Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

Green chili, artistically pleasing light, diverse cultures and landscapes and nuclear bombs. These are all elements that endear many to New Mexico. Then there are the state’s drivers. Let’s just say that something about that special light leaves many New Mexicans vehicularly challenged. A native New Mexican once told me that a traffic light remains “orange” for at least two seconds after it turns from yellow to red, meaning running it is just fine as long as you don’t end up dead.

For a little more evidence of New Mexicans’ troubles with driving, check out this video on YouTube.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

This news needs no help from me. The Washington Post’s Blaine Harden has it nailed, reporting:

Modern hunters rarely become more famous than Jim Zumbo. A mustachioed, barrel-chested outdoors entrepreneur who lives in a log cabin near Yellowstone National Park, he has spent much of his life writing for prominent outdoors magazines, delivering lectures across the country and starring in cable TV shows about big-game hunting in the West.

Zumbo’s fame, however, has turned to black-bordered infamy within America’s gun culture — and his multimedia success has come undone. It all happened in the past week, after he publicly criticized the use of military-style assault rifles by hunters, especially those gunning for prairie dogs.

(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

The Department of Interior and the state of Wyoming have just proposed spending $11.5 million to fund a new program that aims to “protect wildlife while developing mineral resources throughout western Wyoming.” From the Sublette Examiner:

The Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative is a long-term, science-based effort that will identify, evaluate, and implement on-the-ground conservation projects that are most needed in Southwest Wyoming. The inter-agency approach will help ensure that projects designed to benefit wildlife habitat achieve tangible, on-the-ground results. WLCI conservation efforts will enhance existing requirements for energy development reclamation and mitigation.

The funding is slated to come from federal, state, and nonprofits. The feds tout the program’s partnerships with ranchers, conservationists and landowners.

But the real question is when, as we reported a few years ago, energy companies are pulling $3 billion in natural gas out of Wyoming’s Jonah Field each year, why we have to spend any government money at all to reclaim drill sites. The energy companies pay paltry royalties and make obscene profits, and then federal agencies pay for restoring the incredible damage they’ve wreaked on our public lands, habitat and wildlife. What’s wrong with this picture?

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

The biggest chain of health-conscious grocery stories, Whole Foods (191 stores, $5.6 billion annual sales) wants to buy its closest competitor, Wild Oats Markets (110 stores, $1.2 billion sales, hq in Boulder, Colorado).

What’s up with that $700 million deal?

It’ll mean better returns for the usual relentless stockholders, as well as layoffs and possible price hikes, according to industry analysts in Denver Post stories here and here.

It also has to do with green grocers muscling up to compete with monsters such as Wal-Mart that increasingly see profits in organic and whole grain everything.

And … it helps explain why the community food co-op in my town, Bozeman, Montana, has feverishly expanded into a new building and just announced controversial plans to open a second store … Bozeman has no Whole Foods/Wild Oats yet, but one will probably appear here sooner or later. Apparently some local co-ops also believe in muscling up, to battle — or head off — any invasion by what’s becoming the green grocery megachain.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

More than 280 bighorn sheep have been roadkilled on a brief stretch of Montana highway since 1985 … At least 25 bighorns surrendered to the gas-powered steel in a four-month period last year alone. The AP reports that discovery and efforts to reduce the bloodletting.

Meanwhile, other researchers have figured out that osprey, the handsome fish-eating birds, often fall victim to the orange baling twine that’s so popular in Old West ranches and New West ranchettes.

(Read on …)

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

If you think the recent drought in the Colorado River basin is unusually severe, think again. Though dry weather throughout the 240,000 square mile drainage has lowered Lake Powell levels enough to expose canyons that have been underwater for decades, things could easily get worse.

That’s the conclusion of a new report from the National Research Council (pdf). Examining tree ring data from across the basin, the report’s researchers found that the region has experienced much more severe droughts over the past 500 years than the current one (see Michelle Nijhuis’ definitive piece on this research for HCN) . They postulate that the average annual flow of the river is probably closer to 13 million acre feet than the 16.4 million acre feet average on which the Colorado River Compact was based. In other words, over time there will be a lot less water to divvy up between rapidly growing states than originally thought.

Interestingly enough, Pat Mulroy, who manages the Southern Nevada Water Authority, has held up the report as proof that conservation won’t solve water problems, as reported in the Las Vegas Review Journal. Instead, sprawling Las Vegas needs to find new sources of water, she says, namely the aquifer that lies beneath Lincoln and White Pine counties north of Sin City.

Mulroy, as told by the Journal, had this to say:

“It confirms a lot of things that we’ve been saying,” said Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “It says there’s no way you can conserve your way out of this. There has to be a larger solution somehow.”

For the Las Vegas Valley, which gets 90 percent of its water from the Colorado, that solution is to develop an alternative supply, Mulroy said.

“In my mind, it underscores the critical need for Nevada to diversify.”

Sounds like that old Manifest Destiny mindset still survives. Instead of thinking of ways to use less of something — minerals, energy, land, water — we just move in and conquer a new place, as though there is an infinite supply to be had “out there.” Problem is, there’s not many “out theres” left anymore, even in the West. Perhaps it’s time to change the way we think.

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

As I write this, a coal train, some 100 cars long, is rolling by our office. At least two others have rumbled by today, loaded down with the black stuff, headed for points east. Most of the 13 million tons of low-sulfur coal mined near here each year goes to the Midwest or the East, where it is mixed with high-sulfur coal before being burnt to create electricity. Unless all the projections are wrong, the trains will keep on rolling in the coal-producing regions of the West. According to the Energy Information Administration, coal consumption in the U.S. will almost double by 2030.

In a time when global warming threatens to batter property values along the coasts, the idea of burning another billion tons of carbon dioxide-spewing coal each year is a bit alarming. But not to worry: Instead of letting those greenhouse gases get into the air, we’ll just capture them and bury them underground. That, in itself, is a dicey proposition. Though carbon dioxide has been mined from basins around the West, and then reinjected into oil fields to increase production, no one knows whether buried carbon will ultimately leak out of the ground, explode out like a shaken up can of soda pop or chemically alter groundwater in ways that may cause problems later.

Now it seems that the whole idea of capturing the carbon in the first place may also be difficult. The New York Times reports that a yet-to-be-released MIT study indicates that integrated gasification combined cycle coal generation — until now considered to be the cleanest way to burn coal — may not lend itself well to carbon capture. From the Times:

But now, influential technical experts are casting doubts on both approaches.

“The phrases ‘capture ready’ and ‘capture capable’ are somewhat controversial,” said Revis James, the director of the energy technology assessment center at the Electric Power Research Institute. “It’s not like you just leave a footprint for some new equipment.”

Many experts outside the industry share his concerns.

A major new study by faculty members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, scheduled for release soon, concludes in a draft version that it is not clear which technology — the so-called integrated gasification combined cycle or pulverized coal — will allow for the easiest carbon capture, because so much engineering work remains to be done.

It’s kind of scary, really. If carbon capture is a pipe dream, or another decade away from being realized, then what?

I couldn’t disagree more with Jonathan Thompson’s provincial analysis in his preceding post on presidential primaries.
Yes, a lot of states are trying to schedule their presidential primaries on Feb. 5, 2008, meaning that the Interior West states that have scheduled early primaries probably won’t have anything like a monopoly on the date. But that doesn’t mean the West won’t have a much larger impact on the nominating process than it has in years past. Here’s why:

First, California looks almost certain to move to the Feb. 5 date, and California is part of the West (regardless of the High Country News tendency to treat the Golden State as a delinquent stepchild). That move will let the nation’s largest state and a bunch of other Western states vote just weeks after the Iowa and Nevada caucases and the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. States in other regions may well also set Feb. 5 dates, but presidential campaigns will focus on “swing” states and regions, and the West will be one of those regions. The 2006 election results — and their shift of many Inner West states from red to blue, or at least purple — will impel both Republican and Democratic candidates to stump the Western primaries. Nothing will impel candidates from either party to spend a whole lot of time in Alabama, say.

Overall, I agree with the following analysis, from a story in the San Francisco Chronicle:

But Phil Trounstine, who heads the San Jose State University Survey and Policy Research Institute, said an early California primary could deliver some unintended consequences to the 2008 presidential race.

“It may actually increase the importance of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada,” said Trounstine of the four primaries and caucuses scheduled in January 2008 before California’s primary, “because the person who has momentum coming out of those races will have a huge advantage coming into Super Duper Tuesday.”

In post-South Carolina, pre-SDT campaigning, candidates will of course visit other large states that want to move to the Feb. 5 primary date, including Texas, Florida, Illinois and New York. But those candidates will lust after California’s huge slate of nominating delegates, and as they return repeatedly to the left coast, they will stop off repeatedly in the Mountain West, because they will know that, if they win the nomination, the Mountain West will be crucial to their general election strategy.

And I don’t care what Larry Sabato says. The West is where the candidates will go. Not exclusively, but a lot more than they ever did when California was waiting around til useless June to have a primary.

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

It sounded pretty good: A group of states from the Interior West would hold their presidential primaries on the same day, early in the primary calendar. Proponents say that would give the Interior West — usually ignored in national elections — a lot more say in national politics. And that louder voice might encourage the region to think more as a region, rather than as a bunch of different states. Utah, Arizona and New Mexico are on board for a simultaneous primary on Feb. 5. Montana and Colorado have also shown interest.

Problem is, so has everyone else. California now looks poised to hold its primary on Feb. 5, along with several other states, resulting in what some are calling a national presidential primary. The Interior West’s newfound voice will be lost in the din, and we’ll be back where we were before. Meanwhile, Utah’s primary hopes have ebbed under the weight of the cost to hold it: $4.3 million. They’re still trying, though, and may use a “presidential preference poll” rather than a primary to give themselves some clout.

Really, the West’s biggest hope for a voice is in Nevada, which will hold a caucus in January, meaning candidates will focus a lot of their efforts there. The state is considered especially important for Democratic candidate Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico.

High Country News Northern Rockies Editor Ray Ring has won the 2006 George Polk Award for Political Reporting for his story, “Taking Liberties,” an in-depth look at a secretive libertarian campaign to cripple land-use planning in six Western states.

One of the most prestigious prizes in American journalism, the Polk Award was established at Long Island University in 1949 to honor a CBS correspondent slain while covering a civil war in Greece. The list of Polk Award winners includes some of the most renowned names in American journalism, from Seymour Hersh to Jimmy Breslin to Ted Koppel to Edward R. Murrow. The contest also has a history of honoring less-well-known print and broadcast outlets (including, for its 1986 environmental reporting, High Country News).

In his winning story, published in July 2006, Ring examined signature-gathering efforts for state-level libertarian ballot measures pursued across the West in the November elections. Paid political salesmen touted the measures to petition-signers and voters as a way to prevent governments from “taking” people’s land against their will. But Ring showed that that the measures went far beyond eminent-domain reform, including language that would force governments to pay owners any time a regulation reduced the value of property — a sure way to bankrupt governments or force abandonment of all land-use regulation. Ring also unmasked the primary instigator and funder of the ballot measures – who was not a Westerner, but the reclusive New York City-based real-estate mogul, Howie Rich.

“Taking Liberties” had huge national impacts, spurring major newspapers, websites and radio stations to do their own stories on the libertarian initiatives. Ring’s article was widely credited with being instrumental in the defeat – either at the ballot box or in the courtroom – of most of the proposed land-use measures.

“I don’t think it’s even a contest: Ray Ring is the most knowledgeable, well-sourced and hard-working political reporter in the West,” High Country News Editor John Mecklin said. “I’m glad to see him get the national notice he deserves.”

Ring and “Taking Liberties” also recently won the American Planning Association Journalism Award in the small newspapers category. The contest judges said “Taking Liberties” provided “exceptional political analysis” of an organized campaign aimed at “shrinking government to the point where you could drag it to the bathtub and drown it.”

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Gray wolves are about to be taken off the endangered species list in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming (in Idaho, would-be wolf hunters can hardly wait — they’re lining up to bid for the first 10 tags to be issued.)

When the reintroduced population hit the 500-wolf mark some years ago, we wrote about the gut-wrenching conflicts as wolves took down cattle, sheep and elk and provoked angry reactions from ranchers and hunters.

Now, researchers are gaining a better understanding of how wolves actually affect elk herds. Hunters have been quick to blame the wolf for declining elk numbers, but scientists say other factors account for most of the drop. From Michigan Tech:

Elk numbers are down by nearly half in Yellowstone since wolves were introduced a decade ago. But hunting and drought are the real culprits, says Michigan Tech scientist John Vucetich.

(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

We’ve always figured that in many ways, life is better in The Great White North. Canada boasts socialized health care; safe refuge for Americans who refuse to be drafted; about a tenth as many people; sane foreign policy; and some great music (Neil Young, Cowboy Junkies, Bare Naked Ladies, Crash Test Dummies).

Now we’ve got proof. Dan Zuberi, sociology professor at the University of British Columbia, compared social policies in Vancouver and its U.S. cousin, Seattle. He studied immigrant workers at two hotel chains, one union and one non-union. From a review of his book, Differences That Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada, posted on Tidepool.org:

So life for the working poor in Seattle is strikingly harder and more stressful than for their neighbours here in Vancouver. It’s not because folks in Seattle are lazier or dumber than folks in Vancouver. It’s because laws have created wildly different environments in the two cities and the two nations.

As Westerners, we could learn a lot from our northern neighbor about shaping humane, workable social policy.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

The marbled murrelet is a small brownish seabird that nests in old-growth trees. Imaginative or perhaps hungry ornithologists have described it as “a baked potato with a beak.” The bird’s numbers have plummeted over the past several decades, mostly thanks to logging-induced habitat loss in California, Washington and Oregon; in 1992 it made the federal list of threatened species.

But the timber industry didn’t appreciate the ensuing restrictions on logging, and in 2005, we reported on Fish and Wildlife’s response: a plan to boot the marbled murrelet off the endangered species list. The agency claimed that although murrelets were declining in California, Washington and Oregon, there were still plenty of them in Canada and Alaska.

Now, a review by the U.S. Geological Survey has found that the bird’s populations in British Columbia and Alaska have dropped 70 percent in the past 25 years. And scientists at UC Berkeley recently discovered that a hundred years ago, birth rates for marbled murrelets were nearly 9 times greater than they are today.

The timber industry’s response?

“The bottom line is that there are still hundreds and hundreds of thousands of the birds along the Pacific Coast,” Chris West of the American Forest Resources Council said. “How can you list a population like that?”

Just do the math. If the current trend continues, a population of 300,000 birds would be reduced to 90,000 in another 25 years, to 27,000 in 50 years and to 8,100 in 75 years. The real question is, how can you not list a population like that?