Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “When a Boom is a Bust.” The preacher Mike Smith has put in nine and a half years as pastor of Wamsutter Baptist Church, the town’s only surviving church (four others have closed in recent memory). He used to mine uranium in Jeffrey City, […]
Wyoming
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
When a Boom is a Bust
Natural gas has pumped money and workers into Wamsutter, Wyoming. But the town struggles to be anything more than a barracks for industry.
Posted inAugust 2, 2004: The Greening of the Plains
The Greening of the Plains
A conservation movement is stirring on the Great Plains, but farmers are stuck with a stark reality: It pays to plow up virgin ground
Posted inJune 21, 2004: A Walk Between Worlds
Oil money rules in the West’s mini-Middle East
Wyoming and New Mexico governors walk a jagged line between conservation and fiscal conservatism
Posted inJune 7, 2004: Wal-Mart's Manifest Destiny
Wilderness up for lease
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Buying time against the energy assault.” As industry gobbles up oil and gas leases across the West, citizen-proposed wilderness areas, which encompass millions of acres of public lands, have become battlegrounds. Under a Clinton-era policy, these areas […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Follow-up
President Bush’s proposal to offer work visas to undocumented immigrants in the U.S. has opened a window of opportunity, and many are rushing to take advantage of it (HCN, 2/2/04: Immigration reform from Washington, DC). The Border Patrol says that the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border had declined over the last four years, […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Wolf foes get medieval
As feds prepare to take wolves off the endangered list, a rash of animal poisonings causes concerns
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Jackson can’t agree on growth
A decade after a model planning effort, Jackson’s downtown is stagnant, while its workers are priced out
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
A new look at Yellowstone
“Wholly an unattractive country. There is nothing whatever in it, no object of interest to the tourist, and there is not one out of twenty who visits for purposes of observation this remote section.” So declared one congressman in the late 1800s, dismissing the valleys of Yellowstone. What a difference a century can make: Today, […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
A bear book that tames the fear factor
“Wyoming is bear country,” Tom Reed writes in Great Wyoming Bear Stories, a book of yarns from the wild high county in and around Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks — land he calls the grizzly bear’s “last, best stronghold.” Unlike the authors of the many “slasher” bear books on the market, Reed writes with […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2004: Two decades of hard work, plowed under
Proposed wilderness on the auction block
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Two decades of hard work, plowed under.” The following areas, which are proposed by citizens for wilderness protection, will be up for grabs during the BLM’s January/February 2004 lease sale. WIA = wilderness inventory area CWP = citizens’ wilderness proposal New Mexico (Jan. 21) […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2004: Two decades of hard work, plowed under
Heard Around the West
TEXAS In the Dubious Achievement category, let’s send the 2003 Biology Award to Texas A&M’s vet school, which just cloned a white-tailed deer with a rack measuring 230 points on the Boone and Crockett scale. The lead researcher told the Houston Chronicle that the trophy buck is a “conservation tool.” The bottle-fed deer, dubbed Dewey, […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
State struggling to keep up with CBM
Pollution regulations for coalbed methane wells in Wyoming are severely under-enforced, a state task force says. “Basically, there’s one full-time (inspector) covering all coalbed methane activity (in Wyoming),” says Todd Parfitt, who represented the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) on the task force. The department’s lone field inspector monitors 3,924 permitted discharge points from […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Heard Around the West
CALIFORNIA Non-Californians might assume that living close to nature is a wonderful thing. Not so at Del Webb’s Sun City in Palm Desert, a 1,600-acre gated community for 9,000 people. Residents complain vociferously about sand in a nearby nature preserve that won’t stay put. “We are getting buried,” said Dennis DeBorde, 74, at a public […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Reckless rancher cuts sweet deal in D.C.
Bush administration orders local BLM office to back off
Posted inAugust 18, 2003: Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play
Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play
In Wyoming’s Upper Green River Basin, gas drillers lock horns with the locals
Posted inAugust 18, 2003: Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play
Gas crisis puts Rockies in hot seat
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play.” Since last spring, Congress, the White House, economists, consumer groups and business leaders have been sounding the alarm about a natural gas crisis. While there’s plenty of disagreement on the cause and the solution, nearly everyone […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2003: Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play
The Red Desert braces for a gas boom
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play.” Plans for extracting natural gas are piling up in southwest Wyoming. In addition to the drilling in the Upper Green River Basin, industry is targeting fully one-fourth of the federal land in the region that environmentalists […]
Posted inNovember 9, 1998: Grizzly war
Grizzly war
Scientists, activists and politicians clash over taking away the great bruin’s federal protection
Posted inNovember 9, 1998: Grizzly war
A parade becomes a memorial after a murder
Laramie, Wyoming, wrestles with the hate in its midst when a gay student is beaten to death.