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High Country News Post

Despite their reputation as hangouts for brawny hook and bullet types, fly-fishing shops--particularly the fly-tying sections--have always been a tad swishy.  No matter how you slice it, scores of straight-faced men poking through purple Krystal Flash and pearl Flashabou or inquiring about the next shipment of pink chenille isn’t exactly manly.

But a recent women’s hairstyle trend has upped fly-fishing’s “fabulous” factor another notch: rooster feather hair extensions. According a recent NPR story, the trend originated at western music festivals like Burning Man and Sasquatch, but has since spread to various pop celebrities, most visibly, “American Idol” judge and Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler.

And while some fly tiers decry the increased competition--and higher prices--for their materials, a few fly shop owners are happy to see a boom in business.

Adventure Journal Post

Politicians generally don’t level shotgun blasts at sitting presidents of their own party, but in June that’s exactly what former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt did. He brought to the bully pulpit of a former Cabinet member a broadside against President Obama for a lack of leadership on environmental and climate change issues, calling the current Congress the most radical in history and Obama’s failure to engage it “appeasement”. From within the highest levels of the Democratic party, he expressed the frustration with Obama that so many environmentally oriented people have felt, to some a betrayal, to other discouragement and the sense that what might be perhaps the one and only opportunity to tackle the issues of climate change and environmental degradation before it’s too late is slipping away. If not Obama, then who?

Babbitt’s remarks were covered moderately widely in the press, but it did not spark a debate and the response from the establishment was muted, to say the least. It’s true that Obama has made some positive moves, but most reasonably conscious observers can see that the challenges to the global environment are orders of magnitude greater than what we’ve dealt with previously, and Babbit’s speech, along with Al Gore’s powerful and frightening call to action in a recent Rolling Stone, is a much deserved, well needed, and overdue alarm from a voice that carries more weight than most.

Here is his speech, in its entirety.

High Country News Post

When nearly 42,000 of gallons of crude oil rushed down the Yellowstone River July 1, the Environmental Protection Agency said its first concern was human health.

Individuals and communities downstream of the spill who have long used it as a clean drinking water source must now await results as the agency tests their wells for oil-related pollutants. Information regarding the safety of these wells has been slow to surface as the agency scrambles to assess water quality after the spill.

Officials in Custer County, three counties down from the spill site, said they received late notice of the spill and risk to water treatment plants. (They didn’t find out until the morning after.) But as soon as they became aware of it, municipalities and irrigation districts closed their water intakes. According to Reuters, public water supplies to Billings and Lockwood, Mont. were reopened soon after the spill and a preventative closing of their water pipes, because officials deemed them safe.

Three days after the spill, water tests conducted in five locations on the Yellowstone River between Laurel, Mont., and Miles City, Mont., found that petroleum chemical levels had not exceeded drinking water standards.

Wyofile and New West Feature

The Rocky Mountain states remain among the most dangerous in the nation for workers, according to the AFL-CIO, which tracks job-related deaths.

Wyoming’s workplace fatality rate improved from worst-in-the nation — 17 fatalities per 100,000 workers in 2007 — to fourth-worst in 2009, according to an AFL-CIO report, passing the “worst” distinction to Montana, followed by Louisiana and North Dakota, where many drilling rigs migrated during the same period.

But before Wyoming leaders and employers claim victory over such a poor past performance, safety officials are warning that workplace fatalities could spike again when drilling and construction activity returns to Wyoming.

“More than half of the 16,000-plus jobs lost in Wyoming were in natural resource development and construction, and these bear the most dangerous occupational risks,” Wyoming state occupational epidemiologist Timothy Ryan told WyoFile in a recent interview.

“My concern is that people are going to look at this and say ‘problem solved,’” Ryan continued. “Well, no. When the economy picks back up in construction and mining, and oil and gas picks up, so goes the fatality rate.”

Guest Column

Idaho is a sportsman’s paradise and a huge draw for outdoor recreation, including ORVs, or Outdoor Recreation Vehicles. More and more ORV riders are taking to the trails of Idaho’s popular destinations.

My concern is the disregard that a growing number of ORV riders have for rules and posted signs. Unfortunately, their irresponsible riding has led to a dramatic deterioration in the quality of the outdoor experience on both private and public forest lands.

Two years ago, I took along my 11-year-old son on an opening-day hunt on “Access Yes” forestland in Idaho’s panhandle. These lands were owned by a timber company that allowed public access, but restricted motorized use to mainline roads. After hiking three hours up a road closed to motorized use, we encountered two riders on ATVs. My son was discouraged after the long hike and I was upset, knowing his first hunt was cut short.

Mouthful of Feathers Feature

In the autumn, you dream of Huns bursting from the rubble that was the old milk house, and you carry your shotgun cradled ready. You follow the dogs, and they follow their noses.

But now the land is sharp green from rains that don’t seem to quit and when you go, you don’t follow the dogs, they follow you, and they don’t pick up scent, they pick up the bothersome beggars’ ticks burs from last years dried stalks of houndstongue. You go where you want and sometimes, you walk among the old buildings and think about a different time, a different era.

There’s a hand-dug well and 15 feet down, water. It is rock-lined and covered with rotting timbers. Peering down into those depths gives a tremor in your soul. A dark, wet, fearsome cavern. You think about being down in there, digging the damned thing by hand, and placing each one of those rocks. You think about the darkness, but then you look up and above, is freedom. Above, sky. Lots of sky.

AP Investigation

On May 8, 2009, a U.S. District Court jury acquitted W.R. Grace and Co. along with three former executives on charges of knowingly poisoning residents in the asbestos-tainted Northwest Montana town of Libby.

Immediately following the verdict, there was talk throughout Libby of ushering in a new era, one not defined by death and suffering. Hundreds of people have died from asbestos-related complications there and perhaps thousands more have been sickened.

This new era, the hopeful residents said, would be in the spirit of healing and economic development. Libby would be a safer, healthier and happier place to live.

“We’ve got to get on with life,” Dean Herreid, a Libby resident suffering from painful asbestosis, said shortly after the verdict. “Justice was attempted.”

Guest Column

The Yellowstone River oil spill is a stark reminder of something we often forget: oil spills aren’t just for coastal folks.

In case you missed the news, here’s what happened: On July 1, the Silvertip pipeline, an underground conduit for ExxonMobil, split open, spewing some 42,000 gallons of oil into the Yellowstone River near Laurel, Mont. The breadth and depth of the impacts aren’t yet clear, but they can’t be good. Oil has been spotted as far as 240 miles downstream of the spill, and closer to the accident oil slicks shroud wetlands, crops and riparian habitat.

It’s not the first time dysfunctional pipelines have wreaked inland havoc. Last year saw a spate of spills. In July, more than 1 million gallons of oil gushed into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. More than 250,000 gallons leaked from a pipeline in the Chicago suburbs last fall. And an underground rupture spilled 21,000 gallons into Utah’s Jordan River and its tributaries, but luckily didn’t reach the Great Salt Lake.

These spills don’t make the impression on our collective memory that massive gushers like Exxon-Valdez or last year’s Gulf spill do. But they’re much more common, and potentially deeply insidious.

Summer Snow

Perhaps the only thing more fun than snowboarding down the side of a backcountry peak strapped to a giant kite and soaring for 20, 40 or 60 seconds in the air is being able to do it well into July.

Snowkiting season is winding down in places like Summit County, Colorado, but avid kiters say there are a few good days left up on Loveland Pass this season. Bryce DeQuoy and Gary Greene, who operates GG Wind out of Breckenridge, said like other snowsport athletes, snowkiters have had a pretty epic year. Their most recent trip up the pass was earlier this monthe, capping off a 140-day season.

For Greene, the lift lines at Keystone became a little too long to tolerate. So, an experienced kiteboarder on water, he found a new way to fly up the hill — by hitching a ride with a kite.

Not only does it drag riders up the mountain, it allows them to ski and ride lines that they never would have been able to without such a mechanism, Greene said. Pro-level riders can soar for up to five minutes, 150 feet or more in the air — solid intermediates are looking at hang times of more than 20 seconds, 60 feet in the air.

“I can go to places in a matter of minutes that would take you hours without a kite,” said Greene, who has been doing the sport for six years and now provides lessons professionally during the winter. “My highest recorded day riding on snow was 69 miles. And that’s all fresh tracks. I think that’s what I like about the sport the most. Last week, we went up and road for four hours in six inches of fresh snow.”

High Country News Feature

The largest fire in New Mexico’s recorded history, the Las Conchas, is 45 percent contained; its footprint covers 146,000 acres (not all of that land has been charred, though, since wildfires burn in patches). The blaze started on the afternoon of June 26 when an aspen tree fell onto a powerline southwest of Los Alamos. It exploded to 40,000 acres overnight, driven by high winds and crispy-dry forest fuels.

“I’d never seen fire behave that way,” says Bill Armstrong, fuels program specialist for the Santa Fe National Forest, describing how quickly the blaze spread. “It confounds everything I thought I knew.” Fires are crucial to the Southwest’s ecology, but the results of decades of fire suppression, drought and a warming climate mean that blazes are more and more likely to become massive and burn with a severity far beyond normal.

On June 30th, I took a field trip with Armstrong into the Santa

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