The Great Plains ranchers who have long grazed the national grasslands face a growing push by the Forest Service to take over management and try to restore the prairie landscape.
‘A natural calamity’
Through historical and eyewitness accounts, scientific analysis and amazing photos, Rob Carson’s Mount St. Helens: the Eruption and Recovery of a Volcano, takes us back to the blast of 20 years ago: “By the evening of May 18, Mount St. Helens was a smoking crater, hollowed-out and grey. It looked defiled, like the victim of…
Mining is forever
After a successful career as a hydrologist and consultant for mining companies in Montana, David Stiller decided to write a book. By looking at one mine in Montana that a prospector in 1898 named after his horse – the “Mike Horse” – Stiller says he hoped to alert people to the danger posed to Westerners…
Hispanics have a new voice
A new publication in the Four Corners region, El Valle, combines Spanish and English to focus on Hispanic people. “We have a real strong Hispanic community in the Four Corners area and we’re growing,” says publisher and editor LaVerta Valdez-Johnson. “Not many hear about us because our events are not covered in local newspapers.” She…
Nuclear waste needs new backyard
CALIFORNIA After more than a decade of legal challenges and nonviolent protests against a proposed nuclear-waste dump, the Save Ward Valley Coalition is closing its office. Members have gladly worked themselves out of a job. “We’ve made tremendous steps toward victory,” says Bradley Angel of Greenaction, one of the environmental groups in the coalition. US…
Help Hells Canyon
Managers of Hells Canyon on the Oregon-Idaho border, the deepest river-cut canyon in the world, are hoping for more direction in dealing with increasing numbers of visitors, longstanding grazing and logging and a mandate to protect the area. Until June 20, the public can have a say in the future of the canyon by commenting…
The Wayward West
David Brower resigned from the national board of the Sierra Club on May 18, criticizing its neutral stand on U.S. immigration issues (HCN, 5/11/98: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses) and accusing the organization of a general lack of gumption. “Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part…
Latin American Festival in the Mountains
More than 200 volunteers are needed at the 7th annual Latin American Festival in The Mountains, July 1 in Carbondale, Colo. The festival celebrates Latin American culture through food, arts, crafts and performances. Contact Adriana Chavira at 970/945-4060. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Latin American Festival in…
Western Issues Conference
Family histories will be told at the Western Issues Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, June 23-24. Writers Kim Barnes, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Philip Deloria and Vicki Ruiz are among those talking to 200 people about living in the West. Contact the Sun Valley Center for the Arts at P.O. Box 656, Sun Valley, ID 83353…
Fishtrap
Fishtrap, an annual writer’s gathering in Wallowa Lake, Ore., July 10-16, features Ursula K. LeGuin and Luis Alberto Urrea, among other writers. Contact Fishtrap at P.O. Box 38, Enterprise, OR 97828 (541/426-3623). This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Fishtrap.
839 Ways to Move Colorado in the Right Direction
The nonprofit Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado is looking for people to repair trails, plant trees and work on a variety of projects this summer. Last year, more than 2,700 people joined VOC’s volunteer programs. To find out what needs doing, consult the group’s directory, 839 Ways to Move Colorado in the Right Direction, available from…
Mining tops toxic list
NATION For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency’s annual inventory of industrial toxic releases included hardrock mining and six other industries – and the newcomers stole the show. With the addition of these industries to the Toxics Release Inventory (HCN, 9/16/96), reported toxic releases in the United States nearly tripled, increasing from 2.6 to…
The Continental Divide Trail Alliance
The Continental Divide Trail Alliance hopes to lure people to some of the most scenic and ecologically diverse areas in the West for a vacation of trail building, weed pulling or sign repairing. Volunteers can choose from 33 projects along the 3,100-mile trail. Contact CDTA, P.O. Box 628, Pine, CO 80470, or call 888/909-CDTA or…
Gold at What Price? The Need for a Public Debate on National Gold Reserves
A report by three environmental groups says national gold reserves are harmful both economically and environmentally. When governments lock up large gold reserves, they force new, often environmentally destructive mining to meet the market demand for the metal, says the 24-page study, Gold At What Price? The Need for a Public Debate on National Gold…
Seattle passes on greenhouse gases
WASHINGTON Politicos in Seattle, Wash., took Earth Day to heart. Mayor Paul Schell and the city council made an unprecedented pledge: to meet Seattle’s future electricity needs without increasing net greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists say these gases, some of them produced by burning fossil fuels such as coal, make the Earth’s temperature rise. “The mayor…
Governor’s forum on Environment and Natural Resources
Government officials, environmentalists and ranchers will meet in Wyoming this summer to discuss how collaborative processes work, when they are appropriate and which tools are necessary for success. Case studies of successful and unsuccessful collaborations in the West will be used as examples. To attend the Governor’s Forum on Environment and Natural Resources in Riverton,…
The roadless tour begins
NATION Environmental groups and the timber industry are united for once. Both oppose the Forest Service’s plan for protecting roadless areas. The plan, released May 9, comes in response to President Clinton’s promise last October to protect undesignated wilderness in national forests (HCN, 11/8/99: A new road for the public lands). The proposal would ban…
Heard around the West
In the West, people sometimes find bears scrounging for food in the kitchen or cougars pacing the deck. In the East, a chubby house cat can spook the neighbors. Residents of Bensalem, Penn., became alarmed when they saw what they thought was a 50-pound wildcat or worse, a “mysterious monster,” reports The Denver Post. Seven…
Shakespeare in Montana
Montanans are proud of the state’s world-class trout streams, abundant elk herds and their ongoing love affair with Shakespeare. Hang around bars, billiard halls or restaurants across the state and you can easily strike up a conversation with the locals on which of the bard’s plays and characters rings true to their heart. Shakespeare was…
Grizzlies: going, going …
People are the greatest threat to grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park, according to a 73-page Sierra Club report, Rural Residential Development Trends in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Since the Listing of the Grizzly Bear. Writer Vanessa K. Johnson says rapid growth in the counties surrounding Yellowstone chews up what’s left of the bears’ habitat.…
Arizona adds sunshine
Arizona’s plentiful sunshine will soon supply a small part of the state’s power. By the start of 2001, electricity providers in Arizona will be required to begin using renewable resources such as the sun, wind, biomass generators and landfill gas, for one quarter of 1 percent of total electricity used. By 2007, the state wants…
Painting the prairie
Crowded Prairie: Four Painters, an exhibition at the Ucross Foundation Art Gallery in Ucross, Wyo., features 34 paintings by Karen Kitchel, Chuck Forsman, John Hull and James Lancel McElhinney. “Each (painter) has something to say that is very serious about the environmental impact of our technology on the land,” says Gordon McConnell, curator of the…
Invisible roads block wilderness
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Imagine a map of North Dakota with every section line – the crisscrossed lines that stretch north-south and east-west across the state precisely one mile apart – converted into a public road. That’s just what the Dakota Territorial Legislature imagined in 1871, when it…
Dear Friends
Eyewitnesses visit Abe Jacobson and Carol Griffiths Jacobson were driving an unusual rig when they dropped by in May. Two kayaks and a canoe rode atop their van, which was stuffed with paddles, snowshoes, skis and just about every other outdoor toy you can imagine. This was no ordinary vacation, they explained; they were refugees.…
Hanford executive quits in protest
Cleanup mounts to more than $15 billion
The West’s hottest question: How to burn what’s bound to burn
In the wake of the Cerro Grande fire, everyone ponders prescribed burning
More trouble waits in the wings
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article,”The West’s hottest question: How to burn what’s bound to burn.” While the 1988 fire at Yellowstone National Park stands today as an ecological success story, some scientists and forest managers say the Cerro Grande fire will be…
Supreme Court upholds Babbitt’s grazing reforms
Putting livestock on public land is a privilege, not a right
Can ‘property rightsniks’ stop a popular bill?
WASHINGTON, D.C. – You know folks are going to lose when they choose Helen Chenoweth-Hage to close their argument. Resplendent in a red suit, perhaps symbolic of going down in flames, the Idaho Republican stood at the well of the House and used her two minutes to … well, that wasn’t quite clear; her rhetoric…
Change on the Plains
Ranchers on the national grasslands see their power ebb as a new era rushes in
A dissident speaks up for the Badlands
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story To get to John Heiser’s home on the high plains of western North Dakota, you turn at the construction yard (“They’d like to pave everything over”), then bear left when you spot the microwave tower (“I think to myself every day how I’d like…
Elk find no home on the grasslands
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When rangers at North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park culled the park’s burgeoning elk herd early this year, they sent about 200 of the animals to Kentucky. There, the state wildlife division reintroduced the once-native animals to parts of the Appalachian state. This struck…