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WHY SOME AREN'T WORTH REPEATING

This is another of what's becoming a long series of posts highlighting insightful comments by the readers of NewWest.Net. This time, though, before reading them, here's a comment of my own, a comment on comments.

I welcome any comment, even those critical of me or NewWest.Net, but some comments are definitely more effective than others.

To read them all, click on the Comments Worth Repeating Chronology [more]

HERE, WE CAN REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE

During a bout of insomnia last night, I watched CNBC to see if any of the talking financial heads thought my retirement funds might stop disappearing, and there it was. Perhaps the biggest environmental, wildlife habitat and water quality problem we don't like to discuss. Yes, it's touchy, but that has never stopped me, so why start now.

We all need to stop buying fool's gold. [more]

Western Writers

I recently spoke to Peter Brown and Kent Haruf when they were in Denver for the premier of the theater adaptation of Haruf's novel Plainsong and a gallery opening for Brown's photographs. West of Last Chance is their award-winning collaboration, mingling Brown's photos of the Great Plains with Kent Haruf's short pieces about life on the prairie. They capture the land's sweep and sky and its unique people, buildings, and signs in a way that is affectionate yet frank about the difficulty of life in the region. Haruf and Brown will appear at the Tattered Cover in LoDo tonight, March 7, at 7:30 p.m., and at the Boulder Book Store on Monday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m. A shorter Q&A runs in the Rocky Mountain News Books section today. Read on for an extended version of our conversation.

NewWest: Can you explain to me the themes of each of the sections in West of Last Chance?

Kent Haruf: There's a narrative arc to this book, we think. It begins with the land and the landscape, and I write, "You have to know how to look at this country. You have to slow down. It isn't pretty, but it's beautiful." [more]

GIVE US A MEANINGFUL, VETO-PROOF BILL

Last November, I wrote about mining law reform being a no brainer and that the U.S. House of Representatives had just passed a bill spiking the most uncivilized sections of the 135-year-old law. The House bill ends the archaic policy of giving way our public land to mining conglomerates with billions in assets and actually makes them pay royalties for taking public resources, like everybody else does.

Now, the Senate is working on its version of mining law reform, and newly elected Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) is in a position to be the leader in correcting a century-old injustice and getting the Mining Law of 1872 off the books. [more]

New West Book Review

Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land
By Amy Irvine
North Point Press
361 pages, $25

Utah native Amy Irvine's first book Trespass: Living At The Edge of The Promised Land is an unusual hybrid that combines memoir, natural history, Western history, anthropology, and an examination of the Mormon religion. Irvine, who now lives in Colorado, writes with authority about all of these subjects, though sometimes the transitions between so many topics within a particular chapter can be dizzying. Luckily, her clear, detailed prose will help ground readers as they try to keep up with the leaps of her fertile mind.

Irvine will appear tonight in Park City at Dolly's Bookstore (6 p.m.), March 1 in Moab at Back of Beyond Books (7 p.m.), March 8 in Santa Fe at Garcia Street Books (4:30 p.m.), and March 18 in Denver at the LoDo Tattered Cover (7:30 p.m.), as well as in other regional bookstores. [more]

WILL STATE MANAGEMENT PLANS WORK?

This week, thirteen years since reintroduction into the northern Rockies, the federal government says the Big Dog, the wolf, is no longer an endangered species, which means the state wildlife agencies take over wolf management. The state agencies are already in the starting blocks to give us something we've never, ever had here in the New West, regulated sport hunting for wolves.

Regardless of the agency readiness, though, wolf managers expect delays as conservation groups drag delisting through the court system. But regardless when seasons open, will sport hunting accomplish the goal of reducing wolf numbers to target levels? [more]

LOADED FOR POLITICS, NOT BEARS OR CRIMINALS

You've probably heard about pending legislation to allow visitors to our national parks to carry loaded and accessible firearms. The cover story is the concern that people must be able to protect their families from perverts and wild animals infesting out national parks.

To this overused assertion, I must ask why doesn't the gun lobby get out front with the real reason it does these things?

Footnote: Click here to read more NewWest.Net articles on the NRA. [more]

WILL THE FWP COMMISSION STAND UP FOR HUNTERS?

In January, I posted a column about the most expensive deer in the world, which happen to be running around my house in Helena, Montana. I concluded, conservatively, that killing these deer might cost $2,000 or more per animal. Out of the comment section came the question: What would be a more cost-effective option?

Since then, I've been checking around on what's happening in other cities, and I have the answer. [more]

Power to the People

Resort communities require a lot of kilowatts, and bustling Big Sky, Montana is no exception to this rule; between 1996 and 2005 there were 660 new residential units built in Big Sky – a dramatic 8.2 percent increase. And this does not include the Moonlight Basin and Yellowstone Club ski resorts.

In order to meet the energy needs of Big Sky, Northwestern Energy is planning to upgrade the existing 69-kV power line from Four Corners to Big Sky with a 161-kV line. Northwestern is also seeking to bypass state and public review through right-of-way agreements with private landowners to build the 35-mile, $20-$30 million line.

In order to serve a slightly larger growing population, the West Wide Energy Corridor federal plan is buzzing right along with a public comment period closing on Thursday, February 14, 2008. The corridor could affect nearly 3 million acres in 11 Western states. [more]

WHY NOT?

All across the nation, bowhunters help cities control urban deer herds, but whenever the subject comes up, it's followed by a lot of questions on safety, costs, legalities and logistics. To answer some of these questions, I browsed the web for a few hours and then called three cities that effectively, inexpensively and safely keep deer populations in check with bowhunting.

Doubters beware. I couldn't come up with a single reason why bowhunters couldn't safely and inexpensively solve the "deer problem" in Helena, Montana, nor why bow hunts wouldn't work in other cities in the New West. [more]

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