In wealthy, segregated Marin County, a pioneering recruitment program breaks down barriers to the firefighting profession
Danielle Venton
Posted inArticles
Dispatch from Valley Fire evacuation camp in California
State officials are calling the Lake County blaze one of the fastest-moving fires in memory.
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Social media startup cuts food waste
Last spring, following a Sunday farmers market, Nick Papadopoulos, general manager of Bloomfield Farms in Sonoma County, Calif., surveyed his unsold produce: 40 pounds of soon-to-wilt organic broccoli. Normally, it would end up in the compost pile. Instead, he snapped a picture and posted it to the farm’s Facebook page: “We’d love to get this […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
A map collection for time travelers
In 1952, rural Nebraskans encountered an extraordinary sight: an Army chaplain and his 11-year-old nephew zipping around the state in a silver Jaguar convertible. “People in Nebraska never saw such a thing as an open-topped sports car!” Robert Berlo, the nephew, told me last spring from his home in Livermore, Calif. Berlo didn’t inherit his […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Agrichemical companies power up genetically modified seeds
One sunny afternoon, Andy Nagy and Donald Shouse drove past apple trees, plum orchards and sugar beet fields to a farm north of Twin Falls, Idaho. The late August setting was one of pastoral beauty, but the two researchers concentrated on the dirt underfoot. A farmer had asked them to come investigate some problem weeds. […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
Coping with two-headed fish and other effects of selenium
Muddy Creek is nondescript, a narrow stream trickling through the sagebrush steppe of southern Wyoming. But like many Western waterways, it carries selenium, a natural poison that seeps from rocks and dirt and accumulates in the food chain much as mercury does. Both humans and animals need tiny amounts for good health, but too much […]
Posted inGoat
The time for oysters
Next time you find yourself in the San Francisco Bay Area, which for your own sake will be soon, I hope, there are a few things you ought to do. Walk across the Golden Gate, go one of the Thursday “NightLife” events at the Academy of Sciences and drive north to Tomales Bay and feast […]
Posted inGoat
Salmon song
From the outside, the sprawling new red shed at the base of Warm Springs Dam, in Sonoma, Calif., looks suited to cows, pigs and other farm animals. But a peek inside reveals several dozen above-ground tanks, resembling water troughs, and pools, resembling Doughboy Pools. In total, the tanks and pools hold roughly 200,000 young coho […]
Posted inApril 30, 2012: A Mexican rancher struggles to shift from cattle to conservation
Arizona’s clean-election law is pruned, but not uprooted
In the late 1980s and early ’90s, a string of political scandals left Arizona voters incensed. Ultra-conservative Gov. Evan Mecham was impeached in 1988 for misusing campaign contributions. The next year, both Arizona U.S. senators, Dennis DeConcini, D, and John McCain, R, were accused of corruption for meddling in an investigation of Lincoln Savings and […]
Posted inGoat
Downsized cleanup plan for Idaho Superfund site
The mines of Silver Valley, Idaho, east of Coeur d’Alene Lake were once the richest silver producers in the world. The valley’s flush days, however, are long gone. In 1981, thousands of miners lost their jobs when the sinking price of silver forced the mines to close (a few have since reopened). Two years later, […]
Posted inGoat
Hunters ask for protection from enviros
This week, the U.S. House of Representatives plans to consider the “Sportsmen’s Heritage Act of 2012,” a package of bills intended to benefit hunters and anglers. The bill seeks to open additional federal land for hunting, allows polar bear trophies to be imported from Canada, and removes the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate lead […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: Water’s the word in Western news
While the perennial news of the West remains it’s drying, it’s drying, it’s drying, this week brought us a welcome respite: thunder and rain storms. The air smelled fresh, the fields greened and the cars went another week without washing. Water related news also poured down through the intertubes too: read on. Salmon chroniclesAbout […]
Posted inGoat
Biofuel crops invade gas tanks, habitat
From bindweed to tamarisk, invasive weeds are a scourge of many Western communities; certainly not something anyone wants more of. Yet a clause in newly proposed bill to promote biofuels energy may open up a loophole that would send federal dollars to pay farmers for planting and growing certain highly invasive plants as bioenergy feedstocks. […]
Posted inArticles
Margaret Hiza Redsteer uses Navajo memories to track climate change
Margaret Hiza Redsteer has long known the Navajo Nation. Of Crow descent, she grew up near the Montana-Wyoming border, and in the 1970s moved to an area of Arizona then shared by the Navajo and Hopi tribes. She married a Navajo man and they had three children. While living on the reservation, she often heard […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: Dwindling elk herds and the end of new coal plants?
With beautiful, unseasonably warm weather this week, the West’s normally hungry news watchers had trouble keeping our eyes on the computer screens and away from the fruit trees blooming outside. Rallying our strengths, we found birds and elk did not fare well in Western news this week. Our cheer at the climate-conscious news coming from Environmental Protection […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: field changes, from football to strawberries
For avid news hounds, this week saw some shake-ups, showing us that we can be ever surprised. Let’s start with the important stuff. TEBOW TRADED FROM THE DENVER BRONCOS! The West will lose Bronco quarterback Tim Tebow, whose “polarizing skill set” brought us some of the most memorable football moments of 2011. Thus, Tebowmania heads eastward, […]
Posted inGoat
The superweeds are coming!
The enemy grows among us, and it’s spreading. Worse, its powers stand to increase. Invading legions of superweeds have taken root in our fields. In California, growers battle at least 24 different types of herbicide resistant weeds, in nearly 2,000 sites across more than 200,000 acres. Idaho weed scientists report infestations across 240,000 acres. Around […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: repeals and drying rivers
As we reach the end of a week that seems rife with repetitions, and as candidates continue to wax and wane in popularity like so many moon cycles, we’re holding steady. Resignations have also been running amok, with some so fed up they leave their company, their zoo or even their empire, but fear not […]
Posted inGoat
Slippery science: avalanche prediction still tricky
We’ve got one month left of prime avalanche season, and in the U.S. there have been 25 fatalities. Here is a vote for no more. Around the West this winter we’ve had relatively light, late snowfall and fluctuating temperatures; and recent fatalities have led to talk of of this year being especially bad for avalanches. […]