The EPA’s Toxic Releases Inventory report documents the annual industrial pollution of land, air and water in the U.S., with six of the top 10 polluters located in the West.
Tourism summit
Are herds of tourists just the latest scourge on public lands? Heads of the tourism industry and public-lands managers will converge on Lake Tahoe, Calif., Sept. 24-26 to talk about consensus on such contentious issues as national park overflights, access restrictions and recreation fees. Seeking Common Ground is sponsored by the Western States Tourism Policy…
Do cows become the Prescott?
Arizona’s Prescott National Forest is not the place for cows and sheep, according to a lawsuit filed in August by The Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club. But the suit goes beyond the usual grazing vs. o-grazing debate. The lawsuit charges that the Forest Service violated federal law by issuing grazing permits without considering whether…
Two reports set the stage for Sierra Nevada’s future
The Sierra Nevada is a patchwork of dwindling old growth, imperiled species and degraded lakes, streams and rivers. But the seedbeds of its salvation are still intact, according to two reports released this summer, one by a group of scientists, the other by a regional business council. Both conclude there are many reasons for hope…
Bear with us
If you’re a hiker or angler in black bear or grizzly territory, a modest little handbook, Bear Aware: Hiking and Camping in Bear Country, could save your life. It concisely explains the bear essentials of coexistence, such as staying alert in the outback, venturing out only with a large group, sticking to the trail and…
Low cost legal aid
The Department of Defense oversees 25 million acres of public lands and 15,897 contaminated sites. This gives the agency the dubious honor of being the nation’s leading polluter, says the Project for Participatory Democracy, an initiative of the San Francisco-based Tides Center. Citing the government’s poor record on clean-up, the group has produced a legal…
Recycling gets rapped
Is recycling really a stupid idea driven by people too willing to believe that their minute actions can change a culture built on conspicuous consumption? Writing in the New York Times Magazine June 30, John Tierney answers “yes.” In fact, he says, “Recycling is garbage.” Citing studies by conservative think tanks such as the Cato…
Utahns roar over lion hunt
A decision allowing hunters in Utah to kill 630 mountain lions this year has created an uproar. A hunt approved by the Utah Wildlife Board Aug. 26 allows for the killing of 150 more lions than the state allowed last year, or about one-third of Utah’s estimated lion population of 2,000. “This decision was not…
Getting Beneath the Surface of Public Lands Issues
The Foundation for American Communications is conducting a conference for journalists, Getting Beneath the Surface of Public Lands Issues, Oct. 4-6, in Englewood, Colo. Speakers include journalists, professors and HCN publisher Ed Marston. Call 213/851-7372, or e-mail at facs@facsnet.org. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Getting Beneath the…
A summer of smoke and ashes
Marines and Army soldiers joined the tens of thousands of firefighters at work in Western states this summer. On Aug. 16, the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise declared a maximum Level 5 Emergency, which authorizes the use of military personnel. The additional firefighters were needed to combat the most intense fire season since 1969.…
Conservation and Conservatism: Reflections on clean water
The Montana Environmental Information Center’s annual rendezvous, Conservation and Conservatism: Reflections on clean water, will focus on water, pollution and politics Sept. 21 in Three Forks, Mont. The keynote speaker is Gordon Durnil, author of The Making of a Conservative Environmentalist; the rendezvous also features a flyover of the Golden Sunlight Mine and music by…
Bear of the Land, Bull of the River: Protecting Ecosystem Indicator Species
The Missoula-based Alliance for the Wild Rockies will hold its 11th annual rendezvous, Sept. 27-29, at the Teller Wildlife Refuge in Corvallis, Mont. The theme is Bear of the Land, Bull of the River: Protecting Ecosystem Indicator Species. In addition to discussions about grizzlies and bull trout, the schedule includes workshops and updates on regional…
Logging protests go mainstream
Dear HCN: Last November, I was in the White House, having secured an appointment with the Clinton administration to talk about the salvage-logging rider. I wore the same suit as when I was arrested for civil disobedience two days before – now somewhat scuffed up. We started into discussions about the terrible impact of the…
Wilderness therapy is cutting edge
Dear HCN, I am a former staff member of Pathfinders, a wilderness, emotional-growth program which ceased operation in July due to an investigation into alleged negligence and abuse after two students contracted strep A virus in Colorado. I thought that your article on a Utah wilderness therapy program (-Tough love proves too much’, HCN, 6/10/96)…
Llamas are like compact cars
Dear HCN, Hey, Hal Walter, take a geography class (HCN, 8/19/96). Juan Valdez lives in Colombia, llamas don’t. Coffee grows in the tropical highlands, llamas haul loads over high and arid Andean passes in the altiplano of Peru, Bolivia and Chile – just a few thousand feet higher than your 12,000-foot Colorado mountain pass. And…
On llamas and lousy poetry
Dear HCN, I really loved Hal Walter’s piece on llamas (HCN, 8/19/96). I hope it will dispel the myth about the world’s most over-rated beast. As for Chris Ransick on Rock Springs, he’s full of shit. There is an excellent diner (cum Chinese) on Elk Street. I’ve no idea who Poiesis is, but I hope…
Bashing tourism doesn’t cut it
Dear HCN, Ed Quillen’s article on the Disappearing railroad blues shows the West is changing (HCN, 8/5/96), but I must disagree with his inference that tourism brings only minimum wage jobs. Tourists bringing in their $1,800 bikes on $30,000 vehicles are also going to spend millions on motels, quality restaurants, bike and vehicle mechanics, outfitters,…
Don’t listen to bad advice
Dear HCN, Although poetic license and the First Amendment no doubt allow Chris Ransick the right to perpetuate a myth if s/he wants to, still I have to comment on the mean-spirited “Advice for Visitors to Rock Springs’ (HCN, 8/19/96). If people who so freely criticize Rock Springs ever left I-80’s truck stops they might…
What goes around, comes around
It’s been a bad legal year for the county movement. First came the March ruling in Nevada that struck down a Nye County ordinance claiming the county owned federal lands. Now, two public employees in New Mexico seem to have prevailed in their case against county-movement leader Dick Manning. “(Due to a court-imposed gag order)…
Whatever happened to letting fires burn?
The summer wildfire season is drawing to an end, but the West is still burning. And despite a plethora of ecological research that demonstrates the value of fire as an ecological and evolutionary force, land-management agencies continue to suppress fires, except in a few wilderness areas or other reserves. Not only is such a policy…
Multicultural grazing boards off to a good start
DENVER, Colo. – Call them the cowboy and the lady. He is T. Wright Dickinson, tall, rail-thin, a third-generation rancher living on 35,000 high-desert acres in northwestern Colorado. She is Kathy Carlson, dressed in an ankle-length dress, glasses framing a tanned face, a veteran of Washington, D.C., politics for the National Wildlife Federation who moved…
Grazing bill returns for another round
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another new article titled “Multicultural grazing boards off to a good start.” If Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has his way, the Resource Advisory Committees, which just turned one year old, will never reach their second birthday. A bill sponsored by…
It’s the grizzlies and the birds, stupid
CHICAGO, Ill. – “We saved Yellowstone from mining,” President Clinton intoned in his acceptance speech, which was characteristically long, detailed and completely devoid of eloquence. Clinton did not say, “Bob Dole wouldn’t have done that”; he didn’t have to. Dole had done it for him in his own acceptance speech, which was more eloquent, almost…
The filthy West
Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Top 20 polluters
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Rank | Company | Location | Air/Water/Land Total lbs. released 1 Magnesium Corp. of America Rowley, Utah 55.7 million 2 ASARCO Inc. East Helena, MT 43.6 million 3 Courtaulds Fibers Inc. Axis, AL 33.4 million 4 IMC-Agrico Co. Mulberry, FL 25.7 million 5 Lenzing Fibers…
An off-the-books polluter
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. If the mining industry, which has produced at least 40 Superfund sites nationwide, becomes a part of TRI, it will make a lot of other polluters look like they were spitting in the ocean. “I don’t think there’s any ‘perhaps’ about it,” says Phelps Dodge…
The Toxic West
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. (Text adapted from a graphic available in the print version of this issue.) MONTANA Population 856,000 Total Facilities 24 National Rank for Air/Water/Land Releases 18 Transfers into State/Rank 16 Transfers out of State/Rank 42 Top Ten Facilities for Air/Water/Land Releases Facility County Total Releases/lbs. ASARCO…
Heard around the West
When we saw a copy of the Boobyprise out of Cody, Wyo., we thought: “That’s it! This endangered species stuff has gone too far.” For there was a photo of a flying dinosaur carrying off a human being. Worse than the photo was the headline – “Dinosaur reintroduction in Yellowstone Park has gone better than…
For more information
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. The TRI is available in several formats. Many public libraries have the report. Individuals can access it using on-line computer databases or purchase it on CD-ROM or on computer diskettes. For data-use assistance, call 202/260-1531 or fax to 202/260-4659. EPA also maintains a national technical…
Speak up for a quiet Grand Canyon
On my first visit to the Grand Canyon 45 years ago, I was overwhelmed by its magnificent silence, tranquility and timelessness. That serenity is hard to find today. It’s destroyed by the relentless drone of planes and helicopters. A thousand flights a day, 100 flights an hour rain noise down on the canyon. At best,…
Choose not to go boldly outdoors
I don’t hike often in Elk Meadow anymore, the county park near my home in Evergreen, Colo. I don’t hike often in Boulder’s open space parks, either. And I don’t hike any more in Rocky Mountain National Park. Everywhere I look our local and national wild places are crowded with ecology-minded recreationists, and I am…
Dear friends
New interns Recently, while chewing sloppy melted chunks of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and watching shadows cast by moonlight cross the walls of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, intern Patrick Dowd got his first taste of the area around Paonia. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, moving inland in 1991 to…
Opal Creek is blowing in the (political) wind
Since the wilderness battles of the early 1980s, Oregon forest activists have fought to protect Opal Creek, a lovely, nearly intact old-growth watershed on the western flank of the Oregon Cascades. Last spring, Sen. Mark Hatfield announced that he would at last grant their wish. The Oregon Republican, retiring next January after 30 years in…
Bombs go up in smoke in a rural Utah county
On the morning of Aug. 22, giant furnaces sparked into life in Tooele County, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. Inside the infernos, M-55 nerve gas rockets were reduced to shrapnel and smoke. But three days later, the destruction of chemical weapons abruptly halted after traces of nerve gas were detected in a…