One of the West’s great old-school monopolies and its multi-pronged attack on wind and solar.
Features
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Dinosaur Wars
Startling, one-of-a-kind fossils are unearthed in Montana – and shunned by scientists.
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Can we save Mojave desert tortoises by moving them out of harm’s way?
Feds aim to save threatened tortoises by relocating them away from development
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
New route to end Utah’s wilderness stalemate
Can one of the West’s most anti-federal lands lawmakers broker a mega-wilderness deal in the Beehive state?
Posted inJune 24, 2013: Water Rights
California farm communities suffer tainted drinking water
In California’s agricultural hub, the Central Valley, Latino communities fight for clean water.
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Conservation goals in Jackson Hole collide with a need for worker housing
Jackson, Wyoming As I roam around this resort town in April to meet conservationists who battle affordable housing projects, I’m struck by a tongue-in-cheek take on the argument in the Jackson Hole Daily. Smack on the front page is a photo of a pair of geese facing off against two ospreys over possession of a […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
The power grid may determine whether we can kick our carbon habit
Minutes before 4 p.m. on a sizzling September day two years ago, right at the time when they were most needed, San Diego’s air conditioners suddenly died. Thousands of television and computer screens also flickered into darkness. Stoplights stopped working, gas stations ceased pumping, and traffic slowed to a snarl. Trains ground to a halt […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
How right-wing emigrants conquered North Idaho
If anyone in Kootenai County could have predicted the Democrats’ downfall, it was Dan English. He had spent most of his life in the Idaho Panhandle and monitored more than 100 local elections in his 15 years as county clerk. The first ballots he counted, in 1996, revealed tight contests between Republicans and Democrats, but […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Seeking balance in Oregon’s timber country
“Now, that is an old-growth tree!” shouts Jerry Franklin on a September day in the hills above Roseburg, Ore. A mammoth Douglas fir towers 10 stories above, dwarfing everything around it. Sunlight filters down through the thick canopy to a group of about 20 University of Washington students. “You can really see who the veterans […]
Posted inApril 15, 2013: Sacrificial Land
Sacrificial Land: Will renewable energy devour the Mojave Desert?
Over breakfast at the Crowbar Café in Shoshone, Calif., Brian Brown explains to me how he makes a living. Shoshone is a town of 31 in the Mojave Desert near the Nevada border; Brown runs his own business here, the China Ranch Date Farm. In the late summer, he strips offshoots from unproductive palm trees […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Secret getaways of the National Landscape Conservation System
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. Updated 4/9/13 The only map I have shows the way out of Las Vegas — always a good thing to know. It is crisp and folded-up on the passenger seat and it says to take the eastbound interstate, […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2013: Second annual travel issue
Field notes from a solo paddle in Alaska’s Inside Passage
Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West. Mid-day on the last Fourth of July, I sat in my kayak and watched a parade like nothing I’d ever seen: Icebergs shaped like elaborate floats bobbed past me, one resembling an eagle, another a house, still others […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
Climate change turns an already troubled ski industry on its head
George Shirk sits in his office at the Mammoth Times on a Saturday afternoon, with his dog, Fido, who writes his own weekly column for the paper, curled up underneath the desk. Early December is the quiet time between the Thanksgiving and Christmas rushes at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, and Shirk, a 60-year-old news veteran […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2013: Farming on the Fringe
Farmers agree to tax those who deplete groundwater
Amid drought and climate change in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, farmers vote for a new approach to rein in their overpumping of groundwater.
Posted inFebruary 4, 2013: Making Good on the Badlands
Will the Badlands become the first tribal national park?
Oglala Lakota leaders hope to transform their bombed-out Badlands and help lift the tribe out of poverty, but it won’t be easy.
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
How Outward Bound lost, and found, itself
It’s the second day of Drake Clifton’s three-day Outward Bound solo, and he’s starving. He rattles his small food bag in front of the camera: crackers, nuts, a nub of cheese. Matted blond hair pokes out of his black beanie. “It’s seriously killing me,” he says, pouring crumbs into his mouth. He’s camped in a […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
A field program teaches undergrads to think differently about public lands
I am in school, watching a grown man cry. He works at a clinic in the Klamath Basin on the Oregon-California border. He tells me and 22 other visiting college students what happened to local farmers one season, when the federal government shut off their irrigation water to protect endangered fish during a drought. He […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Oil and gas companies pour money into research universities
Northwest Colorado’s Piceance Basin — 5 million acres framed by cliffs and hogbacked mountains — overlies roughly 300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to supply the nation for 50 years. It’s also ideal mule deer habitat; state wildlife managers once called it “the deer factory.” But as drilling ramps up, deer numbers plummet. […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Oil boom spurs a rush on extractive education programs
Last May, Russell Carr crammed his possessions into his 4Runner and drove 30 hours to North Dakota, seeking a new start. The strapping 22-year-old had just earned a degree in civil engineering at the University of Nevada, in his hometown, Reno, but the local firm he’d been courting offered a starting wage of only $17 […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2012: The new Wild, Wild West
A mining rush in Canada’s backcountry threatens Alaska salmon
Last summer, John Grace, one of the world’s elite kayakers, traveled more than 3,000 miles from his North Carolina home into the wild northwest corner of British Columbia, to explore the Iskut River. It’s the biggest tributary of the Stikine River, which flows all the way to the Alaska panhandle coast, and together they’re the […]