United States, Mexico and Tohono O’odham Indians work to preserve the Sonoran Desert.
Chevron drops leases
Chevron USA surrendered all of its oil and gas leases in the Bridger-Teton National Forest near Jackson Hole, Wyo., last month. The surprise release of both its new 1993 leases and older ones dating back to the early 1980s may spare the 60,000-acre Willow Creek roadless area from drilling. Chevron says it backed off the…
Condos, not cows
Dear HCN, As retirees and industries flock to the West, many fear the loss of the region’s open spaces and wildlife habitat. Officials from extractive industries such as farming, ranching and timber capitalize on this fear, warning that if environmentalists and others who are demanding an end to subsidies are successful, subdivisions will proliferate as…
New Santa Fe mayor says: “This town is not for sale’
Defying predictions and the clout of big money, Santa Fe, N.M., voters elected former city councilor Debbie Jaramillo mayor March 1. She promised to rein in runaway development and return city government to the people. Pre-election polls and campaign funds had shown Jaramillo lagging well behind other candidates. Projected winner Peso Chavez raised $86,400 from…
Some advice for rural residents
Dear HCN, Yes, house hunting in Bozeman can be frustrating (as described in the Jan. 24 HCN, “Montana Town Puts Out the Unwelcome Mat”). But unlike others profiled in that story, I don’t exclusively blame footloose entrepreneurs, Californians or Hollywood stars for this and other growth-related problems. While not always to our liking, change is…
Some groups hot, some not
If membership figures are any indication, the 1990s will be a lot tougher for many environmental groups than the 1980s. Traditional heavyweights like The Wilderness Society, the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club and The National Wildlife Federation have experienced significant drops in membership since 1990. Membership at The Wilderness Society, for instance, dropped from…
Getting Dombeck was a coup
Dear HCN, A short correction to the article by Tony Davis in the Feb. 21 edition, Western Roundup section: In the first article on Jim Baca, the last paragraph mentions acting BLM director Mike Dombeck. Mike is not a career BLM employee … in fact, as recently as 1990, Mike was a staff fish biologist…
Tree poaching on the rise
Timber prices are now so high that renegade loggers in northern Idaho have been stealing trees from national forests. Recently, 15 people were arrested for 35 timber thefts that occurred last year on the Priest Lake District of the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. Don Hacker, 42, of Priest River, Idaho, was fined $600 and ordered…
We pay for cheap aluminum
Dear HCN, While the aluminum vs. dams article (HCN, 2/7/94) was good it was short of basic information: what the aluminum industry pays for power. People can understand grazing fees – try to get a horse fed for $3 per month or pay for patent land at $5 per acre – but we should know…
Noisy wildlife refuges
Arizona’s endangered bobwhite quail and New Mexico’s antelope may be running away from national wildlife refuges instead of toward them. According to a recent study by the non-profit Defenders of Wildlife, military overflights continue to disrupt at least 35 refuges. The group’s report, Unfriendly Skies, says that while bombers and fighter-planes practice overhead, startled birds…
Elevating mud to art
You might need to build a new addition just to house the Adobe Journal. The 11 by 14 inch quarterly from Albuquerque, N.M., allows ample room for black and white photos of adobe innovations, from castles with stained glass and arches, to “earthships” of tires and cans that house indoor gardens. Published by the non-profit…
Sun Day
When making plans for Earth Day this spring, don’t forget about Sun Day, April 24, a national celebration of renewable energy and energy conservation. Organizers hope to educate people about the potential of renewable energy and showcase renewable-energy programs and technologies. Over 50 national environmental, business, utility, student and government groups are sponsoring Sun Day,…
News but no paper
For people who want to keep up with environmental news but don’t want to drown in a sea of paper, Green Disk offers a wealth of information without filling up the mailbox or the local landfill. The Green Disk: Paperless Environmental Journal comes on a computer diskette in Mac or DOS format. Included in the…
A grand intellectual critique
John Ralston Saul has developed a theory to explain what ails the world: rationality run amuck. Language, in the hands of bureaucrats or modern poets and novelists, is designed to obscure, as in environmental impact statements, or is all style and no substance. The ultimate rationalizers – Robert S. McNamara and Henry Kissinger – destroy…
Hammering out “ecosystem management’
Lynx, grizzly bear and salmon could be the winners in a new plan to link the current patchwork of parks, national forests and recreation areas in Washington’s North Cascades. Along with the National Park Service, groups like The Wilderness Society, the National Parks and Conservation Association and the Canadian Earthcare Society will host a three-day…
Grazing plan springs a leak
The Department of Interior’s revised grazing reform regulations are not due out until the end of March, but leaked copies are already making headlines. According to the Washington Post, the big changes from last year’s reform proposal will be a grazing fee increase scaled back from $4.28 per animal unit month to $3.96; new incentives…
North Dakota may get a wilderness
In a surprise move in late February, North Dakota Gov. Ed Schafer endorsed portions of a Sierra Club plan to establish the state’s first ever federal wilderness areas. Although all of North Dakota’s major newspapers and many citizen’s groups have backed the wilderness plan, Schafer, a Republican, is the state’s first politician to sign on.…
Professionals, not cowboys
Dear HCN, After reading Ed Marston’s Comb Wash “A Stark Victory in Utah” editorial in the January issue of HCN, I am very disappointed. I am a long-time BLM employee but am not personally involved in Comb Wash. However, I know enough about the issue and BLM to know that your editorial is full of…
Bruce Babbitt as Captain Consensus
What do the following personages have in common: Albert Schweitzer, Linus Pauling, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Bruce Babbitt? Type O blood? A secret fondness for fondue, perhaps? Nope. According to Ed Marston, the normally skeptical publisher of High Country News, they all should be recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.…
Timber companies export logs – and jobs – to Asia
SUPERIOR, Mont. – An unusual alliance of environmentalists and millworkers has asked the government to close loopholes that let timber companies export logs from private ground in Washington and Oregon, then buy timber on national forests in Montana and Idaho. The exemption, allowed under a 1990 law that banned exports from state forests, costs Montana…
How to turn lemonade into lemons
The environmental movement seems intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. With a perverse political sense that values bad news and dismal foreboding over progress and natural evolution, environmentalists are putting a tragic, apocalyptic spin on every event. Take the firing of former Bureau of Land Management head Jim Baca. It was unfortunate.…
Dial 1/800-CANYON for reservations
The Grand Canyon can’t wait for long-term planning to deal with crowding problems, says Boyd Evison, interim superintendent at the park. He has proposed a reservation system for park visitors. It could be set up by 1995 and doesn’t require authorization from Congress. “The only way to maintain a positive experience without trampling the park…
On the borderline
A bleak, flat, grim, hot, gritty and wondrous desert
Dear friends
Locals win awards Two women from Paonia travelled to Austin, Texas, on March 5 to receive awards from the National Wildlife Federation at its annual banquet. Betsy Marston, the editor of High Country News, accepted the communications award – a statue of a whooping crane – on behalf of the paper. Theo Colborn, who was…
Canyonlands, Arches are invaded from above
The slickrock canyons near Moab, Utah, have already been discovered by four-wheel-drivers and mountain bikers, but now tourists are discovering mesas and redrock bluffs from the air, primarily by helicopter. Last year, two helicopter companies hung out their shingles in Moab and began giving expensive bird’s-eye-view tours of Arches and Canyonlands national parks, as well…
There’s gold, and no controls, in Mexico’s hills
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, On the borderline. QUITOVAC, Sonora – On a warm winter day, Esther Velasco Ortega greets visitors from a chair in the front yard of her cinderblock house. One of her visitors is Gary Nabhan, an ethnobotanist who buys saguaro fruit jelly from her every…
Border doesn’t block dirty air and water
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, On the borderline. Because much of the U.S.-Mexico border is already considered a “free trade” zone, additional impacts due to the North American Free Trade Agreement are hard to gauge. U.S. and Mexican environmentalists had hoped NAFTA would help their communities by strengthening regulations…
Three mountain lions killed at Glacier
Three bold mountain lions were treed by hounds and shot Feb. 10 after they took up residence beneath a vacant home in Montana’s Glacier National Park. Park rangers said they had to shoot the animals, whose under-the-front-porch den was near two occupied houses and within 25 yards of a sledding hill popular with local children.…
RS 2477: A loophole for vandals
For years, Utah’s Arch Canyon was closed to motorized vehicles to protect sensitive riparian and natural values. But when off-road vehicle users began promoting the canyon as a travel route for their annual jeep safari, the Bureau of Land Management opened the canyon to vehicle use. Now, vehicles crush streamside vegetation, send fragile soils downstream…
Earth First!ers experience Idaho-style justice
MOSCOW, Idaho – State and federal judges have been hammering members of Earth First! who are fighting the Cove-Mallard timber sales in central Idaho. In early February, Earth First!er Erik Ryberg was sentenced to six months in jail, with four months suspended, for interfering with a U.S. Forest Service officer. Ryberg also must pay a…