The Quincy Library Group’s controversial forest plan comes out of a long struggle for consensus, and many environmentalists worry that the plan and its passage into law will set a dangerous precedent.
Glen Canyon Institute
Members of the Glen Canyon Institute aren’t wasting time about their call for the restoration of a free-flowing Colorado River. Meeting for their third annual conference at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City Oct. 8-9, they plan to present the start of a “Citizens’ Environmental Assessment” centering on the removal of Glen Canyon…
The drilling proceeds
The Bureau of Land Management has given Conoco Inc. the go-ahead to drill for oil in southern Utah’s new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Agency officials say finding oil is a long shot, and Conoco will probably abandon the area. Environmentalists retort that the BLM is playing dangerous games with a national jewel. Earlier this month,…
Farmland wins a round
The Oregon Supreme Court has given state agriculture interests reason to celebrate. Last month the court upheld the state’s right to enforce strict rules against nonagricultural uses of farmland. That means a lot to farmers in western Oregon’s Willamette Valley, home to 70 percent of the state’s population as well as to its richest soil.…
Trees refuse to croak
When Forest Service officials approved logging on 10,000 acres of Idaho’s Payette National Forest under the salvage logging rider in 1995, they said the trees had been killed by a 1994 wildfire or bark beetles. Now, they admit “dead” was an overstatement. “People may see what appear to be green, healthy trees removed from the…
Vandals didn’t silence the past
A recent vandal attack in central Oregon’s Warm Springs Indian reservation left the three tribes that make up the reservation at a loss for words. Literally. In early August, two 12-year-old boys broke into the trailer that houses the reservation’s heritage program and caused over $10,000 in damage. What hurt the most was the destruction…
We can’t trust the BLM
Dear HCN, Columnist Jon Margolis concludes that designation of the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was not a “model of cooperative federalism. Consultation with the state was non-existent, …” ” (HCN, 9/1/97). If President Clinton had consulted with the state before issuing his proclamation, he would have run up against a monolithic stonewall of resistance…
Humility is the heart of park’s approach
Dear HCN, One of the few things Greg Hanscom got right in his article on Yellowstone’s Northern Range (HCN, 9/15/97) is that politics is running the show, and that “range managers, wise-users and Republican lawmakers are all ears’ for any criticism of natural regulation. Unfortunately, he fell into the critics’ trap and declared them the…
Just in time for the budget requests
Forest Service mismanagement is one thing many environmentalists, ranchers and loggers agree is a problem. Now the Government Accounting Office has chimed in with a July 31 report to Congress that says the Forest Service’s decision-making culture is one of “indifference toward accountability.” The agency’s inability to make timely decisions costs taxpayers millions of dollars…
Chemicals aren’t the only answer
Your french fries were probably soaked in chemicals, warns the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, since potatoes are some of the most treated crops in the Northwest. But there are ways to reduce chemical use, such as rotating crops, and that’s just one of the messages the coalition hopes to convey Oct. 11 in…
Stop the assaults on wilderness
Dear HCN, Scott Stouder’s article about extending a road on the rim of Hells Canyon brought back memories (HCN, 4/14/97). I guided river trips in Hells Canyon, backpacked through the Oregon-side wilderness areas, and taught school in Halfway, Ore., in the early “70s. His article illustrated the continuous assault on wilderness values throughout the West…
It’s a big bird
Eleven California condors are cruising the skies over Grand Canyon all the way to Moab, Utah, after being released this year in northern Arizona. Biologists with the California Condor Recovery Project suggest bird-watchers travel Highway 89A north of the Grand Canyon between Lee’s Ferry and House Rock Valley Road to see the carrion-eaters. Pull-out parking…
Too little and too late
Dear HCN, A little comment about your story on the sacred and profane colliding in the West (HCN, 5/26/97). I’m old enough to remember that when the Bureau of Reclamation was promoting Glen Canyon Dam and the resulting reservoir, which it called the “Jewel of the Colorado,” the Bureau strongly argued that now, people would…
Keeping rural American rural
City sprawl has swallowed up rural communities; a revised edition of Saving America’s Countryside: A Guide to Rural Conservation shows how local action can stave off urbanization. Written by Samuel N. Stokes, A. Elizabeth Watson, and Shelley S. Mastran, the book offers everything from well-honed ideas for organizing residents to sample drafts of easements designed…
The writer was cynical
Dear HCN, I find the tone of Stephen Lyons’ essay, “How the writer learned he is not very spiritual,” offensive due to its cynicism (HCN, 8/18/97). Apparently all the writer did was look on the surface of things. He gives no indication of having tried to talk with a local person involved in healing or…
Just charge it
Only 50 or so electric cars are on Arizona’s roads, but the Tucson Electric Power Company has opened eight free charge-up stations in the city. General Motors says it chose Tucson, Phoenix, San Diego and Los Angeles as test markets because the cars perform better on flat terrain and in a warm climate. The EV-1,…
The Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee
When land managers meet to talk about the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, they need a large table. The Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee is composed of the superintendents of Yellowstone and Grand Tetons national parks and the six supervisors from neighboring national forests. They’ll get together in Jackson, Wyo., Oct. 7 and 8, to discuss air quality,…
Call to the Desert
Call to the Desert will cover “hot” topics at the Nevada Nuclear Test site, 60 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nev. The anti-nuclear group, Healing Global Wounds, hosts a gathering Oct. 10-13 that features prayers at sunrise, a workshop led by Margene Bullcreek, a Skull Valley Goshute member who opposes nuclear waste coming to her…
The Wayward West
After five years of ambivalence, the Animal Damage Control unit has changed its name. The U.S. Department of Agriculture agency, whose main job is to kill or remove animals such as coyotes that prey on livestock, is returning to its 1948 handle, Wildlife Services. According to a spokesman, the name change reflects a shift in…
Western Colorado Congress
The consumer and environmental coalition, Western Colorado Congress, holds its 17th annual meeting in Grand Junction on Oct. 11, with historian Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of The Legacy of Conquest, starring in a provocative dramatization of “The Urban-Rural Divorce in the West.” This divorce hearing will explore the relationship between Western urban life and small-town…
Microbes for sale here
As military bands, rangers on horseback and Vice President Al Gore marked Yellowstone National Park’s 125th anniversary in August, park officials signed a contract that formally opened the park’s famous hot springs to bioprospecting. The deal allows San Diego-based Diversa Corp. to collect samples of hot-water microbes, called thermophiles, in exchange for $175,000 over five…
Managing Colorado Watersheds for Riparian and Wetland Values
You can learn for yourself about the West’s most precious resource at the Colorado Riparian Association’s Oct. 14-16 conference in Montrose, Colo. Managing Colorado Watersheds for Riparian and Wetland Values features speakers from dozens of agencies and citizen groups; topics include wetland recovery, pollution clean-up, agriculture and the Glen Canyon flooding experiment. CRA spokesman Larry…
National Recreation and Access Summit “97
Climbers, mountain bikers, river rafters and other outdoor enthusiasts will converge in Boulder, Colo., Nov. 7-8, for the National Recreation and Access Summit “97, sponsored by sports retailer REI. Summit hosts, including the Access Fund and American Whitewater, want ideas for promoting conservation while ensuring access to public lands, reducing user conflicts and building a…
My experience with the Quincy group wasn’t positive
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Erin Noel grew up in a small town within the region the Quincy Library Group has staked out as its domain. She founded Forest Alert, which monitored the Lassen, El Dorado and Tahoe national forests. She now studies law at the University of California,…
A town with a desert heart
TORTOLITA, Ariz. – The nerve center of this brand-new town is not a shopping mall, health resort or golf club. It’s 21 square miles of saguaro, palo verde, cholla and ironwood trees, packed so tightly together that you can’t walk through them without getting jabbed. A 30-minute drive northwest of Tucson, this is some of…
I was always welcomed there
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Terry Terhaar worked for the nonprofit Pacific Rivers Council in 1995. She spent 10 months attending Quincy Library Group meetings. Before that, she was a regional vice president for the Sierra Club in northern California and Nevada. She is now a graduate student at…
We’re much stronger together
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. “Charismatic,” “feisty,” “a bulldog,” and “non-stop talker” are just a few of the adjectives used to describe environmental attorney Michael Jackson. He has lived and worked in Quincy, Calif., for 20 years. Michael Jackson: “I’ve taken part in listing almost every salmon on the…
How a foe saved the Quincy Library Group’s bacon
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Politics has always made strange bedfellows, but this one was stranger than most. One day last July, George Miller took Don Young into one of those rooms near the House Chamber and did him a favor. Well, OK, it was only sort of a favor. But Miller is a liberal California Democrat,…
Heard around the West
“Welcome hunters!” say the blaze-orange signs on stores in many rural Western towns. Out in the woods, the sentiment is not necessarily shared by other mammals. One bowhunter in Wyoming unexpectedly became prey himself, AP reports. A grizzly bear with two cubs nearby charged Greg Dolph, who thought to escape by climbing 15 feet into…
A cleanup project can’t get going
In 1969, when the last container of radioactive waste from the Rocky Flats bomb factory in Colorado was buried at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, no one really knew what was stored underground in the one-acre landfill. Federal officials knew generally what filled the unlined pit, created by excavating 20 feet down to a solid…
Excerpts from a New West dictionary
cal*i*for*ni*an (kal’ u forn’ yun) n. 1. resident of the state of California. 2. imprudent spender single-handedly responsible for inflated values of real property. [earlier form: Texan] en*dan*gered spe*cies (en dan’ grd spe’ sez) n. 1. every group that has had a representative address a public hearing in the West: “Ranchers, miners, etc.: We’re the…
Dear Friends
The gardener’s payoff The best thing about the rain that continually pelted the West this summer is that gardens grew to gargantuan size. Now they’re flooding larders with zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, late corn, patty pan squash, calendula blooms to color a salad, dill and much, much more. This is the reward we reap, not by…
‘Greens’ bulldoze a conservation effort
Karla Player has seen a lot of changes in the eight years she’s lived in Springdale, Utah. Each summer, more than 2 million people pass through this dusty gateway town of 300 on their way to Zion National Park. Most visitors spend just a few hours here, though lately, people are coming to stay. “You…
The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
QUINCY, Calif. – One requirement for belonging to the Quincy Library Group is a strong bladder. The group’s July 29 meeting – roughly its 50th since its 1993 founding – ran from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and while a few people came and a few people went, most of the 20 participants never left…
We may be seeing the devolution of the environmental movement
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Undersecretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons is the presidential appointee to whom the chief of the Forest Service reports. Jim Lyons: “All these environmental groups have signed on against the Quincy Library Group bill because they object to legislating how the national forests are run.…
The stress was very heavy
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Rose Comstock is president of California Women in Timber. She also manages Clover Logging, which has shrunk from about 60 employees to two. The Barkley sale she refers to was a salvage-logging-rider sale that the timber firms on the QLG refused to bid on…
Park may get trashy neighbor
EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Calif. – Once home to 4,000 people and the largest iron ore mine west of the Mississippi, this desert community now features boarded-up tract homes. Yet every five blocks or so a few houses show signs of life, and down one street, prisoners in orange jumpsuits have just finished building a new playground.…