The history of the copper-mining town of Butte, Mont., sparks a searching meditation on the meaning and value of work and the place it holds now, as the Old West becomes the New West.
Miners sneak a rider onto an appropriation for war
When the U.S. Department of the Interior derailed the Crown Jewel gold mine on March 25 with a close reading of the 1872 Mining Law, grassroots activists who’d battled the mine for seven years thought the news was too good to be true. They were right. Just weeks after Interior stiff-armed the Crown Jewel in…
Let’s support taxpayer restoration
Dear HCN, Thanks for your feature on ecological restoration (-Working the Land Back to Health,” HCN, 3/1/99). However, as an ardent conservationist and a small business owner, I was annoyed by Ed Marston’s introduction. “In a time of tight public money,” he writes, “restoration depends on creating economies that can produce healthy land and profits,…
Can computers solve Indian problems?
This winter, 112 years of sloppy accounting by the Bureau of Indian Affairs fell into Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s lap (HCN, 3/15/99). Now, his department has bounced back with a million-dollar solution. On June 25, the department will unveil the Trust Asset Accounting Management System (TAAMS). The software program is designed to sort out the…
Always question land trades
Dear HCN, I want to thank writer Lynne Bama for her story on land trades, and particularly for showing the connection between 19th-century land grabs and the present-day subsidization of corporations through exchanges (HCN, 3/29/99). Lynne called me a “one-woman truth squad,” which I took as a compliment, but which belies the efforts of scores…
Tragedy on the border
Charles Bowden’s recent book Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future chronicled, in vivid words and photographs, the violent restlessness of sprawling Ciudad Juarez (HCN, 9/14/98). Among the most horrifying, and unforgettable, images were those of the bodies of several young women, all murdered on their way home from low-paying jobs at the U.S.-owned factories on…
New tools for bird buffs
Spring in Colorado has brought with it the clatter of bird calls and a few new tools for finding the feathered beasties. In January, the Colorado Bird Atlas Partnership released the Colorado Breeding Bird Atlas, a 636-page book packed with profiles and pictures of birds, and maps showing where in the state they can be…
The real thing
Real “country living” means really having the right and opportunity to grow both food plants and animals. A block of apartments plopped into the middle of a cow pasture 10 miles from the supermarket isn’t real “country.” It’s guaranteed commuter clog and developer’s profit (buying cheap agricultural land and turning it into urban-density, perpetual-rent housing).…
Spare the plow, save the squirrel
The arid grasslands and shrub steppe prairie of the Columbia Plateau have gradually dwindled as farmers have plowed up thousands of acres to plant lucrative crops such as potatoes and onions. The Washington ground squirrel is among the species linked to this dwindling habitat, and over the past decade the squirrels’ population has dropped by…
Mountain plover population
Over the last 30 years, mountain plover populations have dropped by more than 50 percent. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports that these grassland birds are threatened by sod-busting, routine plowing and prairie dog control on a giant swath of the high plains between Montana and Texas. To protect the species, the agency has…
The Wayward West
Residents of Jackson Hole, Wyo., have some new neighbors: a pair of gray wolves and their five pups. Roughly 50 wolf pups have been born this spring around Yellowstone National Park, bringing the population to more than 160. Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is appealing a 1997 district court ruling that ordered the…
Environmental Journalism
A workshop at Western State College of Colorado will attempt to raise the bar on environmental journalism. The workshop is co-sponsored by High Country News and will include HCN publisher Ed Marston, Colorado Central publisher and Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen, and Dr. Marilee Long of the Colorado State University journalism program. For more information…
Armed with alarms
As the prowler approaches, metallic shrieks reverberate across the grassy benchland, and strobe lights pulsate in the black night. The would-be assassin escapes into the forest – on all fours. The high-tech alarm system, designed by a scientist at the National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colo., is the newest tool in wolf management.…
Mann Gulch Fire
The Mann Gulch Fire near Helena, Mont., in 1949, took the lives of 13 firefighters and significantly changed how the U.S. Forest Service fought fires. On Aug. 4-5, the Helena National Forest will hold a 50th anniversary commemoration of the fire. Invited speakers include Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt…
Lawsuit may take what’s holy
When the Bighorn National Forest drew up a plan to bring more visitors to the centuries-old Medicine Wheel, a Native American sacred site in northern Wyoming, tribes organized to stop it (HCN, 5/26/97). And they succeeded. Eight Plains tribes, known as the Medicine Wheel Coalition, worked with government officials to write a Historic Preservation Plan,…
37th Annual Wilderness Walks
The Montana Wilderness Association is offering its 37th annual wilderness walks this summer. In places like the Bitter Creek Wilderness Study Area, you can enjoy the vast beauty of Montana’s wilderness, learn about no-trace camping skills, and enjoy celestial shows and howling coyotes. Group sizes are limited. For more information contact the Montana Wilderness Association,…
Hands On Colorado: Volunteer Opportunities in 1999
To get outdoors and do some good this summer, check out Hands On Colorado: Volunteer Opportunities in 1999. This 64-page guide profiles volunteer opportunities for everything from trail building, to bat monitoring and kids’ fishing derbies. For a free copy, contact Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, 600 S. Marion Parkway, Denver, CO 80209-2597 (303/715-1010, ext. 15),…
Powell was a fire bug
Dear HCN, John Wesley Powell was undoubtedly a giant in the exploration of, and proposals for, Western lands. The essay by William deBuys tells us that if we’d have listened to Powell, we might not have clear-cut forests and disenfranchised local communities (HCN, 4/12/99). In fact, we would have no national forests, and what forests…
Fee fighters blast the Adventure Pass
New recreation fees have incensed some Southern Californians who say they don’t want to pick up the tab for playing on public lands. A major point of conflict is what the Forest Service calls its “Adventure Pass,” which is sold for trailhead parking at $5 a day or $30 a year. In the Los Padres,…
Let’s stop trapping
Dear HCN, After reading Tom Reed’s article on purposeful wildlife trapping and accidental pet dog trapping, all I can say to your headline, “Is trapping doomed?” is – not soon enough (HCN, 4/12/99). It is directly due to the activities of trappers that we now have species in trouble, like the wolf, bear, cougar, lynx,…
Black Canyon National Park?
If Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., gets his way, he will leave behind a legacy. A bill moving rapidly through the U.S. Senate would redesignate the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument as a national park and expand its current 20,766 acres to 30,000. Campbell, the bill’s sponsor, has been pursuing this legislation for…
A reluctant advocate
Thank you for the marvelous huge feature on Tucson development (HCN, 1/18/99). However, I was chagrined to see the quote from Supervisor Mike Boyd, who has been opposed for years to anti-growth measures, and only under great pressure did indeed advocate the Sonoran Desert Protection Plan. During his last election cycle, Boyd came to our…
Fly-in wilderness
During the height of the summer boating season in central Idaho’s Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the sky buzzes with airplanes bound for one of 31 wilderness airstrips. At the Indian Creek airstrip, as many as 50 planes will land in a day. The Montana-based Wilderness Watch says that volume of traffic doesn’t belong…
Park status doesn’t guarantee anything
Dear HCN, I read with dismay Tony Davis’ article, “Plans for a new park in Arizona” (HCN, 3/29/99) on the movement to create a “Sonoran Desert National Park,” by combining Organ Pipe National Monument, Cabeza-Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range. This proposal looks to me like another grandiose scheme…
Mountain to get a facelift
Facing a lawsuit from the Sierra Club, the City of Colorado Springs has agreed to clean up streams and wetlands on Pikes Peak – a project that could cost $14 million to $21 million, according to a preliminary study. The Sierra Club sued in 1998, claiming that the city-operated toll road to the top of…
Blah, blah from the ranchette
Dear HCN, Susan Ewing’s essay on the sins of owning a ranchette in Bozeman, Mont., is typical of the self-serving confessionals I’ve grown to expect from baby boomers who lack the integrity to live up to the principles they espouse (HCN, 5/10/99). For environmentalists like Ewing, the movement isn’t about protecting ecological systems, it’s about…
Court nixes land exchange
In a surprise May 19 ruling, a federal appeals court sent a land exchange in western Washington back to the drawing board. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the controversial Huckleberry Land Exchange needed more study and told company loggers to stop cutting the traded land. The exchange gave Weyerhaeuser Co. 4,300 acres…
Mining the past
Note: an introductory, front-page sidebar, “The hidden West,” accompanies this feature story. BUTTE, Mont. – George Bigcraft, John Bjornstorm, Daniel Budovinac. Near midnight on June 8, 1917, an electric cable caught fire at the 2,400 level of the shaft that served the Granite Mountain and Speculator mines here. Toyvo Kokkonen, Ben Konecney, Mike Kubilus. All…
The Hidden West
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Implicit in the late Wallace Stegner’s phrase, “a society to match the scenery,” is the belief that the West is built from the bottom up, and that the health and vitality of the land and its wildlife will be determined by the health and…
‘Petroglyph police’ try to save the art of the ancients
ZION NATIONAL PARK, Utah – A prehistoric petroglyph, chipped out of red sandstone to resemble a fat sheep, contends with a crude contemporary scrawl about a foot away. The scrawl looks roughly like a circle, scratched out with a sharp stick – the mark of an unsupervised child, or a thoughtless adult. When Sharon and…
Dear Friends
Welcome, Keri New intern Keri Watson arrived at High Country News on Paonia’s first sunny day in what seemed like weeks. She’d just spent time shepherding her German in-laws around Salt Lake City, the city where she was born and where she worked as a camera operator at KUED-TV while also doing research for a…
Lions push bighorn onto an island
Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, the latest addition to the federal endangered species list, may survive extinction with the help of Mono Lake, itself threatened for decades by the diversion of its feeder streams to Los Angeles (HCN, 12/8/97). Mono Lake can help to save bighorn by providing what one expert calls “an imaginary zoo” -…
Stepping lightly in a sanctuary
COTTONWOOD, Idaho – Sister Carol Ann Wassmuth grabs one of the ropes dangling from a ceiling at St. Gertrude’s Monastery. “If you pull too hard, the bell flips all the way over,” she says, demonstrating how to summon 78 Benedictine sisters to midday Mass. Soon, three bells send a joyful sound across the high plains.…
A park all their own
HOLBROOK, Ariz. – When seasoned businessman Marvin Hatch bought a northern Arizona ranch, he and business partner Terrence “Shorty” Reidhead knew the land would yield more than just hamburger. The 60,000-acre, $3.3 million Paulsell Ranch is littered with Indian ruins, artifacts and petroglyphs. The ranch’s resources are so important that its neighbor, Petrified Forest National…
Heard around the West
Utah’s state seal refrains from exhortations, but does feature a bald eagle flapping its wings above a beehive. Judy Fahys in the Salt Lake Tribune finds this far too bland: “To truly personify the state, Utah’s official seal might have illustrated a family the size of a track team slurping vanilla ice cream cones.” The…