Hunting in the West faces public relations problems as well as questions about ethical and biological issues.
Logging opponents lose – again
In Moscow, Idaho, you can tell it’s fall when Cove/Mallard timbersale protesters start showing up for trial. In the last four years more than 100 people have argued their cases before a variety of magistrates and federal judges, and nearly all have lost. This year was no exception. The largest trial this year involved 12…
Thou shalt not build a dam
After a several-week delay, the Roman Catholic bishop of Pueblo, Colo., has spoken, and not to the liking of backers of the Animas-La Plata water project. In early November, a nine-person citizens’ group, the Human Development Commission of the Pueblo Diocese, blasted the project proposed for southern Colorado as wasteful and destructive (HCN, 11/27/95). Outraged…
John Mumma takes another helm
Four years after jumping out of the political frying pan, John Mumma has leaped into the fire. The former Northern Region forester for the Forest Service has been hired as the new director of the embattled Colorado Division of Wildlife. Mumma quit the Forest Service after 28 years rather than accept reassignment to Washington, D.C.,…
How Newt hit a nerve
Dear HCN, The take of Beltway green Paul Pritchard of the National Parks and Conservation Association on the national environmental movement is: “We feel like General Custer.” (-D.C. Green Power Brokers Look for New Home,” HCN, 11/13/95). An apt analogy, indeed – though hardly a grassroots, cross-cultural organizing sentiment. The genocidal Custer got what he…
Saga of Enid Waldholtz
Utah Democrat Karen Shepherd is considering a bid to retake the congressional seat she lost to free-spending Republican Enid Waldholtz. Authorities continue to investigate allegations Joe and Enid Waldholtz are at the center of a $1.7 million check-kiting scheme which may include violations of federal campaign-spending laws in the 1994 race against Shepherd. Waldholtz, a…
Rainfall follows the fence and other lessons from HCN
Dear HCN, It was fortunate that your 10/2/95 issue had in it both the essay by Dave Brown and a letter from William Dickinson. They allowed me to synthesize a new perspective on the effects of cattle grazing on riparian areas. It is now obvious that cattle are the victims of incredible bad luck. They…
More and more friends
Following the lead of other states that face a fast-growing population and diminishing open space, New Mexico residents recently established 1000 Friends of New Mexico. The organization hopes to “encourage responsible land-use planning and find innovative alternatives to the expansion of suburban sprawl,” says Ken Balizer, a planner who is the group’s founder and president.…
Selective quotes altered timber story
Dear HCN, I am quite upset about the selective quotes from me in the article about program cuts at the University of Washington by Kathie Durbin (HCN, 11/13/95). The manner in which my remarks were used makes it appear that the faculty and staff of the Center for Streamside Studies blame Weyerhaeuser Company for the…
Fire on the mountain
Synthetic rubber, sulfa drugs, nuclear power – those are a few of the better-known medical and technological byproducts of war. Less known is that World War II also spawned the snowmobile, the snowcat and the modern ski industry. Those are some of the stories told in Fire on the Mountain, a film that documents the…
She knows about jets
Dear HCN, Your Oct. 2 article about the jet noise in a Colorado wilderness made me realize that I might be able to help after fighting the jet noise from San Francisco Airport for 25 years. First, start by learning everything about the way the Federal Aviation Administration handles takeoffs and landings in every type…
Green fellows
Environmental journalists with at least three years’ experience are invited to apply for a fellowship year at Harvard University. The two selected Nieman fellows – one U.S. and one international – will take undergraduate and graduate classes. They will also meet with distinguished figures from journalism, business, education, the arts and public service. The fellowships…
Southwestern writers hit the airwaves
-Every writer has one thing they want, need to work out desperately in their writing … I seem to be dealing with transformation, a way to make sense of, to rectify, a terrible, beautiful history.” * Joy Harjo Joy Harjo, a Creek poet, screenwriter, and saxophonist, is one of 13 Southwestern authors featured in Writing…
Western Images
The University of Southern Colorado is now accepting papers for a March 21-23 conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., The Image of the American West in Literature, the Media, and Society. Topics may include anything from rodeos to tourism, immigration to heroism. One-page abstracts are due Jan. 5. For more information, contact Professor Steven Kaplan, 719/549-2764,…
The plumber’s guide to the Colorado Basin
When John Wesley Powell rafted down the Colorado River, he was probably not thinking of plumbing. But that’s the metaphor the Dinosaur Nature Association brings to life in a poster of the dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts that have transformed the rivers of the Colorado Basin. Based on Lester Doré’s illustration from HCN’s book, Western Water…
How rivers really run
Ever wonder how rivers shape mountains? How to classify stream erosion? Wildland Hydrology Consultants, a firm based in Pagosa Springs, Colo., offers courses from spring through fall in Applied Fluvial Geomorphology, Stream Classification and Applications and River Assessment and Monitoring. The five-day courses for hydrologists, fisheries biologists, and other riparian ecosystem specialists cover urban, agricultural…
`Goddamn goshawks’
Last summer, loggers discovered a nest with two rare goshawk fledglings on the Headquarters timber sale, west of Laramie, Wyo. With permission from the Forest Service they cut trees within yards of the nest, causing the adults to abandon the nest and the fledglings to die. Environmentalists blasted the agency and loggers for failing to…
Revving up rural schools
Without the drama of guns and gangs, the popular media usually leave rural education in a time warp of little red schoolhouses and outdated textbooks. But rural schools, which house one-quarter of the nation’s students and teachers, turned decades ago to interdisciplinary studies, multi-grade classrooms and community- based learning – all “innovations’ being introduced in…
Hunger striker to head East
The so-called “logging without laws’ salvage rider signed by President Clinton last July has catalyzed many people to commit acts of civil disobedience. But one person has mounted an unusual protest in front of the federal courthouse in Eugene, Oregon. Tim Ream, 33, set up a tent on the courthouse steps Oct. 3 and has…
Thundering against Thunderbolt
When the U.S. Forest Service set aside a steep and damaged portion of the Boise National Forest for a timber sale called Thunderbolt early this fall, environmentalists in Idaho filed one of the first lawsuits against a salvage sale. Now the 13 million board feet has sold for $1 million, and the Sierra Club Legal…
For this hunter, there was only one elk
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. It was mid-afternoon and the bowhunter found himself working up a small knob covered with thick, second-growth lodgepole pine. The knob was part of the north slope of a larger mountain not far from the Continental…
The politics of hunting creates fluidalliances
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. While nonprofit groups like Ducks Unlimited or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have sharply defined positions on hunting, most environmental groups – composed of both avid hunters and anti-hunters – waffle somewhere in the…
Organizations from ‘Get a gun’ to ‘No way’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. Wildlife Legislative Fund of America: “Our sole purpose in life is to protect the right to hunt, fish and trap,” says staffer Allan Wolter. This umbrella organization for 1.5 million sportsmen was founded in 1978 to…
1995: Did toxic stew cook the goose?
BUTTE, Mont. – For 342 migrating snow geese, the infamous Berkeley Pit became their final stop. The birds were first discovered Nov. 14, their carcasses floating in the toxic waters of the shut down, open-pit copper mine. The initial body count at this federal Superfund site was 149; the total rose when officials realized the…
I like to hunt, but I don’t like to kill
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. I always edge away from the subject of hunting. I’ve hunted and shall hunt, but I don’t talk about it much – those late-night, throaty recitations of travels and kills make me nervous. It’s miserable standing…
Proposed gold mine stirs up a rural Washington county
For 15 years, Roger Jackson has raised hay and grain, sheep and goats on his spread in northeastern Washington’s Okanogan County. Then last June, Jackson learned that Battle Mountain Gold Co. planned to operate an open-pit gold mine six miles from his farm, on Buckhorn Mountain in Okanogan National Forest. Worse, Jackson learned that the…
Why a son won’t hunt with his father
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. “You always kill coyotes,” my father would tell me, with a seriousness that both frightened and fascinated me. “Always. They are bad animals. You shoot them whenever you get the chance.” The words rang through my…
Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting
Lee Metzgar took up hunting as a youngster, as soon as he could handle a rifle. At first he hunted mostly birds; then he moved west to teach ecology at the University of Montana and, as he phrases it, his hunting got serious. For the next 22 years, stalking in the Rockies, Metzgar bagged deer,…
Heard Around the West
America’s national parks – its crown jewels – now include a lot of costume jewelry, says a Nov. 20 Forbes magazine article on the National Park Service. The system is so bloated with second-rate parks here, there and everywhere, there is little money to maintain such real treasures as Yosemite, Glacier or Grand Canyon. Writer…
Is hunting morally acceptable?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. Editor’s note: The people she most wants to talk to are the men and women who stalk animals and shoot to kill – the people who make moral choices in a split second. She is Ann…
By the grace of old pines
Fish Creek murmurs to itself in a voice like rustling cottonwood leaves as it curves past Montana’s biggest ponderosa pine on its way to the Clark Fork River. Sunlight animates the tree’s trunk and ripples on the underside of its lowest branch, 30 feet overhead. Its bark is a smooth sheath of gold flakes with…
He stuffs what they kill
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. John Stevenson, who runs Wyoming Taxidermy in Evansville, near Casper, used to mount 500 kills a year. But bad winters have taken a toll on local antelope herds, the number of hunting permits has been reduced…
Dear friends
Deep in the banana belt Sunny, still weather has persisted here into December, and at the Diner coffee shop on Grand Avenue, talk turns inevitably toward fear of drought. The West Elk Mountains, our backyard hills, look merely dusted with snow, and old-timers say this is shaping up as an “open winter.” Not to borrow…
One does not hunt in order to kill
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted. If one were to present the sportsman with the death of the animal as a gift he would…
Congress’ war against nature creates backlash
When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, everyone expected attacks on environmental laws and programs. And they came. But now, with just days left until the end of the 104th Congress’ first year, the anti-environment flood has been slowed. With the exception of the salvage logging legislation signed by President Clinton this summer, the…
Outfitters take aim at four-wheelers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. After a poor deer and elk hunt this year, many Colorado outfitters are calling for a thinning of the herds. Not the herds of big game – it’s the all-terrain vehicles that thundered through the state’s…
Idaho hunters ask public to bear with them
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. Lynn Fritchman is used to spending time with dead bears. The third-generation Idaho hunter inspects bears for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game after they’ve been killed by hunters. But over the years Fritchman heard…
Forget cattle, the money’s in the buck
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. Rancher and farmer Milo Hanson from Saskatchewan, Canada, never imagined that hunting would change his life. That was before judges from the Boone and Crockett Club scored a whitetail buck that he shot near his farm…