NAME Cathy Whitlock VOCATION Montana State University paleoecologist AGE 51 HOME BASE Bozeman, Montana NOTED FOR Discerning ecosystem changes over the last 20,000 years SHE SAYS “It’s a great puzzle trying to figure out how an ecosystem works.” “For me, it’s about solving a big mystery,” says Cathy Whitlock, describing her work as a paleoecologist […]
Profiles
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Protecting the treaty, saving the fish
NAME Kat Brigham VOCATION Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Board of Trustees member HOME BASE Umatilla Reservation, near Pendleton, Oregon CLAIM TO FAME Fighting for tribal fishing rights on the Columbia River, as well as for the health of the river’s fish. SHE SAYS “I like fish any way — baked, smoked, fried, dried or […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
For this logger, twisted trees are the future
In a corner of his airy shop near Silver City, N.M., Gordon West is working out the kinks in Southwestern forestry. In a small way, of course: Everything he does is intended to work in a small way. West, a middle-aged logger, woodworker and builder, is testing a long metal machine that resembles an overgrown […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
A mountain of books becomes a library of the land
Names Jeff Lee and Ann Martin Vocations Bookseller and graphic artist Home Base Denver, Colorado Claim to Fame Founders of the Rocky Mountain Land Library She says “This is just Jeff’s kind of project. I go day to day, he has the big vision.” “To really know the West, to be at home here,” says […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Saving Maidu culture, one seedling at a time
It was just a family jaunt, Lorena Gorbet says — a day trip to Soda Rock, where mineral water fizzes out of limestone clefts into a tributary of northeastern California’s Feather River. Gorbet, a Mountain Maidu Indian, gathered her children at the base of the rock, a Maidu cultural landmark. She told them about the […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2005: An Empire Built on Sand
Colorado couple turns healthy profit from healthy beef
Ten miles north of Durango, Colo., the property lines of the James Ranch are obvious. Red cliffs, cottonwoods and the Animas River frame one side, while to the south, west and north, new homes and a busy state highway push on the fence lines. It’s a common sight in many Western valleys: ranchers stubbornly clinging […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
Nun calls the faithful to an ‘ecological ministry’
NAME Joan Brown VOCATION Head of the Ecological Ministry of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, Order of St. Francis AGE 51 HOME BASE Albuquerque, New Mexico MOST NOTED FOR Taking on social and environmental issues with a Catholic sensibility INSPIRED BY Catholic priest and philosopher Thomas Berry, who said, “If we lose the grandeur of […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
‘Redneck liberal’ defends a hard-to-love landscape
“I want to see people enjoy this country the way it was meant to be enjoyed, the way God created it,” says Tim Faber, speaking about Montana’s arid, rough-hewn Missouri River Breaks. “It’s a place like no other place in the world.” Faber grew up on a cattle ranch in the Bear’s Paw Mountains east […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Protecting the people’s right of way: Public-access advocate Bill Calvert
The Yuba Goldfields in California’s Central Valley is one of the more bizarre and intriguing landscapes in the state — a swath of moonscape, wetlands, and sagebrush that stretches along both sides of the Yuba River. Huge piles of rock tailings, left by gold dredgers in the early part of the last century, loom over […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2004: Where Do We Go From Here?
Transforming the Forest Service: Maverick bureaucrat Wendy Herrett
Since the frontier age, the West’s forests have been home to all kinds of rogues and rebels, from family logging operations to stubborn ranchers to hard-core eco-defenders. And for nearly as long, the U.S. Forest Service has been charged with keeping them all in balance. But sometimes, the Forest Service needs its own mavericks. For […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
Saving wildlife, one animal at a time: Veterinarian Kathleen Ramsay
ESPAÑOLA, New Mexico — Kathleen Ramsay found her calling in a veterinary school lab, when a man brought in a golden eagle caught in a foothold trap. “He threw the trap and chain at me, with the eagle flapping in the trap,” she says. “(That’s when) I decided … to help animals that could no […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 2004: Life After Old Growth
Bucking the trends: Black Hills crusader Marvin Kammerer
RAPID CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA — An old pickup rattles to the top of a grassy ridge. The Black Hills stretch across the western horizon, and in the valley below, the family ranch of Marvin Kammerer is only a dot in the fields of grass. Kammerer stops the truck, gets out and looks down on his […]
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
Composing the new Western: Calexico
NEW YORK CITY, New York — Joey Burns, the guitarist and singer of the rock band Calexico, is sitting just a few blocks from Ground Zero, looking across the water at the Statue of Liberty. It is the Fourth of July. He assesses the situation with rock ’n’ roll profundity: “It’s a trip, man — […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Taking the load off the environment
BASALT, Colorado — Jonathan Fox-Rubin wants to start a revolution in car manufacturing. In his sunlit office in western Colorado he explains his approach to the weighty question of how to make cars easier on the environment: He goes straight to the body of the car. If the skeletal system of automobiles can be made […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2004: The Greening of the Plains
Speaking up for rural Oregonians: Judge Laura Pryor
JOHN DAY, Oregon — As hail pounds the concrete outside, more than 200 people cram into an Elks Lodge — replete with wood paneling and a smoky bar in the rear — to see Judge Laura Pryor, the chairwoman of the Gilliam County Commission and one of the rural West’s most outspoken champions. With her […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Scientific Principle: Klamath whistleblower throws in the towel
In 2002, federal biologist Mike Kelly “blew the whistle” on the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the agency responsible for protecting threatened and endangered salmon (HCN, 6/23/03: Sound science goes sour). As one of the scientists charged with ensuring that enough water was left in the Klamath River for rare coho salmon, Kelly discovered that […]
Posted inJune 21, 2004: A Walk Between Worlds
Fighting for the Rocky Mountain Front: Montana rancher Karl Rappold
DUPUYER, Montana — Montana’s spectacular Rocky Mountain Front is known for its window-rattling winds. But Karl Rappold, a former rodeo cowboy who raises cattle here, says he was still surprised to get blown out of his saddle — literally — while herding stock last year. The winds that day were clocked at over 120 mph, […]
Posted inJune 7, 2004: Wal-Mart's Manifest Destiny
Defending the West Desert: Utah activist Jason Groenewold
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH — Utah’s West Desert is a tough place to love. The barren landscape, which stretches across tens of thousands of square miles along Utah’s border with Nevada, lacks the redrock spires and canyons that draw recreationists and sightseers to southern Utah. The occasional mountain range and salt flat are the only […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
A champion of ‘cooperative conservation’: Interior Secretary Gale Norton
In recent months, High Country News has spilled a lot of ink covering the Bush administration’s policies for the public lands — and the controversies swirling around them. At the center of that storm is Bush’s secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton. Norton is charged with overseeing the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Filmmakers Filmmakers Dru Carr and Doug Hawes-Davis: Documenting the Evolving West
MISSOULA, MONTANA — Filmmaking isn’t about big budgets, explosions or special effects for Dru Carr and Doug Hawes-Davis, the only full-time employees at the Missoula, Mont.-based High Plains Films. Instead, it’s the tool they use to document — and, they hope, protect — the ever-evolving West. In the early ’90s, Carr and Hawes-Davis were students […]