On the Great Plains, some beleagured farmers are pinning their economic hopes on local cooperatives, such as a pasta-making factory in Leeds, N.D.
Mining company knew it was golden
Dear HCN, People whose livelihoods depend on creating and extending controversy about the Crown Jewel Mine have suggested that Battle Mountain did not litigate the federal denial of its plan of operations because the company had concerns about the merits of its case (HCN, 5/24/99). In fact, just the opposite is true. Battle Mountain was…
Wolves get no welcoming party
The 1 million acres of Olympic National Park could sustain as many as 56 gray wolves, says a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report. Yet even though the peninsula provides ample prey and habitat, no wolves will wander the park soon. The obstacle is Washington Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, says Gerry Ring Erickson of Defenders…
Trapping lives on
Dear HCN, Your cover article pronouncing the death of trapping was premature (HCN, 4/12/99). Here in Minnesota, voters last November passed a measure to amend the state constitution to guarantee the right of Minnesota residents to hunt, fish and trap. The measure passed by a lopsided 77 percent to 23 percent, despite editorials against the…
Big Oil down the tubes?
A Northwest oil consortium’s plan to build a 237 mile-long pipeline across Washington has fueled a fiery debate between environmentalists. Will the pipeline eliminate the risk of oil spills in the ocean or will it create a recipe for disaster right in the heart of the Cascade Range? “It makes more sense to get petroleum…
Fight that knee jerking
Dear HCN, I received a great deal of satisfaction from reading Dan Flores’ and Susan Ewing’s articles on Western subdivisions (HCN, 5/10/99). Here are two essays that aren’t the usual blinders-on, cheerleading drivel. As a prelude, I should add that I disagree with the authors on many points. As a range ecologist living in the…
The Wayward West
The beleaguered black-tailed prairie dog is getting some federal help (HCN, 11/11/96). On May 28, the Forest Service ordered all staffers to stop poisoning the ground squirrels except in “extremely rare situations.” The ban will remain in effect until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decides whether to list the animals as threatened. Wildlife Services,…
Trappers should be liable
Dear HCN, Thanks to HCN for doing the article on trapping (HCN, 4/12/99). Many people think trapping went out with the advent of the 20th century … even in Nevada. The Nevada Division of Wildlife has been recalcitrant, as have most fish and game agencies, seeing any restriction on trapping as a move on our…
Sadness from a native son
Dear HCN, Your article, “Greens not welcome in Escalante” reminded me why I left my home state (HCN, 5/24/99). Southern Utahns have long regarded nature as an enemy to conquer, dating back to the days when Brigham Young sent them to colonize a howling wilderness. Considering the local belief that the Earth is a mere…
How crazy?
Dear HCN, How crazy have we become? Brent Israelsen writes in the May 24th HCN about ranchers wanting a new $8 million dam on the Escalante River to supply water to raise cattle feed in arid southern Utah. With a surplus of meat in the United States, it is time for livestock producers to look…
An Olympic eyesore?
The Utah Sports Authority is etching out a 120-meter ski jump on a mountainside near Park City for the 2002 Winter Olympics, but the project isn’t inspiring Olympic fever. Instead, it’s raising the ire of local critics, who lament the ugliness of the scarred slope. “There was no environmental input whatsoever, and consequently we’re going…
The Power of Place: Writing Out of the West
Writers Mary Clearman Blew, Don Snow, C.L. Rawlins and Hannah Hinchman will lead workshops at the 16th Annual Western Montana College’s Writers’ Conference. The theme of the July 16-18 conference at the Birch Creek Center in the Pioneer Mountains is The Power of Place: Writing Out of the West. The $200 fee includes instructors, meals,…
Conservation hero?
Do you have a conservation hero? The National Wildlife Federation wants to know. Every year the federation honors a conservationist or contributing to the future of wildlife, wild places and natural resources. Past winners include Lady Bird Johnson and Morris Udall. Send your nominations by July 10 to the Communications Department of the National Wildlife…
Sustaining and Enhancing Riparian Migratory Bird Habitat on the Upper San Pedro River
A panel of scientists assembled by an international commission says the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona is threatened by runaway growth and development (HCN, 4/12/99). The panel’s final report, released in March, recommends aggressive water conservation measures by area residents and nearby Fort Huachuca. For a copy of the 123-page Sustaining and Enhancing Riparian…
Siuslaw National Forest
Write a 250-word essay explaining why the Siuslaw National Forest is important to you. Do it well enough and you could win an all expense tour with Jim Furnish, former supervisor of the forest (HCN, 11/23/98). Participants must have a Siuslaw National Forest annual pass or an Oregon Coastal Access pass. Send your essay by…
Can poverty protect the last, best place?
All who care about the non-metropolitan West should be grateful to Montanans. Within the generous confines of that 145,000 square-mile state, they are asking, in the closing days of the 20th century, whether the good life can be disconnected from the economy. They are testing whether a place that in 50 years has plunged from…
The disappearing farm
Can cooperatives keep rural people rooted in the plains?
Homegrown leaders: Lakota educators bridge two worlds
ROSEBUD RESERVATION, S.D. – Sherry Red Owl’s conference room in the tribal Department of Education is chaotic, but it’s the kind of happy chaos that reflects its main obsession: the schoolchildren of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in southern South Dakota. Piles of reports, papers, pictures and boxes line the room and occupy several chairs. Wedged…
Dreaming the prairie back to life
Even though the second-highest point in North Dakota lies just a few miles from the dwindling town of Regent, you probably wouldn’t know that if you saw it. At 3,468 feet, Black Butte rises from rolling wheat fields like a bump under a rug. But to Gary Greff it looks like the ideal spot for…
Heard around the West
Even bison, it turns out, need a bailout. Too many of the big critters are raised and not enough of us want to eat them. After producing more bison-burger than the market could bear, ranchers recently asked the federal government for help – their second request in as many years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture…
Dear Friends
Look for local experts At our invitation, writer Cate Gilles stopped in for lunch and an informal seminar about reporting on Indian reservations. Cate wrote for the Navajo-Hopi Observer and the Navajo Times – and freelanced for High Country News – before heading to the University of Colorado in Boulder as a Ted Scripps Fellow…
As salmon decline, feds draw the line
In northern Washington state, a 100-year-old system of irrigation ditches has turned the dry Methow Valley into a well-watered oasis. Alfalfa and oats grow on hobby farms and the water nurtures the wave of second homes popping up in this beautiful valley tucked along the eastern flank of the Cascade Range. Irrigation ditches deliver the…
Happy campers we shall always be
Every summer, my husband and I head for the woods, flushed with optimism and giddy with anticipation. The maps are crisp, the fuel cans are full and the road is open. And every summer, I forget that the reality of camping is different than that pictured in Dodge Dakota commercials and my mind. I imagine…
A grudge against sludge
DEER TRAIL, Colo. – Crowded into a corrugated-steel firehouse, some 50 farmers and ranchers are talking strategy. They have carved a break from their 16-hour, calving-season workdays to battle a common foe, and it’s not a dismal farm economy, nor is it drought. The people gathered in this town 60 miles east of Denver, are…
Cattlemen make use of a conservation tool
GUNNISON, Colo. – Frost gilds the branches of the elder and cottonwood trees bordering the Redden family’s pastureland as Brett Redden climbs into a tractor at dawn and delivers hay to 300 cattle. Then he goes to his “regular” job with the fire and rescue crew at Gunnison Airport. Some months he’ll pick up extra…
Rural Utah braces for a latter-day plague
These crickets and hoppers eat anything in front of them