Along the 120-mile-long “Path of the Pronghorn,” migrating animals cross rivers, dodge traffic, battle blizzards and navigate the infrastructure of Wyoming energy development.
No matter how long you live in your small town, you’ll never be a native
The woman behind the counter asked where I lived. It turns out she grew up in the very same small town, population 300. She said she had to leave it to find a job, moving to the nearest place with a population nearer 10,000.”So you must be the new trash that’s moving in,” she mused.…
A Q&A with former Colorado National Monument head Joan Anzelmo
In 1976, fresh from the University of Maryland with degrees in French and Spanish, Joan Anzelmo began her National Park Service career greeting international tourists at the agency’s new Visitor Center in Washington, D.C. But it wasn’t long before the former “city girl” came out West, where she spent most of her 35-year tenure, including…
Raymond Ansotegui and the art of artificially inseminating cattle
It’s an early June morning on Montana’s 60,000-acre Bair Ranch, north of the Crazy Mountains. Black cow-calf pairs dot the pastures under a frigid rain. It streams from the hats and soaks the chaps of the men and women who exit the bunkhouse, fully caffeinated and sated by steak and eggs. They are here to…
The perilous journey of Wyoming’s migrating pronghorn
On a blustery spring day, I crouched behind sagebrush at the edge of the Green River in western Wyoming, waiting for pronghorn to pass by on their northern migration. Occasional snowflakes fluttered into the steel-colored water. I pulled my arms inside my down jacket, zipped to the chin. Hours went by. Then, across the river,…
Protecting wildlife corridors remains more theory than practice
updated Dec. 30, 3011 Every May for the past five years, Jackson Hole, Wyo., has celebrated the return of 300 or so Antilocapra americana to nearby Grand Teton National Park. The revelry is not just to honor the animals for completing their remarkable 120-mile-long seasonal migration. It also salutes a Herculean communal effort: the 2008…
Boulder, Colo., votes for energy independence — from its utility
On election night this November in Boulder, Colo., under the stained-glass ceiling of the Hotel Boulderado, about 100 progressive-leaning voters crowded around a screen showing preliminary results. Early in the evening, the odds of the city breaking its ties with Minnesota-based corporate utility Xcel Energy to pursue locally produced, clean power seemed as dark as…
Is Colorado Springs the new Babylon?
“Is Phoenix the new Babylon?” resonates in Colorado Springs (HCN, 11/28/11). Colorado Springs Utilities, a city-owned full-service utility — gas, sewer, electricity and water — has committed $2.1 billion to build a pipeline to bring water to the city from Pueblo Reservoir, a project known as the Southern Delivery System. That amount does not include…
Jon Huntsman Jr. — a pragmatic Westerner for the White House
For proof that Western politicians, at their best, have a pragmatic nonpartisan streak, check out the only one seriously trying to win the presidency in 2012: Jon Meade Huntsman Jr. Not only is Huntsman the best-qualified candidate in the Republican primary, he’s also seeking to revive fact-based, reasonable Republicanism. As Utah’s governor from 2005 to…
Lessons from Laos
I’ve been reading back issues of HCN while living and working in Vientiane, Laos. As a native Coloradan, outdoor enthusiast, and anti-corporate child of hippies, I tend to oppose commercial development of public lands and natural resources. However, on a small point, I found myself agreeing with the mining representative in “Hardrock Showdown” (HCN, 11/22/10).…
Love and loss on a Wyoming ranch: A review of Lime Creek
Lime CreekJoe Henry160 pages, hardcover: $20.Random House, 2011. Woody Creek, Colo.-based Joe Henry studied at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop with John Irving, but then detoured from writing fiction to work as a rancher, becoming a successful lyricist along the way. Henry’s ravishing first work of fiction, Lime Creek, must have been inspired by the Western…
Of (captive) wolves and men
“Possessing the Wild” illustrated two truths: First, the birth of any wolf into captivity is a tragedy (HCN, 11/14/11). Despite their close genetic relationship to dogs, wolves are not suited to living with people. Second, there is no universal captive wolf or wolf-dog experience. The vast majority of animals do not live in the facilities…
Stitching habitat together across public and private lands
In October 1983, ahead of an unusually harsh winter, groups of pronghorn in south-central Wyoming began what should have been a routine journey to their sage-freckled winter range on the Red Rim near Rawlins. But a newly completed, five-foot-tall, 28-mile-long woven wire fence blocked the way. Rancher Taylor Lawrence said he’d erected it around the…
Animal migration occurs all around us and yet remains a mystery
Every spring and fall, I’m surprised by an odd sound above my house in Colorado. It’s somewhere between a creak and a hoot, an eerie, echoing call, like the one I imagine some dinosaurs used to make. It always takes me a minute to place it, but suddenly it’s unmistakable: It’s the sound of sandhill…
Cream of the crop
“Milk and Water Don’t Mix,” was wonderfully interesting (HCN, 11/28/11). I was especially impressed when writer Stephanie Paige Ogburn mentioned the origin of feedlot dairying by Dutch immigrants in southern L.A. County, its subsequent shift to Chino in San Bernardino County, and more recently to the Bakersfield area. I didn’t think many people who didn’t…
The year 2011, in apocalyptic weather events
Worried that the world may end in 2012 à la the alleged Mayan prophecies? You might want to get your head out of those New Age clouds and look around: 2011 was plenty apocalyptic worldwide and in the West. Here’s a month-by-month roundup of the region’s freakiest climate and weather events. January 2011 is ushered…
Girls gone wild — 1900s style: A review of Nothing Daunted
Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the WestDorothy Wickenden304 pages, hardcover: $26.Scribner, 2011. “We did not want strays. We had serious matrimonial intentions, and we decided that young, pretty schoolteachers would be the best bet of all,” cowboy Ferry Carpenter recollected about his part in the effort to attract “schoolmarms” to…
Holiday break
While you snuggle up with your last issue of High Country News for 2011, our editorial staff will be taking a two-week publishing break to catch up on editing, writing, reporting and other projects, and, of course, spend time with family and friends. Expect your first issue of 2012 around Jan. 25. We wish you…