Wolves, the Grand Canyon, and Chuckanut Drive

We still have copies of the recent issue of High Country News, the delisting of the Gray Wolf.  KUOW covered it just this week.

Idaho is very worried about wolves, reports Betsy Marston.

Or you can check out the newest issue.  Along with the main article on Las Vegas flight tours over the Grand Canyon there is a low key article on the important topic of news reporting.  With all the world of blogging and the folding and diminishing of the metropolitan newspapers,  fewer reporters are in DC keeping an eye on western issues.  

The bulk of federal land is in the west, and in some states, more than half the state is federal land.  Here in King county we are so urban that we don't pay much attention to the public lands, but just step a little outside of the urban corridor, and you quickly run into the contentious politics of private vs public land.  Just go a little north, and check out the state trust lands on the way to Bellingham.

High Country News, Solar Power, and Harper's

I usually skip over the High Country News quote of the week.  I will have to start checking it out more often.  I missed the quote at the turn of the year, U-District's Janine Blaeloch (Western Lands Project, just up the street), was quoted on big solar.

Currently, High Country News is looking for your stories about solar installation.  Specifically "What sort of permits did you (or your installer) have to get to put solar panels or a wind turbine on your house? Was it difficult or easy? E-mail details, including your location, to editor@hcn.org"

This week the quote of the week (about nullification) led me to High Country News' discussion of the Tiny Little Laws article by Kathie Dobie in Harper's.  It is a subscriber only article, but HCN calls the article well worth the price of the magazine.  While Dobie's article focuses on the problems of prosecution of sexual violence on tribal lands (in one area the local hospital did not have rape kits available for several years), the Denver Post published an interesting and troubling series of articles a few years back.  Women, children, and men fall between the cracks of different justice systems.   Federal prosecutors become federal prosecutors because they want to do high profile sexy cases about terrorists, drug lords, and conspirators, not community domestic problems.  And so what happens to a 7 year old girl 150 miles from the Spokane prosecutor's office gets pushed to the bottom of the pile, a 45 year old man beaten in a highway altercation is too far from Albuquerque for anyone to even interview. 

I feel less frustrated reading this issue's cover article in High Country News -- Utah's Sagebrush Rebellion Capital Mellows, about Kanab.  You may have heard about Kanab when they based the Natural Family Resolution, or because they are just up the road from Warren Jeff's Colorado City, or maybe just from their world famous animal shelter, Best Friends Sanctuary.   John Wayne stayed there, so did Clint Eastwood, the Lone Ranger, and Rin Tin Tin.  Kanab may have mellowed, but don't be surprised if you go down to the corner gas station with your old fashioned long hair, the guys hanging out might suggest that you need a haircut.

Ephemeral Weeklies

We still have a few copies of last week's German language magazine, Der Spiegel, with the pink or blue his or hers covers. 

And then some of the news and science weeklies, not quite as over the top as the post election ride of  the valkyries cover.  High Country News Dr No cover, Thanksgiving from the New Yorker, The Economist does China, Time does Marijuana, and Newsweek does the God of All Things.

WSJ's Buzzard of the National Parks.

The Weekend Edition of the WSJ has a provocative article about Thomas Chapman, who buys inholdings in the National Parks. He then presents wilderness and other open space advocates with his plan to develop it, but says that he will sell it to them (at a profit) if they really don't want him to develop the land. His latest project has been a parcel inside the Black Canyon of the Gunnison (Colorado). Finding no public interest group as a taker, he subdivided the land, built a grand mansion with view, and now is offering the property for far more than his original asking price.

If you don't know about private land and inholdings, this might be a good article to pique your curiosity, and then decide if he is an Atlas Shrugged hero, a creep who should be stopped, or just a man who saw a loophole.

High Country News' article in 1999 used more forceful language.


Also reading today: Rolling Stone Matt Taibbi on The Truth about the Tea Party (DM says that Taibbi is not interesting as too partisan, but LH was very interested in Jann Wenner's Obama Interview); Bloomberg Businessweek on How Facebooks Sells You; American Archaeology on The Clovis Comet Debate