Newly elected Santa Fe Mayor Debbie Jaramillo promises progressive, populist changes.
Children need the wild
In one of the eight essays that make up The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places, Gary Paul Nabhan relates an amusing but poignant scene he witnessed about 10 years ago when he was asked to arrange a meeting between a noted Native American educator in Arizona and a Phoenix television news team.…
Talk about pejoratives
Dear HCN, A recent letter criticized Ed Marston’s review of Rangeland Health (HCN, 4/4/94) in which he described range science as “a handmaiden of the livestock industry.” Marston stands accused of political incorrectness for pejoratively using a female gendered word. At least he was civil. Agriculture faculty in the West’s land-grant universities are often accused…
A Northwest watersheds expo
Everyone from farmers to fishers and scientists to students will gather under one roof to talk about Watersheds “94 in Bellevue,Wash., Sept. 28-30. The conference seeks to create links between people, politics and science in order to create on-the-ground improvements in the Northwest. Speakers include John Bellamy Foster, author of The Vulnerable Planet: A Short…
Tourists welcome, sort of
Some Native Americans fear one of the dark sides of tourism – that this economic mainstay threatens the values of Indian life. In late spring, 150 people from 15 tribes gathered at the Yavapai Reservation near Prescott, Ariz., to discuss strategies for dealing with southwestern vacationers. Resort owner Gene Keluche said tourism needs a spiritual…
Teaming up
Because more than 20 state, tribal and federal agencies share control of the 2 million-acre Henry’s Fork Basin in eastern Idaho and western Wyoming, planning has been fragmented. There have been jurisdictional battles between the two states and not much concerted environmental protection. To end the divisiveness, two former adversaries – the Henry’s Fork Foundation…
As witness for prosecution, chief aids defense
Although Jack Ward Thomas testified against him in his Great Falls, Mont., trial, former forest supervisor Ernie Nunn believes the Forest Service chief was also partially responsible for his acquittal. “I think he signaled the judge that those were not significant charges.” The signal came twice. First, as the top appeals officer within the Forest…
Wetlands program wasn’t
Although designed to prevent the loss of Oregon’s wetlands, mitigation projects in the state destroyed more wetlands than they created, according to a state study. While Oregon has some of the strongest wetland protection laws in the nation, it still allows wetlands to be drained and developed if their destruction is offset by creating, restoring…
No room for “pseudo-Indian charlatans”
New-age religion and Native American tradition clashed at Bear Butte State Park in western South Dakota earlier this summer. The Lakota and other tribes say the 4,422-foot landmark is being desecrated by non-Indians who use it for male-bonding weekends and crystal worship. More than 100 people, mostly Lakota, protested at the butte in June. “Sometimes…
Restoring the Rio Grande
Water levels on the Rio Grande River dropped so low in 1988, says rafting guide Steve Harris, that his business almost came to a screeching halt. He and another El Prado, N.M., outfitter then began asking each client to contribute $1 each for conservation programs, and in two years they raised more than $30,000. Other…
Agency cuts timber cut
Timber cuts in the heavily logged Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota will plummet 25 percent under a revised forest plan released last month. Forest staff studied eight alternatives and recommended setting the allowable timber harvest at 86.7 million board-feet per year for the next decade, almost 30 mmbf less than the current plan…
A seed business blooms in Nevada
After Nevada enacted a mining reclamation law in 1989, a 10-year-old native seed company began to blossom. Comstock Seed, based in Reno, Nev., found requests poured in for seeds for native shrubs, wildflowers and wild grass as mining reclamation work became “our biggest and most booming market,” says owner Ed Kleiner Jr. To meet the…
Idaho wilderness bill fails
Idaho Rep. Larry LaRocco, D, abandoned his attempt to push an Idaho wilderness bill through Congress this year. LaRocco struggled for 18 months to formulate a bill, but shelved it this July. “Once you get into the summer months and closer to November … the people who like to kill things become active,” said LaRocco…
Colorado water map
To help end the chronic battling over water in Colorado, a group has formed to provide impartial information on water issues. The nonprofit Colorado Water Education Forum is made up of 33 volunteers representing virtually every water interest in the state, ranging from farmers and dam builders to environmentalists and wildlife agency staffers. The group’s…
Where have all the tourists gone?
After all the worry and publicity about overcrowding at the Grand Canyon, the Park Service reported that visitation this summer has dropped by nearly 12 percent from last year. Not everyone is relieved; local businesses banking on a record-breaking flood of tourists are hurting. Theories about the decline range from the hot weather to foreign…
Pesticides linger in Northwest
A report commissioned by the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides found major groundwater contamination in five Northwest states. Neva Hasanein, the author of Uncovering the Legacy of Pesticide Use: What We Know About Ground Water Contamination in the Northwest, gathered information from researchers and government agencies in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and northern California.…
Now you see them …
Indian ruins in the Southwest are disappearing, but it’s for their own good. Cartographers are wiping famous Anasazi sites off their maps. Due to a hot black market for sacred Indian objects and increased numbers of tourists, ancient cities such as Keet Seel, Awatovi, Hawikuh and Cutthroat Castle will no longer appear on many road…
Eating the scenery
Communities throughout the rural West worry about their futures, as wealthy urbanites buy property for vacation homes and speculation. Will congestion, pollution and increased property values destroy the very qualities that make these areas attractive? A report by CHEC, an Oregon economics consulting firm, says that it doesn’t have to be this way. Rural communities…
Ferrets to find new homes
The endangered black-footed ferret may be hunting down prairie dogs in South Dakota as soon as September. The National Park Service recently approved release of at least 38 ferrets onto 42,000 acres of wilderness area in Badlands National Park. But there may be a hitch. Joe Zarki, public information officer for the park, says similar…
Real summertime
When southern Arizonans travel during the warmer months of the year, they get looks of sympathy when they reveal their homeplace. “Isn’t it hot down there?” “Isn’t it hard to live without seasons?” But Sonoran Desert dwellers know they have one up on the questioners, with two distinct seasons during what the rest of the…
Animas-La Plata a financial boondoggle
The Inspector General’s office of the Department of Interior says costs have soared so high on the $635 million Animas-La Plata water project that it is “economically infeasible.” That pronouncement was made in a draft report addressed March 14 to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Dan Beard on the controversial dam-and-irrigation project proposed for southwestern…
Give Smokey Bear a vacation
Dear HCN, Here in my driveway on Carrizo Valley Ranch, I’m sitting on the tailgate of my pickup watching the most vicious forest fire I have ever seen. The entire Patos mountain range is ablaze, producing smoke thermal clouds that can probably be seen from 150 miles away. Flames are visible through the smoke leaping…
Life after Barbee
Fresh from a stint as superintendent of Yosemite National Park in California, Michael Finley will take over the helm at Yellowstone in early fall. When Finley, 47, replaces Robert Barbee, who has been in charge for 11 years, he will inherit a wide range of management controversies including the proposed Noranda gold mine adjacent to…
Outward Bound and Canyonlands
Dear HCN, The reasons the Colorado Outward Bound School is opposed to the Canyonlands Backcountry Management Plan are far greater than group size limits as implied in Florence Williams’ article, “Outdoor Groups Fight Camping Limits’ (HCN, 6/27/94). In fact, the plan proposes to eliminate permits for commercial and educational backpacking groups altogether, thus denying public…
The list no Idaho stream wants to be on
Prodded by court order, the EPA has increased its official list of polluted streams and lakes in Idaho from 36 to 800. The agency had been relying on information compiled by the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, but the Idaho Conservation League and Idaho Sportsmen’s Coalition sued, claiming that hundreds of polluted waterways had been…
The problem and the solution
Dear HCN, Yellowstone National Park faces a terrific dilemma. Enhancement for recreational visitors or management as a diverse ecosystem? What ecosystem? The pre-Columbian system or the modern system which is a result of endless human tinkering? Of course, this kind of dilemma faces not only Yellowstone, but every place. The overriding goal, which researcher Fred…
Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
Santa Fe Mayor Debbie Jaramillo, fresh from the populist coup in March that swept her and a progressive city council into office, still has that I-just-won-the-lottery euphoria about her this morning. She’s waving hello to diners at a downtown restaurant, shaking hands (“We did it, didn’t we!”) and getting needled a bit by husband Mike.…
FBI was out to get freethinking DeVoto
Nearly 40 years after his death, Bernard DeVoto is remembered as a brilliant historian, pungent social critic and one of the West’s earliest and most outspoken conservationists. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, however, knew him differently. To the FBI, DeVoto was an “intellectual revolutionary,” “the son of a fallen away priest of the Roman Catholic…
Dear friends
Ray Ring and company High Country News now has an Editor Emeritus, an Editor, an Associate Editor and, as of July 6, a Senior Editor. This last is Ray Ring, who has spent the past 10 years or so writing novels and free-lance newspaper and magazine articles in Tucson, Arizona. Altogether, Ray has lived and…
Why did 14 more have to die?
Jim Carrier wrote this column for the Denver Post after 14 firefighters died in a blowup in the Canyon Creek, Colorado, wildfire, July 6. The image that endures is that hillside, marked by charred trees and bristle-like brush stuck in rusty-blue, nearly rose soil, scarred in the center by a boot-scuffed line that became a…
Forest Service dunked by its own ‘witch hunt’
HELENA, Mont. – A federal judge has sided with an ex-forest supervisor who was forced out of his job in 1993. Judge Joseph H. Hartman ruled July 15 that former Helena National Forest Supervisor Ernie Nunn should be offered reinstatement as a forest supervisor in Region One as well as back pay with interest amounting…
City Slickers should leave wilderness rough
MOAB, Utah – A Hollywood production company has been slow to restore land damaged during the filming of a stampede scene in City Slickers II. Federal land manager Brad Palmer said the movie crews trampled about 30 percent more acreage than they were supposed to in an area above the Colorado River, just off the…
Eagles fly off the endangered species list
In a rare environmental success story, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Mollie Beattie says her agency will soon reclassify bald eagles from endangered status to threatened, in most of the lower 48 states. Beattie’s proposal, which becomes effective Sept. 28, marks only the 14th time that a species has been rescued from near-extinction under…
Endangered Species Act dissed on street …
Protesters sporting bright yellow “Stop the War on the West” T-shirts swarmed the blistering streets of Ronan, Mont., July 23. Their target: the Endangered Species Act reauthorization bill introduced in Congress by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. Baucus brought the only Western hearing on the bill to the isolated town, pop. 1,500, where an estimated 400…
… and invoked for salmon, against grazing
In the battle to save the northern spotted owl, environmental groups have brandished the Endangered Species Act as a sword to halt logging. Now they are using the controversial law against grazing, for the sake of another threatened species – Snake River chinook salmon. In July, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco…