Among the spectacles swirling around Southern California’s recent wildfires, we had now-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who rose from body-building to movie screens and into politics on the principle of self-reliance, beseeching Washington, D.C., to cushion Californians from the toll of the flames. There was also California’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who rose with […]
Writers on the Range
Posted inWotr
Our publicly owned forests are being subverted
As the nation remains preoccupied with the war against terrorism, President Bush has been carrying out a less visible assault on another front: our national forests. Most of the attacks over the last year have been below the radar — in arcane rules, stealth riders and misnamed legislation. In this many-fronted assault, big timber is […]
Posted inWotr
River advocates take a seat at the table
There is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort underway to restore natural stream flows to many of the nation’s waterways. The poster child for this groundbreaking work is California’s Mokelumne River, which flows from high up in the Sierras through the gold country. Dams and diversions have reduced the river to a relative trickle, but that is […]
Posted inWotr
California’s growth machine fueled these disastrous wildfires
The wildfires that gnawed their way through drought-crisped Southern California are on a pace to establish a record for acreage charred and for the dollar value of structures and belongings destroyed. Perhaps this is no great feat in a state where homes worth $250,000 five years ago are worth twice that today. The monetary disaster […]
Posted inWotr
To have and have not in Flagstaff, Arizona
I’m still appalled by the subject line of the e-mail I received a month ago. “Great news: we are homeless!” I didn’t know the address on the e-mail. Based on the subject line, I figured it was probably from a Democratic candidate informing me about a Bushite atrocity. I clicked open the e-mail to find […]
Posted inWotr
Trying out for the new sport of Extreme Canning
It’s getting harder and harder to be an “extreme” athlete. The ultra-fit among us aren’t just climbing all Western peaks over 14,000 feet; they’re climbing them in less than 10 days and doing it on snowboards, skis, bikes and in-line skates. All this requires thousands of dollars’ worth of gear and years of training. And […]
Posted inWotr
Ski resorts go for the green
Because ski resorts are beautiful in winter and green in summer, they have usually been considered good environmental citizens. But in the last few years, that perception has begun to erode. In 1997, there was the Earth Liberation Front’s terrorist attack on Vail’s Two Elks Lodge to protest the resort’s expansion into lynx habitat. Later, […]
Posted inWotr
Leaving Las Vegas
I lived in Las Vegas recently for about a year, doing research at a large weapons-testing facility outside of town. Among all the places I’ve lived, from tropical islands to small towns and Western strip-mall communities, Las Vegas seemed uniquely American in its boosterism for get-rich-quick schemes, the sex industry and for the stupendous desert […]
Posted inWotr
Salmon go swoosh in the Northwest
It was Saturday, and we had shopping to do: groceries, eyeglasses, yard tools, and as we crisscrossed Portland to find deals, we were sucked into malls, lured by displays to purchase jeans and sports paraphernalia. Then, in the middle of the overcast Oregon afternoon, in the heart of Northwest cool known as the Pearl District, […]
Posted inWotr
Culture shock on the Range
When the movie Open Range came to my western Colorado town, my sweetie and I made a beeline for the theater. We waited in line for popcorn with a good number of other folks: old-timers and Forest Service employees and their spouses. They apparently hadn’t had enough open range by the end of the long […]
Posted inWotr
Teddy Roosevelt would have put his foot down
When the young Theodore Roosevelt went West to become a cattle rancher in the late 1800s, he was impressed by the flint of the Western character. In his travels through South Dakota and the Rocky Mountains, he met mountain men and cowboys and Indians so independent and strong-willed that even the robuster-than-robust Roosevelt confessed he […]
Posted inWotr
A corporation’s deadly legacy lives on
“It was a Superfund site,” my friend Nina told me, joking about a house she and her husband nearly bought in the crunched real estate market of the greater Yellowstone area. At first they loved the house and its affordable price. Then an inspector informed them that the building was full of asbestos-laden vermiculite from […]
Posted inWotr
A South Dakota hero has a great fall
I was probably the only 3-year-old in South Dakota to own a “Janklow Sucks” t-shirt during Bill Janklow’s second of four terms as governor. Janklow served two terms from 1978 to 1986 and two more from 1994 to 2002; in 2002 we elected him to represent our state — which has fewer people than metro […]
Posted inWotr
Colorado’s thirsty suburbs get the state into trouble
Denver’s southern suburbs have a rich, new-car smell. Emboldened by information-technology employers, Douglas County during the ‘90s was the nation’s fastest-growing county. It also ranked among the nation’s elite in per capita income, education and other measures of affluence. In short, this region of sleek and slinky subdivisions looks and feels an awful lot like […]
Posted inWotr
A grizzly attack that was bound to happen
One of the most egotistical notions humans have is that we can “commune” with unpredictable wild animals. News headlines over the last couple of weeks have revealed the depth of our folly. During Siegfried and Roy’s Las Vegas nightclub act, a tiger turned on trainer Roy Horn. Doctors still don’t know if he will survive. […]
Posted inWotr
Some issues are uncomfortably gray
My opposition to the Holcim Company’s proposal to burn more than one million tires every year at a cement plant at the headwaters of the Missouri River started as a no-brainer. I have three children growing up downwind of that plant. I float those rivers. Several friends work with the advocacy group, Montanans Against Toxic […]
Posted inWotr
We need a sensible approach to fight wildfires
It’s the sweet time of year in northern Montana, late drying-out summer, easing into the rains of autumn, and in the soft low green hills of the Yaak Valley, on the Kootenai National Forest, the mornings are tinged, not unpleasantly, with the smell of wood smoke. Objects take on a golden glow, illuminated by the […]
Posted inWotr
A conservation elder celebrates 101
Perhaps all standoffs between so-called environmentalists and industry are clashes of mythic proportion, but the unfolding story of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge seems particularly so, a world-class drama whose players include migratory birds, caribou, polar bears, native Alaskans, eco-activists, oil executives and politicians. The outcome of this mythic tale is yet unscripted. If not […]
Posted inWotr
Western patriots are rebelling against the Patriot Act
A quick opinion poll: The mass murders of Sept.11, 2001, were allowed to occur because: A. Letting airline passengers carry potentially deadly weapons such as box-cutters was a bad idea. B. Airport security is a job too important to delegate to corporations. C. Cockpit doors were either unlocked or missing. D. Americans enjoy so much […]
Posted inWotr
How to dis-credit yourself without really trying
I made my first telephone call in the 1950s by turning a crank on a wooden telephone box. Some neighbors on the party line always listened; in that small ranching community of rural South Dakota, everybody knew everybody’s business. Perhaps for that reason, most of us dealt honestly with each other. We paid cash for […]