|  | |
|
|
|
 |
CHEYENNE - Large stands of dead and dying lodge pole pine can instill a certain amount of dread in observers. In the midst of an enduring drought, all that dead, dying and dry wood conjures up visions of catastrophic wildfires racing through the national forests of Wyoming and the West. |
Vast stands of mountain pine beetle-killed forests make people, including me, | | MORE... | |  |
|
|
|
|
 |
SHERIDAN - On Thursday, March 13, Sheridan College held its 12th annual Thickman Ethics lecture. The college chose as its speaker not usual philosophers or academics, but a Tibetian monk of some renown, Khen Rinpoche Lobzang Tsetan, head Abbot of the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery in southern India. |
To a standing-room only crowd, the Rinpoche gave Sheridan a crash course in Buddhism. He spoke in | | MORE... | | |
|
|
|
|
 |
CHEYENNE - After watching a certain amount of legislative action on the large-acre subdivision reform bill, one stops counting all the ironies. But a few of the richer ones still linger a week after the 59th Legislature sent the final draft to the governor. |
Such as, it took a debate over cutting up land into ranchettes and hobby farms to bring land stewardship interests together.
| | MORE... | | |
|
|
|
|
CHEYENNE - Wyoming’s 59th Legislature was a model of self-restraint and modest achievement. Faced for the first time in five years with virtually no budget surplus, the legislators fine-tuned existing programs and took incremental approaches to pressing issues. They created tools for better land use management and laid the groundbreaking groundwork for underground isolation of CO2 pollution. This careful, measured agenda befits the temperament of the Wyoming citizenry in 2008.
Or so they tell us. But there’s another way of looking at the achievements of the 59th Legislature.
This contrary view holds that the lack of a budget surplus was an accountant’s gimmick: | | MORE... | | |
|
|
|
|
 |
CHEYENNE - We in Wyoming congratulate ourselves for having a “citizen Legislature,” entitling us to claim moral and practical superiority over nearly year-round sessions in other states. Our term suggests a legislative body that draws its members from regular folks who remember the regular folks who elect them for these short, manageable sessions of the Wyoming Legislature.
|
| | MORE... | | |
|
|
|
|
SHERIDAN - I’ve been watching with concern as a financial and environmental drama unfolds southwest of what’s left of Jeffrey City.
The old Top Hat Motel sign broods
over the empty streets of Jeffrey City.
Jeffrey City, as many in Wyoming know, is the town that uranium built. When the price of | | MORE... | | |
|
|
|
|
Ian Tyson
We’re careening through the deep green Galway countryside, the year is 1989, it’s raining, we’ve just had another gut-twisting Irish breakfast, and with three moldy kids yammering in the back of the van I’m tempted to swerve to the right side of the skinny road and let a milk truck take us out. My oldest daughter slips a tape in the deck, cranks up the volume, and, to a loping beat, Ian Tyson is singing: | | MORE... | | |
|
|
|
|
After passage in the House, a campaign finance bill is on the verge of passage in the Senate, after a Senate committee dramatically raised the amounts of money that could be contributed to Wyoming’s elected legislators and state officials.
Originally, House Bill 9 (Campaign finance reporting) was drafted in response to a 2006 incident where a Natrona County political donor used a political action committee (PAC) to give more money to a candidate for county commissioner, than was allowed under limits on individual contributions.
Under current law, Wyoming has no limits on state PAC contributions to candidates. | | MORE... | | |
|
|
|
|
(Courtesy of NRCS/USDA)
(News Update: Tuesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service initiated a new status review and listing decision for greater sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act. The agency previously determined that listing the sage-grouse as “threatened” or “endangered” under the ESA was “not warranted” in 2005. Conservationists successfully sued to overturn the agency’s | | MORE... | | |
|
|
|
|
(Correction: The initial release of this column contained an error - that 18,000 people had died in the gas incident in Africa. The actual number was closer to 1,800.)
LARAMIE - Twenty years ago a huge explosion of gas from Lake Nyos in the central Africa Republic of Cameroon killed nearly 1,800 people and untold livestock up to 15 miles away. The naturally occurring gas was carbon dioxide (CO2). A year later, the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce decided that, “since CO2 is deadly, CO2 pipelines should have appropriate federal safety | | MORE... | | |
|
|
|
|
 |
SHERIDAN - I am a recycling fool, but recently I've been pondering the petro-wisdom of schlepping a flattened tuna fish can from Sheridan to Portland. Recycling has always been a problem in the land of long haulage.
|
It takes a lot of diesel to haul paper, cardboard, cans, and glass from Wyoming to various paper or steel mills or scrap exporters on the west coast. If you’re not careful, you'll burn as much | | MORE... | | |
|
|
|
|
"We’re doing just fine,” was the pronouncement by Gov. Dave Freudenthal in a recent interview on Wyoming Public Television, concerning our revenue picture entering the 2008 legislative budget session.
It’s not the picture awash in surplus revenue we’ve had the previous three budget sessions. But everyone agrees there is money to cover the “standard” budgets of state agencies – which have just about doubled since 2000 -- and half a billion dollars more for cities, towns, counties and highways.
Anyone who starts complaining is urged to think back 20 years. The Legislature was still catching its breath from an energy boom that
| | MORE... | | |
|
|
|
|
 After years of construction inactivity and several false starts, some wags in Wyoming’s coal rich Powder River Basin began to refer to the proposed billion dollar Two Elk power plant project 40 miles southeast of Gillette as "No Elk."
“It’s kind of like Two Elk and ‘Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy?' ” said Christy Hale, clerk/treasurer for the city of Wright, the nearest town to the proposed 320 megawatt plant. “That’s pretty much the rhetoric going around here regarding Two Elk.”
| | MORE... | | |
|  | Brodie Farquhar
has been covering the West for over 30 years, working in Colorado, Arizona, Kansas,
Washington, South Dakota and now Wyoming since 2000. He was a member of the first
Scripps Fellowship for Environmental Journalism class at the University of Michigan,
where he earned a master's degree in natural resource policy. He's also worked stints
in public relations for the Colorado School of Mines, The Nature Conservancy, Crested
Butte Mountain Resort and most briefly for Wyoming Democratic candidate Gary Trauner.
Brodie lives in Casper with wife Sharon, daughters Katie and Sarah, while son Eric
is stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan as a captain in the U.S. Air Force.
| | | The Pine Beetle And Forest Fires | | Core areas could save sage grouse in Wyoming | |
|  | Marguerite Herman, 57, moved to Wyoming 28 years ago as the first ever person to transfer to
the Cheyenne office of The Associated Press. (You were supposed to train here and move away.)
She grew up in an Air Force family, moving every year, and is still a little surprised to find
herself so stationary. She has a BA from (The) Colorado College, MAT from University of
Chicago and MA in journalism from the University of South Carolina.
She is wife to attorney George Powers and mother to Rosemary, Charlotte and Tom. Her abiding interests include
breastfeeding, knitting, good government, education, maternal-child health, New Mexican
chili and politics - especially politics.
| | | Wyoming's No-Frill Legislature: It's Cheap, But Is It A Good Thing? | | There's Money Enough | |
|  | Jason Marsden has served as executive director of Wyoming
Conservation Voters and the WCV Education Fund since September 2001. He was born in a small
farming town in southern Minnesota but got to Sheridan in time to finish elementary school,
graduating from Sheridan High in 1990 and Harvard College, with a degree in English, in 1994.
He served as field director for the Wyoming Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign in 1994
before starting a seven-year career as a Casper Star-Tribune reporter, covering government,
the environment, the energy industry and the state's congressional delegation.
Jason won the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region 8 Environmental Achievement Award
in 1998 for his coverage of the litigation and eventual cleanup of Casper's former Amoco
Refinery site, and has twice been honored by the Wyoming Wildlife Federation.
He serves on the boards of directors of the Equality State Policy Council, the Wyoming Chapter of the
Sierra Club and the Alliance for Historic Wyoming. In his remaining free time he studies
Dutch, spoils his two cats and pursues domestic tranquility with his partner of 10 years,
Guy Padgett, the two-term Casper city councilman and former mayor.
| | | Subdivided, we stand ... together | | Postbellum: Legislative War on the West Recedes | |
|  |
WyoFile economics writer Samuel Western has spent 25 years
exploring the west. He's been a correspondent for the Economist of London since 1985, but his
stories have also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, LIFE, Sports Illustrated, E-Magazine,
and High Country News. He's a contributing author to two books, The Next West, and Wild and
Fair (due out in March 2008). He's the author of Pushed Off the Mountain, Sold Down the River:
Wyoming's Search for its Soul, and A Random Census of Souls (due out December 2008).
Western specializes in economic history, ethical issues, and examining the human aspect of
shifting demographics.
Western lives in Sheridan with his black lab, Finn. His two children, Sally and Cyrus, are
away at school. His interests include literature of the land (from Virgil to Houseman to Heaney),
history all sorts, music, and cooking. He is a licensed Wyoming hunting guide.
| | | Speculators hit Jeffrey City again | | Recycling in the land of long haulage | |
|  | Deb Donahue is a lawyer and a wildlife biologist. A member of the
University of Wyoming College of Law faculty since 1992, she teaches Environmental Law, Public
Lands, Indian Law, and Native American Natural Resources Law. She spent 2002 on sabbatical in
New Zealand, studying biodiversity conservation policy. Donahue served as executive director
of the Wyoming Outdoor Council in 1983-85. She has worked for federal land management agencies,
the mining industry, law firms, a federal judge, and conservation organizations, including the
National Wildlife Federation in Alaska.
She is author of The Western Range Revisited: Removing
Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity (1999). In 2000 she was honored
as the Wyoming Wildlife Federation's Natural Resources Conservationist of the Year. In 2000
she was honored as the Wyoming Wildlife Federation's Natural Resources Conservationist of the
Year.
| | | Some cautionary notes about CO2 sequestration | |
|  | Geoffrey O'Gara is an author and television producer based in
Wyoming. His books include A Long Road Home (Houghton-Mifflin), about his travels with the
1930s WPA guides; What You See in Clear Water (Knopf), about the battle between Indians and
whites over control of water in the West; and a number travel guides. He has written,
produced, and hosted programs for Wyoming Public Television since 1991. He has worked as
editor of High Country News, a bureau chief for the Casper Star-Tribune, and a freelance
writer for publications ranging from the New York Times to National Geographic Traveler.
Under pressure, O'Gara will confess that he is originally from California. He moved to Wyoming
in 1979 from Washington, D.C., and has lived in Lander since then. He has three semi-grown
children with his spouse, Berthenia Crocker.
| | | Singing the cowboy songs, aye, yi, yi! | |
| |
| |
