Here in Moab, Utah, where we can watch railcars carry off the radioactive uranium waste that was stored right next to the Colorado River, many locals are steeling themselves for the return of yet more uranium to their lives. During the Cold War, Moab was called the uranium capital of the world, as the element […]
Jen Jackson
Posted inWotr
The revolution will be motorized
Growing threats of violence; increasing rage; calls to restore liberty by throwing off unjust and unconstitutional government rule. The voices of the angry are loud, and they’re likely coming soon to a BLM Bureau of Land Management or Forest Service office near you. The issue that inspires this fury is closing roads through public lands. […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2010: Hardrock Showdown
Housing keeps getting tighter all the time
Moab resident feels development squeeze
Posted inWotr
Mexican wolves, still strangers in a strange land
With the opening of their holding pens 12 years ago, wolves stepped into their historic home on the Southwestern desert for the first time in over 50 years. So began the reintroduction of the Mexican gray wolf into southern Arizona and New Mexico. It was a culminating moment for the state and federal agencies that […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s not forget the hidden costs of uranium mining
Here in the West, uranium mining continues its wobbly resurgence. In recent years, it has sputtered through the peaks and valleys of pricing to once again climb in importance and output. The graph-line of this revival seems to correspond with the vicissitudes of our love-hate relationship with fossil fuels. In 2003, a time of cheap […]
Posted inWotr
When school budgets get cut to the bone, what then?
Last fall, a massive budget deficit was uncovered within the Grand County School District in Moab, Utah, leaving parents aghast. Because of mismanagement, the school district faced a cascade of shortfalls, from $1 million for the 2008-’09 school year and $1.4 million for 2009-’10, to $1.9 million for 2010-2011. Just before the holidays, the district […]
Posted inMarch 19, 2007: The Silence of the Bees
Driven to fight
A retired BLM special agent finds herself battling the very agency she once worked for
Posted inWotr
A Utah resort town welcomes 300,000 foreigners
In Moab, Utah, a town constantly visited by jeepers and hikers from all over the world, the arrival of 300,000 beings from Kazakhstan hasn’t received much press. But as the newcomers flutter in and make themselves more at home, people are starting to take notice. Diorhabda elongata is their sexy name, and most of us, […]
Posted inWotr
When does a deer become an elk? And other questions…
At what point did moose become marvels, bears become monsters and a 300-yard walk get to be strenuous? When did the human eye need a digital camera to properly experience the unimaginable proportions of the West? While working for the Park Service at Natural Bridges National Monument in southern Utah, and now for a concessionaire […]