Montana native Corey Shott grew up in Missoula, came to D.C. to earn a bachelor’s in political science at George Washington University and made politics her career: An internship with Montana Sen. Max Baucus, then campaign work for various Democratic candidates, then a couple of years as a “junior lobbyist” for a D.C. firm that […]
Politics
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
Profile: Bethany Cotton, Center for Biological Diversity
A crowd of several dozen lawyers met in a recent D.C. federal court hearing to consider the question: Should the government limit carbon emissions to slow climate change and save sea-ice habitat for polar bears? Some represented the Obama administration, while others were there on behalf of Alaska’s government, the oil industry or environmental groups. […]
Posted inGoat
A new day dawning?
At times, it seemed that peace would never break out in southern Utah. At least not when it came to wilderness. As Jim Stiles, a long-time chronicler of Utah wilderness battles, wrote in an HCN opinion piece last year, “Bullheadedness is what defines both environmentalists and those locals who’d rather see coal mining or oil […]
Posted inGoat
Roadless redux
Been wondering what’s new with the Clinton-era Roadless Area Conservation Rule? Well, being the inveterate wonks we are, we’ve got an update for you on the latest with this 2001 rule that banned most logging and road building (but not off-roading or mining) on 58.5 million acres of national forest. But first, a bit of […]
Posted inArticles
Can bandits: Recycling fraud hits California
In February 2010, criminal investigators tailed a pair of Penske rental trucks more than 300 miles, from a self-storage facility in Phoenix, Ariz., to a small house on the outskirts of Perris, Calif. They watched as the drivers transferred their loads to two handyman’s vans. Then they drove the vans across town to a set […]
Posted inGoat
Rid(er)ing into the sunset
Last week’s heavily wrangled 2011 federal spending deal brought with it some unexpected baggage. Along with $38 billion in budget cuts, unrelated riders attached to the bill derailed the controversial Bureau of Land Management Wild Lands order and yanked Northern Rockies gray wolves from the endangered species list. Deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency […]
Posted inGoat
Bison back-and-forth
A century ago, the federal government took a tribal bison herd and a chunk of tribal land and created the National Bison Range. Roughly 350-500 bison still roam 18,000 acres north of Missoula, Mont., and after years of negotiation, in 2005 the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes finally won back the right to share management […]
Posted inGoat
Environmental bargaining chips
In the fall of 2009, billionaire Ed Roski Jr. went to the California Legislature looking for a deal. Roski wanted to build a football stadium in the Los Angeles suburb City of Industry, but the California Environmental Quality Act was getting in his way, and Roski thought lawmakers should exempt his project from the act. […]
Posted inGoat
Idaho eases the way for factory farms
Idaho counties have fought hard in the past for the right to regulate mega-animal operations; Gooding County, which has some of the highest concentrations of dairies in the state, won a lawsuit in the Idaho Supreme Court in Feb. 2010 upholding its ability to regulate water and the number of animals per acre. But the […]
Posted inRange
Keeping the wild in National Wildlife Refuges
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House I’ve never thought much about this country’s National Wildlife Refuges (NWR). With the exception of controversial ones like the “drill, baby, drill” Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they’re stealthy public lands that don’t get the airtime our national parks and monuments do. It wasn’t until recently, when I learned […]
Posted inRange
Conscience and the constitution
One Colorado county might be gearing up for a confrontation with the federal government over road closures on public land. Montezuma County — its seat is Cortez — sits in the southwest corner of the state, and its sheriff, Dennis Spruell, told the Denver Post last week that he is pondering certain matters of conscience. […]
Posted inRange
Indians await health care funding
Just over a year ago President Barack Obama signed the health care reform bill into law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That measure, of course, also includes the permanent authorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. So what has happened since the president signed the bill into law on March 23, 2010? […]
Posted inRange
BLM Wild Lands policy deserves praise
By Joel Webster If a misleading statement is repeated often enough, some people will begin to believe it. That appears to be the strategy of those working to overturn the Bureau of Land Management “wild lands” policy that was introduced in December by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Beyond the misleading rhetoric are some hard facts: […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Danged ornery critters
MONTANA It’s a Tea Party world in Montana’s Legislature these days, and Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, sometimes can’t believe his ears as newly elected representatives talk blithely of creating armed citizen militias and “nullifying” a slew of federal laws, reports The Associated Press. Schweitzer calls many of the proposals from the new Republican majority […]
Posted inBlog
Wild Lands, bureaucracy and the BLM
I’ve been following BLM Director Bob Abbey’s earnest PR campaign to pacify conservatives on the subject of Secretarial Order 3310, the “Wild Lands Policy,” which was issued by interior Secretary Ken Salazar in December. The policy was immediately attacked by Orrin Hatch and other Western politicians as an end-run by the BLM around Congress (which […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Are you on the endangered species list?
THE SOUTHWEST Nikki Cooley is a Colorado River guide for Arizona Raft Adventures who also “happens to be Navajo,” reports the boatman’s quarterly review. So it must have struck her as particularly odd when a tourist on one of her Grand Canyon trips casually asked, “Are Indians extinct?” No word on her reply. THE BORDER […]
Posted inGoat
Utah lawmakers cut off public access to information
Okay, I admit it. At times, I’m a Tea-Party sympathizer. I’ve been glad to hear voices like Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s calling to eliminate wasteful price-gouging military contracts. And having spent too much of my lifetime struggling to extract information from recalcitrant government officials, I can see where people get the idea that inside federal […]
Posted inRange
The McClintock Factor
When Republican Congressman John Doolittle was implicated in the Abramowitz Scandals and forced to retire from Congress, California Democrats figured they had a good chance to win the 4th US Congressional District for the first time in modern history. The sprawling 4th district extends along the eastern side of northern California. Lead by growth in […]
Posted inRange
Arizona the trendsetter?
As I pointed out last year, under our federal constitution and various court decisions, American states don’t any power to determine who is or isn’t legally within their borders. That’s a federal responsibility. That doesn’t stop states from trying, though. There’s the well-known Arizona immigration law, which requires local police to ask for the papers […]
Posted inGoat
Top-Down Land Management
Those who saw the March 1 hearing on Interior Secretary Salazar’s “Wild Lands” order may not have learned much about wilderness preservation’s impact on Western jobs — as the hearing’s title suggested — but they did, at least, witness a brilliant display of congressional snark. “The reality is,” said Congressman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) addressing his state’s […]