The land trust movement is bigger than the earliest groups imagined, but the challenge the 250 Western groups face is even bigger, as development swallows the last open space.
A test case on access
MONTANA A federal judge says a family living inside Montana’s Glacier National Park can no longer use a snowmobile to access their property. Former Denver residents Jack and Stephanie McFarland sued Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in Missoula’s U.S. District Court on Feb. 2. The McFarlands said park officials had acted improperly when they refused to…
Tern terror
OREGON Near the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon, Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, The Birds, has come to life. Over 10,000 pairs of Caspian terns nest on Rice Island, and while the birds aren’t attacking people, they are eating millions of young salmon (HCN, 10/26/98: Are birds to blame for vanishing salmon?). A biological assessment…
Drain it now, says organization
Glen Canyon Action Network, an advocacy group that wants to drain Lake Powell, will hold its Restoration Celebration and Rendezvous at Glen Canyon Dam on March 14. The event, which coincides with the International Day of Action Against Dams and the anniversary of author Edward Abbey’s death, “will be a celebration, not a protest,” says…
One rancher’s narrow viewpoint
Dear HCN, I can’t quite figure why Peggy Godfrey’s story got front-page coverage (HCN, 12/6/99: Peggy Godfrey’s long, strange trip). While she is certainly an interesting person, her life and outlook are neither unique nor visionary. She appears to view the world through the same narrow slot common to many other ranchers. Her awareness and…
Bovine boondoggle
Cows eat up more than just grass in the West, says a special investigative report by the San Jose Mercury News. According to “Cash Cows: The Giveaway of the West,” federal-lands grazing consumes tax dollars without giving much back. Published in November and now available in eight-page color reprints, the report was compiled by 10…
‘Old West’ Idaho was better
Dear HCN, I was born and raised in Idaho near Sun Valley. The Wood River Valley was an incredible place in which to grow up; I was as carefree as Huck Finn. The fishing and hunting were fantastic, and it wasn’t considered politically incorrect then. Idaho’s scenery was beautiful and pristine, and the “undesignated wilderness’…
Goose eggs in Congress
According to the League of Conservation Voters’ 1999 National Environmental Scorecard, over one-third of senators received a zero percent score. Western delegates cast their votes against the environment more often than their counterparts from other regions. Eleven Western senators earned a big zilch, including the entire delegations of Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. Of those,…
We’re making a new claim on nature
Dear HCN, Many thanks for Allen Best’s excellent feature story on the White River National Forest Plan (HCN, 1/17/00: STOP – A national forest tries to rein in recreation). On a related topic, a conference held in December in Snowmass, Colo., provided in-depth dialogue on many of the issues at play in the White River…
Fed-bashing investigated
Gloria Flora got the ball rolling. After she resigned as supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in November (HCN, 11/22/99: Nevadans drive out forest supervisor), the Forest Service sent a team to investigate her charges of “anti-federal fervor” and “fed-bashing” in Nevada. Although the team’s report says that working conditions for Forest Service employees throughout…
A red herring issue
Dear HCN, In “Experiment takes the cut out of logging” (HCN, 1/17/00: Experiment takes the cut out of logging), Mark Matthews writes, “Some environmentalists who have followed the (Flathead Forestry Project) group fear that, like the Quincy Library Group in Northern California, stewardship contracts put land that is owned by every U.S. taxpayer in the…
Saving the environment saves money
A coalition of 27 environmental, taxpayer and budget-watchdog groups has produced its sixth annual report, Green Scissors 2000, which cites 77 wasteful government programs that harm the environment and cost taxpayers $50 billion. The 26-page report targets programs such as timber and irrigation subsidies and predator control projects, detailing their cost to the taxpayer and…
WTO protesters deserve better
Dear HCN, I have some problems with Jon Margolis’ Washington Watch (HCN, 1/31/00: Protesters raised the right questions): Some anti-WTO demonstrators’ arguments might or might not have been “silly,” but one adjective does not constitute a counterargument. Some of the costumes were “silly’? We readers and the protesters in the street struggles deserve more than…
Porta-potties to Posters: Planning Community Events
Community planners and historic site interpreters can prepare for tourism along Lewis and Clark’s historical route by attending a variety of courses at Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Training Academy in Great Falls, Mont. One session offered this summer, Porta-potties to Posters: Planning Community Events, even tells how to prepare for the unexpected. Contact Lewis and…
McNeal should be sheepish
Dear HCN, If many families elected to have eight children, as Lyle McNeal did (HCN, 1/31/00: Searching for pasture), there would be no space available to pasture his Churro sheep. In fact, it will be “Standing Room Only” for humans on our fragile planet. Lew VavraLaramie, Wyoming This article appeared in the print edition of…
The Murie Center
The Murie Center in Moose, Wyo., in Grand Teton National Park, will host a gathering July 20-23 to celebrate the legacy of the Muries: Mardy and Olaus and Adolph and Louise Murie. The program includes speakers, conversations about wilderness, conservation biology, history, and personal reflections on the contributions the Muries have made to American conservation.…
Impressions of Nature, an Internet photography exhibit and auction
American Land Conservancy is presenting Impressions of Nature, an Internet photography exhibit and auction. From March 3-31, visit their on-line gallery at www.impressionsofnature.org and view 71 works (see illustration at right) by renowned nature photographers such as Art Wolfe, Thomas Mangelson and David Muench. Then link to www.ebay.com to bid on the photos. For more…
High Altitude Revegetation Workshop
Colorado State University’s High Altitude Revegetation Workshop in Fort Collins, Colo., March 8-10, features William Perry Pendley, director of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, as keynote speaker, and a tour of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. Call 970/491-7501 for registration information, and Gary Thor for workshop information, 970/491-7296. This article appeared in the print edition of…
Montana loses an environmental leader
WHITEFISH, Mont. – The works of great men last long beyond their passing, so it was fitting that the memorial service for Ben Cohen was in the community theater he helped found, at the base of the mountain he loved to ski. Friends, family, former and sitting Supreme Court justices, legislative colleagues, ski buddies, and…
Northwest Wilderness Conference
Author David Brower and veteran Northwest environmentalist Polly Dyer will speak at the Northwest Wilderness Conference in Seattle, March 31-April 2, where everything from Lewis and Clark’s legacy to the economic value of wilderness will be discussed. Sponsored by the Wilderness Society and the Northwest Wilderness and Parks Conference, the groups want to increase wilderness…
10th Annual Spring Conference
The Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts is sponsoring its 10th Annual Spring Conference in Golden, Colo., April 6-8, opening with a talk by High Country News publisher Ed Marston. Topics include water rights, public policy updates, monitoring and enforcing conservation easements, and finding and using volunteers. Early registration deadline is March 15. Write Colorado Coalition…
Tom Bell quotes
“While I am a believer in the multiple-use principle, the concept of conservation, and an ecological approach to resource use, I find myself reacting to those who disregard any or all of these. And so I strike back. To the public, it would appear I am completely and diametrically opposed to all progress, to all…
The Wayward West
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has a new name for his proposed protected areas: National Landscape Monuments (HCN, 12/20/99: The Wayward West). Landscape monuments run by the Bureau of Land Management would lack the tourist amenities of national monuments, and mining would be prohibited. But not everyone is convinced that the BLM is the right agency…
Roadkill keeps the peace
WASHINGTON In January, hunters from eastern Washington’s Methow Valley delivered 300 pounds of roadkilled deer to six western Washington tribes. The delivery signaled the start of a groundbreaking agreement, in which the tribes agree to stop hunting in the valley in exchange for the meat. Tribal hunters have lost much of their traditional hunting ground…
Book says cows don’t belong on most BLM lands
Debra Donahue, a law professor at the University of Wyoming with an M.S. degree in wildlife biology, has gathered biology, economics and history in her The Western Range Revisited: Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity. Her proposal to evict livestock from arid rangelands receiving less than 12 inches of precipitation annually is…
What to do about “Frankenfoods’?
NATION The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may say bioengineered foods are safe, but two natural-food chains say they don’t trust the agency’s word. Boulder, Colo.-based Wild Oats Markets and Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market are banning genetically engineered foods from their private product lines. “There are significant unanswered health and environmental concerns,” says a…
Tribe calls dam a trout trap
MONTANA The Blackfeet Tribe’s Fish and Game Department wants to remove a 95-year-old dam on its reservation that backs water up three miles into Glacier National Park. Getting rid of aging Sherburne Dam, says Blackfeet biologist Ira New Breast, would eliminate the biggest threat to the St. Mary River’s bull trout, a population recently added…
BLM signs snatched
UTAH San Juan County officials recently removed federal “road closed” signs on three dirt roads they claim in the Grand Gulch area of southeastern Utah. The action could provoke a lawsuit to test who owns these roads – San Juan County or the Bureau of Land Management (HCN, 10/28/96: Utah counties bulldoze the BLM, Park…
Dog doesn’t get its day
NATION Ranchers, farmers and land developers can breathe a sigh of relief; the black-tailed prairie dog won’t be listed as an endangered species – at least not yet. Citing a lack of money and staff and a long list of species in greater need, the Fish and Wildlife Service ruled that protection for the black-tailed…
Acre by acre
Can land trusts save the West’s disappearing open space?
A land-trust toolbox
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When land-trust staffers get together, they can sometimes sound more like a group of real estate lawyers than environmental advocates. The deals they broker are complicated, but they use a few basic tools over and over again. A conservation easement is a legal agreement…
‘We didn’t even know what a land trust was’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Sanctuary Forest was founded in 1987 to protect Big Red, a 2,000-year-old redwood tree in Northern California’s Mattole River watershed. “We started with 11 people, since it took 11 of us to join hands and stand around this one particular tree,” says executive director…
‘We need a whole paradigm shift’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In 1990, the McDowell-Sonoran Land Trust was founded to protect a 36,000-acre, billion-dollar chunk of private and state land near the affluent community of Scottsdale, Ariz. “We realized we weren’t going to raise that money selling T-shirts, so we went to the city,” says…
‘Our first focus is the landowner’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust is the first land trust founded by agricultural producers. Jay Fetcher, a rancher in Colorado’s Yampa Valley, hit on the idea of a cattlemen’s land trust when he and his family put an easement on their land in…
‘We have a stake in the place’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Five Valleys Land Trust in Missoula, Mont., was founded 27 years ago to protect the area’s river corridors. The group has since broadened its mission, and has protected over 15,000 acres with easements or acquisitions.Recently, the trust purchased 1,000 acres of land on…
‘The growth wasn’t organic’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Utah Open Lands is a statewide group that holds about 18,000 acres in conservation easements. In 10 years, it’s grown far beyond the expectations of executive director Wendy Fisher, who helped start the group in Park City when she was finishing her senior year…
In Wyoming, academic freedom is an endangered species
Mention the term academic freedom, and some people picture professors sitting in ivory towers, writing arcane articles and books for each other. They’re wrong. Academic research and higher education may be specialized, but they are not arcane or irrelevant. Ask the students who flock to this nation’s major universities, or visit the industries that have…
Burgers bolster Colorado open space
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. On their way to Steamboat Springs, Colo., skiers and snowboarders from Denver skirt the open, snow-covered pastures of the Yampa River Valley. Snowhounds who enjoy those condo-free vistas can now help preserve them – by chowing down on hamburgers after a day on the…
The West ‘ain’t no cow country’
Whatever might be said of the arid West, it “ain’t no cow country.” That’s what Henry Fonda, playing Wyatt Earp, said of Arizona in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946). That’s also the bottom line of a book I wrote, The Western Range Revisited: Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity. In it,…
Dear Friends
For the record In the gentlest way, J. Robb Brady, former editor of the Idaho Falls Post Register, corrects a statement in our front-page coverage of breaching dams on the Lower Snake River (HCN, 12/20/99: Unleashing the Snake). Paul Larmer had written that the Idaho Statesman had been the first newspaper to advocate breaching the…
Heard around the West
The U.S. Forest Service is thinking about changing the color of its 15,000 vehicles, now mint green. A new color would help create a more modern image, says an agency spokesperson, according to the Portland Oregonian. Some employees say they’d also welcome some anonymity on the job. Needling the federal agency, the Northwest Forestry Association…
HCN at 30: The saga begins
On the cover of the Oct. 22, 1970, issue of High Country News, there’s a photograph of a hunter packing out what later would become the paper’s mascot, the Rocky Mountain goat. The man – Charlie Farmer of Cheyenne, Wyo. – was the first person to bag a mountain goat in Wyoming’s first official hunt.…
A prof takes on the sacred cow
Wyoming’s Cowboy Joes jump on a grazing critic
To breach or not to breach
Salmon advocates stand up for tearing down dams
‘We still have a ways to go’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Jefferson Land Trust, based in Port Townsend, Wash., is a 10-year-old land trust on the Olympic Peninsula with 1,140 acres in conservation easements. In 1996, the trust also acquired the 130-acre Janis Bulis Forest Preserve, donated by Bulis’ widow, Erika Bulis, who continues…
A town defends a peacemaker
District Ranger Linda Duffy opened her door to the community