Some worry that Vail and the other booming ski resorts along Colorado’s I-70 corridor – which are more lucrative than ever as they become year-round resorts – are turning the state into an Alpine theme park more like Switzerland than the Rocky Mountains.
Arson: What a lesson
Dear HCN, It was a pleasure to read in the Nov. 9 issue the letter by Michael E. Adams supporting the arson at Vail. This man and every member of the Earth Liberation Front should be canonized for their visionary efforts in advancing the environmental cause. I only regret that someone wasn’t killed in the…
Women want the railroad to back off
Kathy Beisner and her family used to take vacation trips in their camper. Though her husband Ron worked long hours for the Union Pacific railroad, making the run between Omaha and their hometown of North Platte, Neb., there was always time off to take the kids camping. No more. Since a 1996 merger with Southern…
Keep the backcountry free
Backpackers who frequent Grand Teton National Park scored a partial victory in their fight to keep the backcountry experience almost free. When Park Superintendent Jack Neckels unveiled an extensive backcountry fee program at a recent meeting organized by the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, the audience of over 200 people vehemently protested. Many Jackson residents told…
Top gun seeks more of the high desert
Two years ago, a remarkable coalition formed in rural central Nevada to halt the spread of Navy war games on public lands. Low-flying jets and the military’s hunger for land withdrawals spurred the Sierra Club, the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association, People for the USA, and almost every level of government – from local land-use boards to…
Loggers told to stop cutting
In an unprecedented action against a major timber company, California suspended Pacific Lumber’s operating license this November. The Humboldt County company, locked in confrontation with environmentalists over the giant coastal redwoods of the Headwaters Forest, was cited for numerous violations, including cutting trees too close to streams and driving heavy equipment in spotted-owl habitat. Paul…
Grand Staircase-Escalante in the spotlight
When President Clinton created the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah two years ago, environmentalists broke out the champagne, while many locals moped (HCN, 4/14/97). A proposed management plan for the monument has the two groups in each others’ shoes. “I thought the people doing the plan really did a good job,” Kane County…
Crystal Mountain plans to grow
Ski resort collector Boyne USA is laying the groundwork for a massive makeover of Crystal Mountain in Washington’s Cascade Mountains. Boyne, also the owner of Big Sky in Montana (HCN, 3/31/97), plans to pump $40 million into the resort to keep Seattle-area skiers from fleeing the state to visit other resorts. Improvements include 10 new…
Adopt a stream
Driving the West’s highways, you can’t help but notice the blue “Adopt a Highway” signs announcing who’s agreed to pick up trash beside the road. Now, the Colorado Water Conservation Board has started a similar program to help monitor stream flows. The agency is responsible for maintaining adequate water levels in 1,300 of the most…
Bears flocked to Aspen
ASPEN, Colo. – Celebrity sightings are old news in the place known as “Glitter Gulch.” New this summer and fall were black bear sightings. “The number of nuisance bear calls was the highest it’s been since I moved here 20 years ago,” says Randy Cote, Colorado Department of Wildlife’s Aspen-area district manager, who received more…
Squawking gets squawfish renamed
The squawfish is about to be rechristened. The Names of Fishes Committee of the American Fisheries Society has recommended that all squawfish be renamed pikeminnows. Although the committee is reluctant to change common names for fear of causing confusion, it made an exception this time because “names should not violate the tenets of good taste.”…
Land Trusts
The last decade has been a good one for the West’s land trusts. A census conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Land Trust Alliance reveals that the number of land trusts that serve the Rocky Mountain states has risen from 20 to 52, and the Southwest shows similar growth. Nationwide, these private nonprofits, whose primary purpose…
Scientists get a free ride
-We’re not very receptive to charges that the park is “wimping out,” “””says Rocky Mountain National Park spokesman Doug Caldwell. But critics say the park did just that – by permitting a crew of soil scientists to take a helicopter ride in a wilderness study area. Last summer, the park in northeastern Colorado sent a…
Women pioneers
-We must elect more women – yes. But we must transform those structures to which we elect women to accomplish our goals, because present institutions will not do … In my heart I believe that women will change the nature of power rather than power change the nature of women.” * Bella Abzug, quoted in…
The Wayward West
The revolving door to the Bureau of Land Management director’s office took a spin in November. On the way out was Salt Lake City attorney Pat Shea, who headed the agency for just over a year. Shea has been promoted to acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management, where he will help create…
Why one man hunts
Dear HCN, I wish to respond to Marc Gaede’s letter “Hunting: Call it competition” (HCN, 11/23/98). In this complex, confusing world, it is a tremendous relief to find someone with the simple answers to difficult questions such as, “Why do we hunt?” From Mr. Gaede’s remarks, I now understand that I hunt because I am…
In Idaho: A grizzly consensus plan didn’t exist
Dear HCN, Kudos on HCN’s most recent issue covering the “Grizzly War” (HCN, 11/9/98). The piece by Todd Wilkinson is both timely and dead on target. I must say, however, that I was rather amazed to read under “Idaho grizzly plan shifts into low gear,” that “Environmentalists are silent on grizzly reintroduction.” Environmentalists, both in…
A road could go there
Forest Service officials in central Montana are finding themselves in a tight spot over a proposed land exchange. The agency has been trying for five years to acquire about 4,000 privately owned acres surrounded by the Lewis and Clark National Forest. Acquiring these islands of private land “will enable us to manage in a more…
Everyone is wrong but me
Dear HCN, I have found recent letters to the editor and the latest essay by Stephen Lyons to contain some bits of hidden wisdom. The larger message that I get from these writings is that when all is said and done, at the end of the day, we’re all a bunch of selfish bastards. Opinions…
Power poles make deadly perches
To most people, utility poles and power lines are just another part of the Western landscape. Not to Montana falconer Kirk Hohenberger; he sees power lines as death traps for hawks, eagles and falcons. “I’ve seen four of my own falcons electrocuted,” says Hohenberger. “I reported the poles to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.…
Heard around the West
Northern spotted owls are supposed to be shy and almost invisible in what’s left of our ancient Northwest forests. This was not the case of a “dispersing juvenile” who chose to hang around Everett, Wash., a city of 70,000 close to the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. After spending a day roosting unobtrusively in a tree,…
Terrorist tactics always undermine progress
“We’re always a little afraid.” That’s what a staunch environmentalist told me shortly after I retired from the Idaho Legislature and left a big-firm law practice to work for the Idaho Conservation League. “Afraid of what?” I asked him. So he patiently explained certain realities of being an environmentalist in an Idaho Panhandle timber town.…
Utah builds a dream trail
Late one afternoon, a trim, bearded University of Utah administrator climbs from a car in a foothill cul-de-sac 10 minutes from the busiest intersection in Salt Lake City. Rick Reese brims with energy as he strides off down a mountain path toward a perch with an astonishing view of the Salt Lake Valley. He stands…
Vail and the road to a recreational empire
Note: three sidebar articles accompany this feature story: a variety of concerned Coloradans speak out in their own words about Vail, “Anger on the web,” and an index of interesting facts about Vail and other Colorado ski areas. VAIL, Colo. – Diane Gansauer was on a future-of-skiing panel for activists a year ago when she…
Concerned Coloradans comment
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. J. Francis Stafford Former Catholic Archbishop of Denver, 1994 Pastoral Letter: “The time when the Western Slope could be overlooked as a reserve of empty, if beautiful, solitude, has long since passed. The current explosion of Front Range growth has its parallel in communities…
A paradise resettled and a community lost
In 1974, when Peter and Deedee Decker bought a rundown, 600-acre ranch six miles from the small, doomed, also rundown town of Ridgway, Colo. (the Bureau of Reclamation planned to bury it under a reservoir, but later relented), it was nowheresville. Despite the San Juan Mountains, which loom up almost as abruptly and beautifully as…
Anger on the Web
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Michael Lewinski, writing in the Unofficial Stop SuperVail Website, bcn.boulder.co.us/environment/Vail/, says that after the Oct. 19 arson at Vail, e-mail poured in. “I’ve been called some extremely nasty names,” he writes. – ‘Nazi” seems the most popular so far. “Ours is not the first…
Colorado: Snow = skiers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Inches of snowfall per year at selected Colorado ski resorts: More than 300 Number of days of sunshine: More than 300 Acres at Vail, Colorado’s – and North America’s – largest ski area: 4,644 Number of U.S. ski areas in 1967: 1,400 Number in…
Dear Friends
Congratulations Two career Forest Service employees working on ecosystem management have each won $10,000 from the High Desert Museum in Bend, Ore., which gives the coveted, annual Earle A. Chiles Award. The winners are Jeff Blackwood, supervisor of the Umatilla National Forest, and Thomas Quigley, a Ph.D. range economist. For the last four years, the…
Newcomers battle over river resort
MOAB, Utah – Ten years ago, Karen Nelson arrived in southern Utah, drawn by redrock canyons, whitewater and a simpler way of life. A native of California, she moved to Castle Valley, a community of 50 homes nestled above the Colorado River; there, she made a living handcrafting furniture. A stretch of Route 128, called…
Using tools of destruction to restore redwoods
ARCATA, Calif. – In a dense forest of second-growth redwoods next to a logging road, Bill Weaver bounces on a culvert pipe so rusted it’s ready to collapse. A stagnant pool of water is the only sign of the torrent that will gush through the pipe when autumn rains start. “If this culvert hasn’t already…