Gulf spill can be goad to do right thing
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from BP’s disastrous oil spill, it’s how missed opportunities can come back to haunt you. One glaring example has received little attention, however.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 14 YEARS, 6 MONTHS AGO
Writers on the Range: Circle of nature in NW Montana's woods
Not far from where I live in northwestern Montana, the land opens up and the people disappear.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 14 YEARS, 9 MONTHS AGO
Column: Learning to live land-locked
When I lived in southern Alaska, everything revolved around the ocean. Our island was reachable only by plane or boat, and you couldn’t get anywhere dry or metropolitan without hopping an Alaska Airlines jet.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 14 YEARS, 10 MONTHS AGO
Column: Good fences don't mangle, destroy wildlife
This winter a small tragedy took place on a ridge above the Bitterroot Valley of western Montana near where I live. I was nearly home when two neighbors out for a walk frantically flagged my truck down.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 14 YEARS, 10 MONTHS AGO
Column: Don't build in wrong place
Recent news stories lament the “disaster” of mudslides in Los Angeles caused by heavy rainfall on steep slopes where wildfires have burned off trees and shrubs.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 14 YEARS, 11 MONTHS AGO
Tester's forest jobs bill: Bill is true collaborative effort
When Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester introduced his Forest Jobs and Recreation Act last July, he did something that is all too uncommon in today’s political world. He kept a promise.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS AGO
Tester's forest jobs bill: When a wilderness bill is a sham
Montana politicians are usually quick to defend our state brand – “the last best place” – although they tend to falter when it comes to defending what makes our state the best. And that is our wildlands, the real last best places in Montana. They are the substance behind the …
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS AGO
Column: Setting the record straight on wilderness
It’s been a good year for wilderness. In March, the Omnibus Lands Bill designated over 2 million acres of wilderness in nine states. In September, President Obama declared a month-long celebration of the Wilderness Act, and this November, the United States, Canada and Mexico signed the world’s first international agreement …
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS AGO
Column: Heard Around the West
It’s always a treat to get Cabela’s Christmas catalog, that compendium of rugged outdoor gear for hunters, anglers and all those who love camouflage in its myriad incarnations.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 1 MONTH AGO
Column: Do we really need another ski resort?
This winter, Missoula, was on its way to boasting a brand-new ski area besides Snowbowl. The new resort, carved out of the Bitterroot Mountains, would have been closer to town, but creditors began closing in and the word “foreclosure” hit the papers.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 1 MONTH AGO
Advice from the Loser School of Hunting
The less successful a hunter you are, the more practice you’re going to get, because failure means you have to go back out there again and again. If you bagged your beast early, then evidently you didn’t need any extra practice. Otherwise, consider yourself enrolled in the Loser School of …
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 2 MONTHS AGO
Column: The war between bicyclists and motorists
Most motorists courteously and safely share the roads with cyclists, but then there are all the obnoxious others, the ones who fill with rage when they see anybody on a bicycle on the road ahead.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 2 MONTHS AGO
Column: Blame it all on my crazy biology teacher
With fall in the air, I get this funny feeling that my homework isn’t done.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 3 MONTHS AGO
Column: Solace among the Crazies
I've always gone to the woods to calm or rejuvenate a spirit too easily rubbed raw by modern life.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 3 MONTHS AGO
Column: Conservationists' opposition to hunting wolves is wrongheaded
I never thought I’d say this, but wolf recovery in the West has been the most successful program ever accomplished under the Endangered Species Act.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 4 MONTHS AGO
Column: Still our best idea
Dayton Duncan was an impressionable 9-year-old when he made his first journey into the West’s national parks. There, he had the kind of life-changing experience that many people have enjoyed in the parks.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 4 MONTHS AGO
Column: Perspectives from home on glacier
I spent the summers of 2007 and 2008 on a glacier in southeast Alaska, with 12 people and 200 huskies. I was working as a dogsled guide, and each morning I’d pull myself from my sleeping bag, slip on my raincoat and boots, and step from my tent into the …
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 4 MONTHS AGO
Column: Can natural gas save the world?
Some 15 million Americans believe the moon landings were faked. Millions more are convinced that the sun revolves around the earth, which is approximately 6,000 years old.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 5 MONTHS AGO
Column: Forget grandpappy, I'm local
I live in Lemhi County, Idaho, but nobody else in my family ever did, and recently, that’s become a problem.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 8 MONTHS AGO
Column: Case of following your passion
The bones of the young artist Everett Ruess, identified last month through DNA analysis, have at last been found in Utah. They were 100 miles from where he was last seen 75 years ago, and from where his mules were found by a search party in early 1935.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 8 MONTHS AGO
Column: Let's remember the children
As dollars from the Economic Stimulus Act arrive here in the eight Rocky Mountain states, most Westerners seem to be talking about spending that money on shovel-ready jobs. The projects we hear about are intended to repair our crumbling schools, bridges, roads and sewers, or to restore our abused landscape.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 9 MONTHS AGO
Column: Calling Hollywood to run the West
Macho Hollywood actor Val Kilmer has starred in more than 40 movies, often playing tough cops and Western gunfighters. He’s probably best known for playing the 1995 Batman and punching out a villain called The Riddler. Now Kilmer wants to become a political hero by running for the governorship of …
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 9 MONTHS AGO
2017 is just around the corner
I’ve been writing about the Great Salmon War in the Columbia River Basin for so long that by now you’d think I’d have grown a tail and fins. When I wrote my first stories, Moby Dick was a minnow, my 30-year-old son was still in middle school and the projected …
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 9 MONTHS AGO
Column: If an island can renew energy
For the past 10 years, a Viking named Soren Hermansen has spearheaded one of the most audacious experiments in the world – the attempt of 4,000 people living on the small Danish island of Samso to become energy independent.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 10 MONTHS AGO
Column: Winter camping can be hazardous
One hundred thirty-five years ago this spring, a six-week ordeal began for Alferd E. Packer.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 10 MONTHS AGO
Healing in the barn with 'Wander'
I was in the middle of a divorce when I applied for the barn job. I walked into the local rodeo arena, introduced myself to the owner and was attacked by a rooster – claws up.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 15 YEARS, 11 MONTHS AGO
Column: USFS skips a chance to do things right
If you’re like me and can’t keep up with the Bush administration’s last-minute policy changes, you might have failed to notice a recent announcement by the U.S. Forest Service. In its rush to tie up loose ends, the Forest Service is hammering out new internal agency guidance documents, called “directives.”
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 16 YEARS AGO
Column: Hunting is the ultimate do-it-yourself experience
Garden-raised vegetables are probably the tastiest, and eating food raised from seeds you planted yourself always gives a deep sense of satisfaction. But nothing beats hunting for connecting you to the land.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 16 YEARS AGO
Column: The perfect imperfect Christmas tree
I love going into the woods to cut my own Christmas tree. It’s not that I want to snub the Boy Scouts, who host a tree lot in town. I’ve spent a lot of time in those urbanized groves, searching for the perfect conical tree, and sampling hot chocolate.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 16 YEARS, 1 MONTH AGO
Column: It's time for a ceasefire on guns
Gun owners represent at least 4 million of the nation’s most dedicated voters, and in election after election, they affect the outcome.
THE WESTERN NEWS | UPDATED 16 YEARS, 1 MONTH AGO
