In a barn on his 400-acre ranch south of Pueblo, Colo., Hersh Saunders sharpens a long blunt-end knife called a halaf. A blue crocheted kippah, a Jewish skullcap, covers the bearded rabbi’s silver hair. Outside the barn, sheep graze and chickens peck near a small synagogue and rows of organic vegetables. Saunders has spent the […]
Politics
Posted inRange
President Obama says Indian Country is at a turning point
Politicians are required to be optimistic. It’s the first tool in their bag. And a president of the United States is even more optimistic than most politicians. It’s what we expect from our leader. President Barack Obama beamed that message at the White House Tribal Nations conference last week. He told tribal leaders: “We’ve got […]
Posted inRange
Success stories fail to materialize in Indian country
Last December hundreds of American Indian and Alaska Native leaders traveled to Washington, D.C. for the second White House Tribal Nations Conference. I wrote at the time: “When President Obama reached the podium at the Interior Department last week nearly every person in a seat lifted a cell phone to take a picture. Row after […]
Posted inRange
Another try for wilderness
Browns Canyon in central Colorado is again getting promoted for wilderness designation. It was one of 18 areas in nine Western states identified in a recent report by the federal Bureau of Land Management with “significant local support for Congressional protection.” The area sits six miles south of Buena Vista, and even if it’s called […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Beware the leftward tilt
I really like your stories of people coming together to solve gnarly problems, and exposés of environmental abuses. But your uber-liberal ideology is extremely irritating, as in Ray Ring’s article, “Citizen democracy staggers onward” (HCN, 10/31/11). I give Ring credit for quoting a source who even-handedly criticizes big business and big labor unions for corrupting […]
Posted inWotr
Thanks to Obama, cattlemen lose out
When four companies control 80 percent of the supply in a marketplace, even the most conservative economists would admit there’s a high potential for market manipulation. This is the case in the world of meatpacking today, where four giant packers — Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National Beef — rule the market. And that is why, […]
Posted inRange
Does Pew’s ad on the roadless rule get it right?
Editor’s note: Sharon Friedman blogs on forest policy at “A New Century of Forest Planning” and will be posting occasionally on the Range blog. In the Denver Post this morning, I saw the full page ad you see here below. I couldn’t figure out how to link to it, since it was an advertisement, but […]
Posted inGoat
Obama sides with big business over small cattlemen
When four companies control 80 percent of the supply in a marketplace, even the most conservative economists would likely admit the potential is high for market manipulation. This is the case in the world of meatpacking, where four packers — Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National Beef — rule the scene. That’s why, last year, the […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Daniel Marlos shares his knowledge and love of the insect world
In early June, Daniel Marlos, an eccentric, cherubic-faced Los Angeleno, received an intriguing message from a friend: “If there weren’t two little, scrawny legs, I wouldn’t think it was a living thing!” she said, describing a creature loitering on her porch. She emailed Marlos a photo of a tawny, wingless insect, its legs cartoonishly splayed […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Firefighting at fault
In his Oct. 17 editor’s note, Paul Larmer writes: “Meanwhile, gigantic, uncontrolled fires have become more common than ever, largely driven by shifts in climate. Whether caused by lightning, arsonists or negligent campers, these mega-fires are reshaping the West. Smart managers are learning to use them, letting them burn where they can do some ecological […]
Posted inWotr
Military’s fly-by-night scheme raises lots of questions
Imagine how it would feel: You’re asleep in bed at midnight, when suddenly, the roar of a fighter plane flying just a few hundred feet above your head wakes you up with a bang. But not to worry, the plane is one of ours. Our military’s pilots simply need to practice their skill at flying […]
Posted inRange
At Drake’s Bay, real heroes have long term vision
Politicians rarely think beyond the next election and corporate leaders beyond the quarterly report – but National Park rangers make America stronger when they think about generations to come. A case in point is playing out today on the coast of California at Pt. Reyes National Seashore, a modern twist on an old story. That […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2011: Omens from a Vanished Sea
Lawyer Laird Lucas on how and why he fights for the West
Laird Lucas, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Advocates for the West, entered an Idaho courtroom last spring to examine a witness. As he prepared to take over from a junior colleague, the judge adjourned for the day. “You mean I had to put on a suit for nothing?” Lucas griped. In his Boise […]
Posted inArticles
Presidential candidates are missing the Western issues
What if the Western Republican Leadership Conference sponsored a debate in the West for Republican presidential candidates, with audience members all from the West, and they never got around to talking about Western issues? That’s pretty much what happened on Oct. 18 in Las Vegas in a contenders’ debate co-sponsored by CNN, which also broadcast […]
Posted inRange
Occupation in the boondocks
It started with “Occupy Wall Street” on Sept. 17, and the movement has since spread to more than 1,000 cities in 82 countries. So it didn’t come as a major suprise that my town was home to an “Occupy Salida” protest early in the afternoon of Oct. 29. About 50 people showed up at the […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2011: Omens from a Vanished Sea
Western voters love ballot initiatives — and sometimes make a mess
When Colorado voters go to the polls in November, they’ll consider Proposition 103, a ballot initiative that would raise taxes to help fund public education. It’s an attempt to fix some of the huge problems created by previous ballot measures that strangled education funding. It’s also a messy habit: For decades, Colorado voters have repeatedly […]
Posted inGoat
Will Valles Caldera become a national park?
Around 3,000 elk, the second largest herd in New Mexico, spent the summer munching on Valles Caldera National Preserve grasslands before migrating to nearby Bandelier National Monument for the winter. A menagerie of other wildlife also stake claim to the collapsed volcano’s mountain forests: black bear, mountain lion, bobcat and 60 species of birds. A […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2011: Omens from a Vanished Sea
Why so defeatist?
“Getting weeds out of the national parks is an endless war that can never be won, but many Park Service employees are willing — and happy — warriors (HCN, 10/17/11, “Among the processes of place”).” This strikes me as rather biased. It is possible to remove invasive plants from many areas, or to keep them […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2011: Omens from a Vanished Sea
A press of pessimists
A very timely article (HCN, 10/17/11, “Obama jam”). The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released a study this week showing unrelenting negative coverage of President Obama by the press. Though the context is the political race, the data is culled from thousands of sources mostly dealing with the day-to-day business of the […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2011: Omens from a Vanished Sea
It’s a perilous profession
Wildland settings make for terrible places to get injured (HCN, 10/17/11, “The golden hour”). Unfortunately, injuries often lead to death, as time becomes the killer. Nobody is to blame for this, and changing a pretty damn good system — that which is used by the U.S. Forest Service — will do no good, and could […]