An Udderly Different Wildfire Strategy

June 16, 2023

Federal land managers and environmental industry lawyers are back in court, rearguing a decade long case about livestock grazing permits. It is a generational debate that finally shows an emerging consensus, though this lawsuit clarifies it’s not universal. Throughout the 1990s when I was at Club 20, one of the Western Slope’s more contentious issues […]

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Californians Want Water – But Not Theirs

June 9, 2023

People concerned about water levels in the West’s reservoirs should be able to cheer up now. The U.S. Drought Monitor system has removed drought status from the entire Western Slope and nearly all of California. Snowpack this winter was well above average for the entire Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, and nearly 50 percent above average […]

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Drought Solution – Are They Serious This Time?

June 2, 2023

My grandpa was a ditch rider on the Stub Canal in Palisade, and when someone used more water than they were entitled to, the solution was simple – he locked the headgates. This week, the seven Colorado River Basin states announced they had finally reached an agreement to reduce their water use, staving off the […]

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Maybe We Should Ration Common Sense

May 26, 2023

I am not old enough to have experienced rationing during World War II, but I heard stories about it from grandparents. They remembered well having to pay an inflated price for many goods, not just in money but also rationing stamps and tokens issued to every family. The government first rationed tires, but soon added […]

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The Forest Service’s OTHER Mission

May 17, 2023

When I was little, grandpa used to speculate that someday there would be a car that could run without gas. I don’t know if he could have envisioned modern wind and solar power, or lithium-ion batteries, but as a highly skilled blacksmith he had considerable imagination about the future of gadgetry and machinery. He might […]

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Should Agency Experts be Experts?

May 12, 2023

In 2021 President Biden nominated Martha Williams to run the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Several powerful environmental industry groups objected and several lobbied intensely against Senate confirmation. This is a position once considered mostly nonpartisan, and historically held by scientists, not political activists. So, a political battle over that nomination has only happened […]

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A “Can and Will Doctrine” for Public Resources

May 5, 2023

Let’s say you have a spring on your land, and you are surrounded by people living in the desert who are desperate for water. You make your living selling it to them, but I like the looks of the spring and I’m rich, so I might offer you even more than it’s worth – not […]

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A “Can and Will Doctrine” for Public Resources

May 5, 2023

Let’s say you have a spring on your land, and you are surrounded by people living in the desert who are desperate for water. You make your living selling it to them, but I like the looks of the spring and I’m rich, so I might offer you even more than it’s worth – not […]

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Plastic in Oceans is Un-American, Literally

April 28, 2023

Steve Moore’s “Committee to Unleash Prosperity” often shares charts and graphs that graphically illustrate otherwise complex arguments, a simple picture often being worth a thousand words. One especially impressive bar chart calls attention to a thorough study, published in the journal Environmental Science, analyzing plastic debris in the world’s oceans to find out how it […]

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Lighting the Way to More Government

April 19, 2023

Light bulb jokes were popular for years as a way to poke fun at stereotypes. I remember an old one during the Reagan years, about how many Republicans it took to change a light bulb. It took one to screw in the bulb, one to steady the chandelier, one to claim the bulb wasn’t truly […]

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