Kim Stanley Robinson on how the High Sierra has influenced his science fiction.
Jon Christensen
Posted inArticles
Harry Reid’s legacy will be remembered on the land
A reflection on what endures after the death of the longtime senator from Nevada.
Posted inMay 1, 2020: Lives on Lockdown
Endowments
“Land-Grab Universities” (April 2020) called for reconciliation efforts at schools that have endowments derived in part from the taking of Native American lands in the 19th century. South Dakota State University has dedicated around $636,000 in annual endowment income from these lands to programs and support for Native students. If all 52 universities in your […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2017: The Elwha, Unleashed
How we risked losing the West
A look back at how range science misled land managers.
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Brave new L.A.
Los Angeles is an unlikely model of urban sustainability for the West and the world.
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Land trusts thrive despite, and because of, the Great Recession
The Great Recession, it turns out, may have been good for one thing in the West: private land conservation. From the tiny Orient Land Trust in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, which has nearly doubled its holdings to 2,260 acres, to the 138,041 acres of ranchland protected by the California Rangeland Trust over the last five […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Measuring Tahoe’s blues
Sediment and pollution obscure lake and light
Posted inJuly 21, 2008: A fractured party
Dreaming of a New Deal for nature
Sometimes it’s easier to understand why things are the way they are today by looking back to the past. That’s one common reason to study history; another is to see the possibilities in the past that are no longer present today. And then there are those moments when the past illuminates the present and suggests […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
The great wilderness compromise
What would Zahnie do?” I asked myself that question as I hiked into the White Cloud Mountains of central Idaho. I’d come here to report on an ugly internecine fight among environmentalists over the fate of this would-be wilderness of rock and ice, high meadows, pine forests and alpine lakes. Both sides invoked the name […]
Posted inWotr
How not to fix conservation easements
One of the most useful, cost-effective methods of conserving land in America is in serious crisis. A series of scandals has revealed major abuses of conservation easements — a legal tool increasingly used to protect private land from development by compensating landowners for development rights. It is true that some landowners who donate easements to […]
Posted inWotr
Gov. Schwarzenegger is the nation’s newest Progressive
Heeee’s back. Only this time, Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn’t come from the future as the Terminator. He’s come from the past, a time when some politicians took contentious issues straight to the people. Schwarzenegger has announced that he’s fed up with the Democratic-majority state Legislature and will appeal directly to voters to impose a cap on […]
Posted inWotr
It takes a community to save the sage grouse
Way out on the sagebrush sea of the American West, people are embarking on an uncharted new journey called community-based conservation. Their flagship is the greater sage grouse, a bird that has narrowly avoided being added to the endangered species list because of the cooperative efforts of people around the region. The decision not to […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Go West, Democrats, in the path of Harry Reid
Can a teetotaling Mormon from a busted mining town in Nevada lead Democrats to the Promised Land of national power? This much is certain: Democrats rallied behind Harry Reid in the hope that he can take them safely through purgatory — or is it hell? — as minority leader of the 44-member Democratic caucus in […]
Posted inWotr
Go West, Democrats, in the path of Harry Reid
Can a teetotaling Mormon from a busted mining town in Nevada lead Democrats to the Promised Land of national power? This much is certain: Democrats rallied behind Harry Reid in the hope that he can take them through purgatory —or is it hell? — as minority leader of the 44-member Democratic caucus in the U.S. […]
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Who will take over the ranch?
As a real estate frenzy grips the West, conservationists scramble to save a disappearing landscape
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Not just a ranch: Bucks and acres
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Who will take over the ranch?“ If most people looked at the Adobe Ranch, they’d see a meadow with a creek and willows running through it and sagebrush grasslands rising to pine forests. But Carl Palmer sees a distressed asset that he and his […]
Posted inMarch 29, 2004: Who Will Take Over the Ranch?
Biology: The missing science
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Who will take over the ranch?“ The Gunnison Ranchland Conservation Legacy and other groups around the West are spending millions of dollars on conservation easements to ensure that ranches are not subdivided. But beyond the ranches themselves, what are the easements protecting? Do ranch […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Showdown on the Nevada range
Ranchers trespass on public lands, says the BLM
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Nevada’s quest to lose its reputation as a wasteland didn’t begin auspiciously in the new millennium. In fact, it looked as if the state was politically doomed to become the home for a nuclear waste repository that would remain dangerously radioactive for many millennia. At the start of 2001, with Republicans in control of the […]
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
A bitter valley waits
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. AMARGOSA VALLEY, Nev. – “Yea, though we live in the shadows of Death Valley and Yucca Mountain, we will not fear,” it said on the T-shirt of the man in front of me as I checked into the Longstreet Inn and Casino in Amargosa […]