A newly released tape of the encounter of three federal agents with Idaho rancher Eugene Hussey over the killing of a wolf proves that the “feds” were not aggressors.
Thoughtless analogy
Dear HCN, In your Sept. 4 issue, writer Peter Heller was quoted as labeling some of my thinking “the drug dealer defense.” His comment didn’t really make sense, but it had a connotation. With due respect to Peter, I have to say it was a thoughtless analogy. People cannot make sound decisions without good information.…
Cowboys are socialists
Dear HCN, For some reason I am just unable to relate to the long tale of woe of “good” BLM rancher Barbara Cosimati (HCN, 7/24/95). Were it not for socialistic, below-market federal grazing fee subsidies to the West’s Forest Service and BLM ranchers, few of these welfare cowboys could ever compete with our nation’s free-market,…
All about river guides
ALL ABOUT RIVER GUIDES Members of Grand Canyon River Guides will gather in Fredonia, Ariz., Oct. 28-29, to share music, food and perspectives on their trade and the future of the Grand Canyon. Their publication, boatman’s quarterly review, chronicles the feisty group’s concerns, including opposition to the Park Service’s proposed requirement that guides wear plastic…
Condors ready for takeoff
CONDORS READY FOR TAKEOFF California condors, giant vultures that can fly over 100 miles in a day, met with limited success when they were released by federal biologists in California three years ago. The endangered birds seemed inexorably drawn to human activities: Four birds died in collisions with power lines, another from drinking anti-freeze. Now,…
Inventing the Southwest
INVENTING THE SOUTHWEST Few people realize that a restaurant and hotel chain played a key role in marketing Indian art as early as the 1880s. An exhibit to run through April 1997, at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Ariz., explores how the Fred Harvey Company influenced the art of the Southwest’s Indians and shaped tourism…
Babbitt protests a $1 billion giveaway
-How can a public official give away $1 billion without going to jail?” asked Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as he signed over 110 acres of public land in Clark County, Idaho, worth $1 billion, to a Danish mining company for $275. To drive home the need for reform, Babbitt signed the deed with an ink-dip…
Greed makes cents
GREED MAKES CENTS The Forest Service would do well to emulate state and county timber-sales practices, according to a report released by the Political Economy Research Center, a think tank advocating free-market responses to environmental problems. Turning a Profit on Public Forests compares the economic and environmental performance of national forests and state and county…
Is another senator backpedaling?
New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, R, reluctantly conceded last month that his bill on public-land grazing needed at least clarification. Hunters and other recreational users of the public lands apparently made their opposition clear: They cannot live with legislation that puts ranchers above everyone else (HCN, 8/21/95). Now another Western Republican, Sen. Craig Thomas of…
Too many pesticides
TOO MANY PESTICIDES Dams aren’t the only threat to Pacific coho salmon. A report, Toxic Water, by the Oregon-based Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, reveals that pesticide residues in the waters of the Northwest may have built up to harmful concentrations. Since Western states have no reporting requirements for users of pesticides, few records…
Bill comes back from the dead
Undaunted by a defeat in the House, Utah Rep. Jim Hansen advanced a park-closing bill by hooking it to other legislation. On Sept. 19, the House voted 231-180 against creating an independent park commission that would recommend parks for elimination. Ten hours later, Hansen tacked the bill on as a rider to the House Budget…
Growth in the Intermountain West: Impacts on the GreenLine
How do you plan for growth and protect riparian areas? Look for some answers Oct. 11-13 at Growth in the Intermountain West: Impacts on the GreenLine, the 7th annual conference of the Colorado Riparian Association in Frisco, Colo. Topics include land-use planning and regulation, land trusts and riparian restoration. Contact Alan Carpenter, 303/444-2985. This article…
Move over, Catron County
Not to be outdone by other angry rural counties in the West, Lake County, Ore., wants to buy the 1 million acres of Forest Service land within its boundaries. Officials of the county in south-central Oregon say they’re frustrated by a federal bureaucracy that has slowed timber harvesting and hurt the local economy. To make…
The West … Pioneering Technology into the 21st Century
Do Western states really want to take possession of Bureau of Land Management Lands? Elected officials will talk about Utah Representative James Hansen’s bill and other proposals that would catapult a host of federal programs over to the states at the 48th meeting of the Western Legislative Conference, Oct. 7-10, in Salt Lake City, Utah.…
Civil disobedience heats up in Oregon
Frustrated by their inability to appeal two old-growth logging sales, environmentalists in Oregon have taken to the woods. More than 30 people have been arrested since Sept. 11 in protests against the Sugarloaf logging operation in southern Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest (HCN, 9/19/94). Farther north, in the Willamette National Forest, 20 to 30 people have…
The Politics of Sustainable Agriculture
Ponder the future of farming, free trade and technology with Wes Jackson and other researchers and writers at a University of Oregon conference, The Politics of Sustainable Agriculture, Oct. 7-8. For details, contact the Department of Political Science, 1284 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1284 (503/346-4868). This article appeared in the print edition of the…
Triage for trees attacked
Triage for trees attacked Environmentalists in southern Oregon say the Forest Service wants to “kill the patient” in an effort to protect a rare tree species from a fatal root fungus. The Port Orford cedar, native to the southern Oregon and northern California coast, has succumbed throughout its range to the fungus, which spreads through…
Sheep vs. sheep in Hells Canyon
To protect bighorn sheep, the Forest Service has decided to kick the domestic variety out of Hells Canyon National Recreation Area – again. The agency decided in 1994 to shut down three grazing allotments that straddle the Oregon-Idaho border. It feared that bighorn sheep reintroduced into the area were succumbing to a deadly bacteria, Pasteurella,…
The San Pedro River: A Long View
Dear HCN, The article on competing water usages for Sierra Vista, Fort Huachuca, and the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area opens the door for more general consideration of the dramatic geologic and ecologic changes that have affected the San Pedro River over the past century (HCN, 6/12/95). The paired “before” and “after” pictures (pages…
When regulations are lax, s— happens
In the once-pristine valleys of eastern Idaho, ooze from malfunctioning septic systems in older subdivisions has seeped into groundwater used for drinking. Health officials in Island Park recently found fecal coliform contamination and shigella – a bacterium that causes severe diarrhea and cramping – at several homes and one resort. At a subdivision near Salmon,…
Where credit is due
Dear HCN, Your essay “How to get rural people to stand proud and tall” perpetuates the myth that the Mono Lake Committee “saved” Mono Lake (HCN, 9/4/95). The record clearly shows that the increased flows into Mono Lake of the past several years – thanks to decreased diversions out of the Mono Basin by the…
Clamping down on trapping
When Judy Goss of Aspen, Colo., recently found her neighbor’s missing dog, Pooh, caught but unhurt in a wire snare trap in the White River National Forest, she got angry. Now she and Pooh’s owner, Cody Lacy, have joined others in a fight to clamp down on sport trapping of wildlife such as badgers, bobcats,…
Out of respect
Dear HCN, Thank you for your insightful issue on the ethics of revealing sensitive wilderness locations (HCN, 9/4/95). I have a favorite place in the wilderness: a high mountain lake, right up at the Continental Divide, always half-frozen. The water sparkles there like a million diamonds. The silence is broken only by the sound of…
Hikers aren’t a herd
Dear HCN, “Fiddling while Rome burns’ should have been the subtitle of Christopher Smith’s stories concerning guidebooks and wilderness usage (HCN, 9/4/95). It’s sad to see wilderness advocates decrying people visiting the Colorado Plateau while the Utah congressional delegation legislates Utah wilderness out of existence. Hiking in the Swell with Steve Allen persuaded me to…
Fund raising in parks takes a collection box, and a lawyer
When it comes to First Amendment rights, national parks operate a lot like airports. Park officials cannot discriminate against the speaker or the message, but they do have some discretion over how, where and when the delivery is made. While most decisions are left up to the park superintendent, there are some agency-wide rules, such…
Did Idaho libel the feds?
Three federal agents involved in a celebrated tangle with an Idaho rancher were packing more than pistols when they investigated the case of a shot wolf on private land. They also had a tape recorder. The tape reveals a dramatically different picture of the agents from the thug-like characters lambasted by Idaho lawmakers in the…
DIA jets roar over a Colorado wilderness
BOULDER, Colo. – Some environmentalists have started firing political flak at noisy commercial jets flying over a wilderness area west of here. The local Sierra Club mailed a letter this summer to federal and Denver International Airport officials complaining about the wilderness overflights. So far, the letter has been largely ignored. The problem took off…
Wolf killing will never be solved
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Did Idaho libel the feds? The wolf shot on Gene Hussey’s remote ranch south of Salmon, Idaho, trotted to her death just nine days after federal biologists set her free in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. B13 parted from 14 other transplanted…
Is the ESA being gutted in order to save it?
Like navigators of a sinking hot air balloon, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is hastily casting off heavy parts of the Endangered Species Act – perhaps before a reform-minded Congress grounds the law altogether. The latest changes surfaced in late July when the Interior Department announced new streamlined, “user-friendly” consultation procedures for federal land…
We need to avoid riparian hysteria
At a recent workshop on riparian ecosystems sponsored by the Tonto National Forest and Arizona Game and Fish Department, biologists dutifully presented their litanies on the inhabitants, histories and importance of steamside environments. Although the theme of this symposium was understanding and not preservation, several speakers offered up the statistic du jour: 95 percent of…
Rocks, invective, and generosity
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Did Idaho libel the feds? SALMON, Idaho – Until a wolf was shot on Gene Hussey’s ranch south of Salmon in January, he was just “Hussey,” a prankster with a sharp tongue who lived without a phone. Since the wolf’s killing and Hussey’s confrontation…
Grazing reform: Here’s the answer
We are veterans of America’s longest war: the war over the public lands of the West. For the past quarter century – in a conflict that dates back to the Civil War – we have written and spoken about livestock grazing on federal lands and fought over how those lands should be governed. We have,…
Dear friends
A Beltway correspondent High Country News has just opened a bureau in Washington, D.C. It will be manned by Philip Shabecoff, the creator and publisher of an electronic publication named Green Wire and a 32-year veteran of The New York Times. He spent 1977 to 1991 on the environmental beat out of Washington, D.C. Before…
BPA scapegoats fish to protect fat cats
The Bonneville Power Administration says it can’t afford to save Columbia River salmon anymore. The eight senators in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana agree. They have asked governors in their states to help write a new law effectively capping the BPA’s fish costs. Not that the BPA’s fish programs have worked. Numerous runs have gone…
Dinosaur’s monumental quiet is threatened
Visitors to remote Dinosaur National Monument first marveled at the huge dinosaur bones exposed in its Utah quarry back in 1915. In the years that followed, other attributes surfaced. Rafters and hikers visiting the monument straddling the Utah/Colorado border discovered winding river canyons and quiet high desert. But Dinosaur’s serenity may not survive another year.…
Congress fights to restore a filthy past
What follows sounds like a nightmare. But it’s not. It’s true. If you have a weak stomach, don’t read it. I grew up in an area of Kansas City, Kan., called Armourdale, which was bordered on the east by two meat-packing companies, on the west by two soap factories, on the north by the Santa…
Jealousy, passion, rage: It all takes place in Yellowstone National Park
MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS, Wyo. – Marsha Karle was right. Hang around long enough, Yellowstone National Park’s official spokeswoman warned me once, and you’ll get chased by an elk. Last week, it happened. Leaving a mind-numbing press conference in the Mammoth Hotel inside Yellowstone National Park, I stepped outside to see the sun low in the…
Inside the glitter
In the past, photographers wanting to document Nevada’s workers headed for the mines, forests, ranches and irrigated farmlands. But no more, according to photojournalist Kit Miller. Today’s workforce can be found in the state’s casinos. Miller, a Nevada native, says she took on the project of interviewing and photographing this new Nevada workforce to confront…
Does Religion belong in national parks?
Karl and Rita Girshman, a Jewish couple from Maryland, happened to be naked in their room at Big Bend National Park in 1993 when suddenly, a lodge employee let himself in with a key. He handed the Girshmans a flier, then invited them to “join in worshipping our Lord and Savior” and to “come as…