Catron County, N.M., the home of the county independence movement, is a study of contrasts – its people heavily dependent on the federal government and its land and rivers dying.
Still stealing trees
Since the U.S. Forest Service disbanded its special timber-theft task force nearly a year ago, investigations of large-scale timber theft have ground to a halt. That’s the conclusion of Unindicted Co-Conspirator, a report by the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Governmental Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington, D.C.-based group that protects government…
Ranger charges ranchers with assault
When Chuck Oliver’s job with the Forest Service in Montana fell victim to an agency consolidation three years ago, he seized the chance to return to his native New Mexico. But Oliver, a range conservationist on the Gila National Forest in Catron County, found that public-lands grazing was much more contentious in the Southwest than…
Mountain outposts of empire
Although the Sangre de Cristo Mountains are almost synonymous with New Mexico, the range – the longest in the United States – extends about 110 miles into Colorado. Tom Wolf, a writer and one-time forestry student, explores these northern Sangres in Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Starting with the Anasazi and continuing through the Spanish,…
Alarmed by consensus
Dear HCN, I am alarmed by the collaborative approach described in the May 13 issue and praised by Karl Hess Jr. in the May 27 issue. Though born and raised in the Rocky Mountain West, I moved East to work and live here happily, though I return West as often as possible. As a supporter…
Twenty-something takes Sierra Club’s helm
In the midst of moving its offices from San Francisco’s run-down Tenderloin district to the trendy South of Market district, the Sierra Club elected a new president, 23-year-old Adam Werbach. Werbach will be in charge of a network of 5,000 volunteers and the club’s professional staff. He is 24 years younger than the average member.…
Consensus breaks out in Idaho
Dear HCN, Your May 13 special issue on Westerners talking together was timely and thought-provoking. Two such efforts are under way on north-central Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest. It’s too soon to know if they will be a success, but it is worth noting that the Forest Service has been an honest and energetic proponent. The…
Proposed hatchery breeds conflict
If the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has its way, a new steelhead hatchery will be built on the moss-covered ruins of an abandoned federal hatchery. But the agency’s plan for the $4 million Grandy Creek steelhead hatchery – the state’s 91st – faces stiff opposition. Many conservation and fishing groups, as well as…
We need both
Dear HCN, Thanks to Mike McCloskey for sharing, and thanks to you for printing, his memo on the limits of collaboration. This is a very important issue: To what extent can environmental problems be solved through collaboration of interest groups at the watershed level? I believe the bottom line is that the environment needs both…
Frog story hurt, not helped
Dear HCN, I feel compelled to respond to Todd Wilkinson’s May 2 article, “Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion,” because it exemplifies one of the greatest problems facing contemporary conservation issues today: polarization. Wilkinson’s article does not just present the arena of opposition but pushes the fighters further into their respective corners. This article promotes…
He’s true blue
Dear HCN, I enjoyed reading about Sid Goodloe (HCN, 4/15/96) – a fellow who applied grit and intelligence to fix his piece of the West. I didn’t exactly enjoy, but sure did appreciate, the contrast provided by the “opinions from experts.” The “experts’ certainly covered most of the type. The old forestry professor is impressive…
Clean air victory in Colorado
The operators of the polluting, coal-fired Hayden Power Plant in northwestern Colorado have agreed to reform. The pressure began in 1995, when the Sierra Club won a lawsuit holding the plant accountable for more than 17,000 clean air violations (HCN, 11/27/95). The EPA followed this year with a notice of 10,234 additional violations. Rather than…
Chaining is a sop for cows
Dear HCN, HCN muddies the waters in regard to “chaining” of piûon-juniper woodlands almost as much as Sid Goodloe does (HCN, 4/15/96). Just think of it as deforestation accompanied by profound soil disturbance, habitat aridification and heating due to increased wind velocity and insolation, and destruction of virtually all extant wildlife habitat. On public lands…
No pay for pooches
Will Defenders of Wildlife, the nonprofit group that compensates ranchers for livestock killed by wolves, also pay for pets that become prey? Several private citizens and government employees have raised that question since a hunting dog was killed by a pack of wolves near Fishtail, Mont., last December. The answer is no, says Hank Fischer,…
Enola Hill report was nowhere near objective
ENOLA HILL REPORT WAS NOWHERE NEAR OBJECTIVE Dear HCN: I work as a recreation forester for the Mount Hood National Forest where the Enola Hill timber sale is taking place and the sale has no “350-year-old Douglas fir that loom,” as HCN intern Bill Taylor reports (HCN, 5/27/96): The trees are about 90 years old,…
Lessons of Lewis and Clark
Our Natural History: the Lessons of Lewis and Clark describes the wilderness of the American West as the two explorers encountered it during their journey 1804-1806, and compares it to today’s American West as shaped by industrial civilization. Long the subject of historians, the famous journals also offer author Daniel B. Botkin, a leader in…
It’s the pits
Summo USA Corp. hopes to extract 34 million pounds of copper each year over a 10-year period from the Lisbon Valley southeast of Moab, Utah. The operation would include four open-pit mines as well as waste-rock dumps and a processing plant on 1,030 acres of public, state and private lands. According to a draft environmental…
Marvel ups the ante
Marvel ups the ante Sporting a bright-green button that said: “I support welfare ranching,” Hailey, Idaho, conservationist Jon Marvel bid $12,000 for the right to lease a 960-acre parcel of state land. After rancher Mike Ward bid $12,050 for the 10-year lease, Marvel folded and declared victory. “We’ve approximately tripled the cost of the lease…
Can the silence be unbroken?
Rocky Mountain National Park has so far been spared the headache – and earache – of commercial scenic overflights for one reason: no tour operators exist yet. Hoping to head off possible conflicts, Transportation Secretary Federico Peûa has proposed a ban on commercial overflights in the park. Peûa’s May 11 recommendation came with three alternatives:…
Making history on the prairie
The Prairie Plains Resource Institute got its start 16 years ago when its founders gathered seeds from prairie grasses near Aurora, Neb., and planted them along a muddy creek in town. By restoring this small 15-acre corridor, “we were making a new history,” says institute manager Bill Whitney. Since then the land trust has sponsored…
Living with wildlife
As suburbia swells into wild country throughout the West, conflicts between humans and wildlife increase: Deer graze in gardens and dogs lope into the hills after packs of singing coyotes. Occasionally, a black bear wanders close to a subdivision or a mountain lion lunges for someone’s pet. To keep such inevitable encounters as positive as…
The Forest Ranger
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Catron County’s politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt Mike Gardner has worked for the Forest Service in Catron County for 15 years, first as a wilderness ranger on the Gila National Forest, then as district ranger in Luna, and since 1988 as…
State lands: money isn’t everything
Pockets of land exist all over Colorado where locals hunt, hike, farm and ranch. They look like public land. But these 3 million acres of trust lands, established by the federal government in 1876, usually have one purpose – to make money for public schools. And increasingly, in these boom times, the state land board…
The Psychologist
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Catron County’s politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt Melinda Garcia of Albuquerque has been a clinical and community psychologist for 25 years. She has led three day-long sessions in Catron County for Forest Service employees and their families: one on the high…
The Country Doctor
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Catron County’s politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt Mark Unverzagt, a doctor in Reserve, N.M., took up Melinda Garcia’s challenge and became key to the formation of Concerned Citizens for Catron County. The group, comprised of some 18 ranchers, local politicians, Forest…
Ski industry masters the sneak attack
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Legislation often resembles siege warfare back in the days of the battering ram and the catapult. The attackers figure that the more stuff they throw at the walls – rocks, spears, little guys – the better the odds that something will get through. They’re right, because the defenders tend to relax after…
Predator control: more pain than gain
A lot of cows die every year in Montana, most often in a slaughterhouse on their way to a hamburger bun. Others succumb to weather, disease and calving problems. Then there are predators – the lions and coyotes and bears so often scorned as the scourge of the range. The federal Animal Damage Control agency…
Idaho air base guns for more space, again
If cats have nine lives, how many lives do bombing range expansions have? Air Force officials hope their plan for an air training and dummy bomb range in southwest Idaho has at least three. In a series of meetings early this month, Mountain Home Air Force Base unveiled its third training-range expansion plan. Air Force…
Heard around the West
At least once a day, High Country News is mistaken for the local High Country Shopper. In the Shopper you can find goats, chain-link fence, slightly used wedding dresses and the like for bargain prices. Depending on your blood sugar level, the headlines for ads in the Shopper can seem anything from commonplace to hallucinatory…
Pact promises cleaner canyon air
GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK – As thunder rumbled in the distance and a hawk wheeled overhead, Grand Canyon Park Superintendent Rob Arnberger stood on the canyon’s rim and stared into a bank of television cameras. He said what a year ago he doubted he would ever get to tell the world: “Today we are saying…
Development plan breaks consensus on grizzlies
The pact worked out last year between Plum Creek Timber Co. in Montana’s Swan Valley and some federal and state agencies looked like a good deal for both bears and loggers. Then this May, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund served notice it will file suit to negate the agreement. What’s changed is Plum Creek’s…
Canyonlands is a park in name only; in truth only highly organized chaos reigns
They put a park on it in 1964. Canyonlands National Park. People struggled to define its borders, to leave in Indian Creek, or to exclude Lavender Canyon, should the Orange Cliffs be inside or outside? A congressional hearing was held. Meanwhile rocks off the Orange Cliffs broke loose and moved from BLM land into proposed…
Dear friends
We brake for summer We skip the next issue of High Country News because, we like to joke, everyone needs a chance to catch up on their HCN reading. Some of us here will hike, bike or cheer for kids at summer baseball games, others will head for “meditation camp” in New Mexico, and all…
Catron County’s politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
GLENWOOD, N.M. – In 1962, Hugh B. McKeen’s rancher parents brought him back to their native Catron County after 15 years in crowded, hectic Southern California. Catron County was then, and still is, everything that urban America is not. Lying four to five hours by car from Albuquerque and Phoenix, it has no local newspapers,…
Fire sweeps through the Southwest
The fire season started with a vengeance this year in the parched Southwest. As of June 16, firefighters had extinguished more than 2,400 fires in Arizona and New Mexico that charred some 230,000 acres. Fire crews from all over the West are camped on the airport lawn in Albuquerque, poised for assignments. “This has been…
The County Attorney
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Catron County’s politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt Jim Catron is a fourth-generation New Mexican and a distant relative of Thomas Benton Catron, the land baron for whom Catron County is named. He lives in La Joya, N.M., and is county attorney…
Wyoming climbers win equal footing
CASPER, Wyo. “There are nearly 200 separate climbing routes up the granite face of Devils Tower National Monument, and Andy Petefish will be able to guide you up any one of them this month – thanks to a ruling by a federal judge. Petefish and other climbing guides have won the first round in what…
The Businessperson
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Catron County’s politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt “You’re not going to get people to tell you what’s going on here for the record, because they’re afraid of retaliation,” one Catron County businessperson told High Country News, speaking on condition of anonymity.…