Pam Jahnke was riding her bike on a section of Highway 89 near Lake Tahoe, in an area where Caltrans, California’s road and bridge department, had just installed a new storm-drainage system. “The minute my tire hit the drain, I was air-bound and smacked down on the pavement in the middle of the road.” she […]
Writers on the Range
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Raptors are our fierce allies. Shame on those who harm them.
Note: the opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of High Country News, its board or staff. If you’d like to share an opinion piece of your own, please write Betsy Marston at betsym@hcn.org. Birds of prey soar over the human imagination like no other creatures […]
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Looking back on a century of poisoning predators
Note: the opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of High Country News, its board or staff. If you’d like to share an opinion piece of your own, please write Betsy Marston at betsym@hcn.org. We celebrate most anniversaries, but there are some we should just acknowledge by pausing […]
Posted inNovember 23, 2015: Water Hustle
The view from the top of the food chain
Today I hiked along a forest trail near my home. Squirrels scolded, a raven croaked. I moved steadily on. Startled at my approach, a deer bounded away, labored up the loose soil of the steep little canyon, and disappeared. I barely paused. There was nothing there for me to fear, nothing for me to attend […]
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The tiny Nebraska town where Keystone opposition began
Note: the opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of High Country News, its board or staff. If you’d like to share an opinion piece of your own, please write Betsy Marston at betsym@hcn.org. To call Newport, Nebraska, a small town inflates its size. Located on the edge […]
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Where’s the middle ground on wolves?
Note: the opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of High Country News, its board or staff. If you’d like to share an opinion piece of your own, please write Betsy Marston at betsym@hcn.org. Eighty-one — that’s how many gray wolves were confirmed to be living in Oregon […]
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Among those who fish the polluted Duwamish, a divide between haves and have-nots
We pull off the highway into a gritty-looking industrial park less than 100 yards from the road and snap our rods together. It’s just a few steps down the banks to this Seattle river where we can see the silver bellies of the pink salmon flipping in the current, slinging themselves upstream. We tie lures […]
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Reflecting on the tragedy of the young ‘invincibles’
A high school boy who recently survived a catastrophic crash that killed three of his friends in Maryland was quoted by the news media, saying: “We felt invincible!” The police estimated that their car was traveling at more than 70 miles per hour when it veered off the road and hit a tree. A pastor […]
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The Hopi man who runs to protect his tribe’s water
What do you think about when you run? This is my favorite question to ask long-distance runners in the Arizona desert. When I asked Hopi runner and farmer Bucky Preston this question, he thought about the thousands of miles he has run to protect and honor his people’s water. “When I run, I meditate and […]
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On E.M. Frimbo and riding the Western rails
People in the Western United States like their trains, or so E.M. Frimbo, The New Yorker magazine’s great rail writer with the unusual name, liked to say. But Frimbo believed that Westerners lost track of what happened to so many railroad lines: We spent the last half of the 19th century building them up, then […]
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Thanks, BLM, for letting the dirt shine through
Editor’s note: The following is a recent letter from Collin Smith, an aspiring geologist, to the Bureau of Land Management in Utah. He said he was happy to share it with us because the federal agency receives so little praise these days. Dear BLM: I am pleased as punch! I just got back from my […]
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Washington’s long summer of fire and smoke
On Spokane’s west side, the Houston Fire was growing fast. If a wind were to come up and whip flames across a field of weeds, the gate that keeps the world at bay at the entrance to Erika and Andrea Zaman’s lane would do no good. Just in time, Andrea blasted back from the airport, […]
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Find a way to travel in the wilderness, without carrying a gun
Hiking the Mad Creek Trail north of Steamboat, Colorado, one day this fall, I glanced back at another hiker, who was accompanied by two yelping dogs. I was taken aback to see the man wore a pistol in a holster on his hip. He fell into step for a while with my daughter, Greta, who’s […]
Posted inOctober 26, 2015: Clean Energy's Dirty Secret
Lessons learned, and unlearned, from a life around guns
In my family, everyone got a hunting license, and everybody hunted big game.
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Farmers team up with Humane Society on behalf of animals
Like all farmers and ranchers, Kevin Fulton has experienced his share of tough days at work. But he does everything possible to make sure that his animals – goats, sheep, cattle and chickens – never have to experience more than one bad day themselves. “If we can provide an environment where our animals only have […]
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Mexican wolves seem targeted for extinction
This fall, for the second time, the New Mexico Game and Fish Commission rejected a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to release two adult Mexican wolves with pups, and up to 10 captive-born wolf pups, into the Mexican Wolf Recovery Area in southern Arizona and New Mexico. An important part of the release, which […]
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Why are the feds sticking with a racist name for a Washington lake?
Update from HCN staff, Oct. 23, 2015: Two days after this piece was published, the National Park Service reversed its decision and recommended that the U.S. Board of Geographic Names change the name of Coon Lake to Howard Lake, Glenn Nelson reports. “We recognize that our previous decision on this issue overlooked relevant information, and […]
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How Arrowrock Dam is supporting corporate farming
Water runs uphill toward money from Arrowrock Dam on the Boise River, where the Bureau of Reclamation first pioneered high-rise concrete dams that transformed the face of the West. Thanks to Arrowrock, the wealthiest 10 percent of its water users control 75 percent of the water. Mostly large corporations, they pay about a dime for […]
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Monument designations aren’t land grabs. They’re protection against theft.
Today, some Westerners might call the 1908 presidential proclamation of a Grand Canyon National Monument a “surreptitious land grab.” But it all depends on who’s doing the grabbing, and for what purpose. Utah Republican Rep. Rob Bishop says that such proclamations allow presidents to “lock up” millions of acres of public land “like bandits in […]
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A trail runner defends his right to public lands
One September morning, with huckleberry bushes burning a fierce red against a dusting of snow on the banks of the upper Nisqually River, I left Mount Rainier National Park headquarters on a pilgrimage. Twenty-seven hours later, depleted but filled with a near-religious sense of reverence and elation I’ve rarely felt since, I arrived back where […]