting […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Keep what’s public public
One of the very best things about the West is the availability of public land for all kinds of outdoor recreation (HCN, 5/14/12, “Sagebrush skirmish”). Conversely, a major shortcoming of the East is the lack of the same. Unfortunately, some of the very best public land has been misused and abused for decades by grazing, drilling, […]
Posted inJune 11, 2012: The Darkest Shade of Polygamy
Fantasy politics
“Over the last 30 years,” says (Arizona state Sen. Al) Melvin, “mining, lumbering and grazing have come to a screeching halt, snuffed out by the so-called environmental practices of the Forest Service and BLM” (HCN, 5/14/12, “Sagebrush skirmish”). Is there any chance that reality could enter into this debate? The first 10 of those 30 […]
Posted inGoat
Firefighting pilots deserve better
Last Sunday, an aging P2V air tanker, T-11, flew low over the White Rock fire on the border of Utah and Nevada, dropped 2,000 gallons of retardant and crashed into the mountainside. Pilot Todd Tompkins, who loved fighting fires, died alongside his co-pilot, Ronnie Edwin Chambless. Iron County Sheriff’s detective Jody Edwards told the Missoulian […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Conservation agreements try to head off endangered species listings
With the arrival of spring in western Colorado’s Gunnison River Basin comes the bizarre mating ritual of the Gunnison sage grouse. In clearings called leks, males gather to show off extravagant courtship dances, slapping their wings against their bodies and filling and popping the two air sacs on their breasts. Spring also heralds another local […]
Posted inGoat
The ideological war against renewable energy
This blog’s headline may sound hyperbolic. But I’m not sure how else to interpret Republicans’ latest congressional hijinks. A couple weeks ago, the House passed a Defense budget that prohibits the department from using or experimenting with alternative fuels that are more costly than oil — which they all are — unless those fuels are […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Fighting billboards in Missouri
Congratulations on your incredible article “Billboards vs. Democracy” in the Jan. 23, 2012, issue. My neighbor brought me the issue, knowing my dislike for billboards. Your research for the article was amazing — so thorough and comprehensive. The only detail I would add is that digital billboards are energy hogs. Our Kansas City neighborhoods were […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Secretly funded Montana sportsmen dive into political fray
The images are arresting: An ATV stops in a sunny meadow filled with knee-high grasses. Its driver, a young woman, removes her helmet and looks directly into the camera, a strip of black duct tape stretched across her mouth. A bird hunter in full camouflage is likewise muzzled by tape, as is a fisherman on […]
Posted inWotr
Chosen by Wyoming
Good friends recently sold their home in Wyoming, packed up and moved to Florida. Even though they’d met in Wyoming and married in view of the Wind River Mountains, where they loved to hike and ski, and even though they often spoke of their affection for the West’s open spaces, within months they were gone. […]
Posted inRange
Arizona, unpredictable as always
This month, all U.S. citizens have cause to celebrate: Arizona’s Republican governor, Jan Brewer, vetoed Senate bill 1332, which authorized the state to seize federal lands within its borders. Of course the whole notion was nuts, not to mention unconstitutional – although this didn’t prevent Utah governor Herbert from signing a similar bill awhile back – and Brewer deserves some […]
Posted inWotr
If corporations are people, what are they really like?
ExxonMobil spits out a gob of chewing-tobacco juice and taps a baseball bat against the cleats of its shoes, knocking off the dirt clods. Then “Exx ‘Em” — as the fans like to call their slugger — steps into the batter’s box and slams the first pitch over the center-field wall of Dodger Stadium. Meanwhile, […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Western legislatures grab for control of public lands
In late April, Arizona’s Legislature approved a bill demanding that Washington, D.C., give the state control over most of its federal land. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed a similar measure in March. These bills are, of course, highly unlikely to result in any actual transfer of land; most legal experts think they’ll prove unconstitutional, and […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Western legislative roundup
Western legislatures, except California‘s, have finished for 2012. Montana and Nevada didn’t have a lawmaking session this year, but elsewhere, election-year politics, not surprisingly, influenced what happened. In New Mexico, many Republican-favored bills were shot down by a Democrat-controlled Legislature, including a measure to repeal a 2003 law that allows undocumented immigrants to get drivers’ […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
Sierra Crane-Murdoch on Idaho’s political transformation
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, KDNK’s Nelson Harvey talk with High Country News correspondent Sierra Crane-Murdoch about Idaho’s political transformation and the (mostly) California migrants behind it. Protest audio courtesy of noisecollector, from freesound.org
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: Catch-share cuts and free water
It was hard to keep up with the news this week for this traveling HCN editor; she was lost on a highway somewhere between Utah and Nevada when she heard the sad news about author Maurice Sendak’s death. After that, things went pretty much downhill. The House of Representatives showed disdain for fisheries and ocean […]
Posted inWotr
Selling what’s priceless is the nuttiest idea of all
Of all the nutty ideas floating around the West of late — that Wyoming needs an aircraft carrier to prepare for the coming apocalypse, that Idaho residents should be allowed to lure wolves by using pets as bait, or that Yellowstone bison in Montana are “bio-terrorists” because they might cause brucellosis — none can match […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Arizona’s clean-election law is pruned, but not uprooted
In the late 1980s and early ’90s, a string of political scandals left Arizona voters incensed. Ultra-conservative Gov. Evan Mecham was impeached in 1988 for misusing campaign contributions. The next year, both Arizona U.S. senators, Dennis DeConcini, D, and John McCain, R, were accused of corruption for meddling in an investigation of Lincoln Savings and […]
Posted inRange
Lessons from the Old West: Don’t ban it, brand it
By P.J. Hill Last Saturday was roundup and branding day at my ranch in the Madison River Valley, about 20 miles west of Bozeman, Montana. Neighbors came to help and I put the P J (my registered brand) on the left side of my calves. As I carefully placed the irons on each calf (yes, […]
Posted inGoat
Could Arizona go blue?
To gauge how conservative Arizona is, look no further than the national headlines over the last few years: Its state legislature passed one of the most stringent immigration laws in the country, allowing police officers to check the immigration status of people who are dressed suspiciously, or otherwise strike an officer as likely to be paperless. […]