A court ruling calls for major reevaluation of Columbia and Snake river dams.
South Pass reconsidered
A Wyoming environmental group has been successful in getting the Bureau of Land Management to reconsider the route of a natural gas pipeline over historic South Pass. Following a tour of the area last year, the Wyoming Outdoor Council convinced former BLM chief Jim Baca to reconsider the route. Council founder Tom Bell and other…
Bring back real estate ads
Dear HCN, I just noted your new policy of not running real estate ads and wanted to say that this was one of the features I really enjoy about HCN. Why not limit the wording in some way? Your readership is an excellent target audience for environmentally unique properties. Also, if they buy it, your…
We pay for a “nice way of life’
Dear HCN, It is hard to realize that less than 29,000 ranchers in the West can have such an unreasonable political influence over public lands. Some major industries have laid off more employees than the total number of ranchers in the West. We doubt that condominiums will ever replace ranches. The isolation, severe weather, lack…
Recovery plan bearly there
Seventeen environmental groups said March 16 they will sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because its Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan will fail. The announcement follows a similar notice filed by three other groups in late January (HCN, 2/21/94). All say the federal plan needs to include more specific standards for the protection of core…
Environmentalists are revolutionaries
Dear HCN, As an environmentalist, I was surprised at Ed Marston’s conclusion in his recent HCN, essay (-How to turn lemonade into lemons,” March 21) that “the goal of environmentalism was never to achieve a cultural revolution.” Silly me. I thought I was part of a social movement with a goal of enacting fundamental social…
Wildlife advocates stand firm
Despite pressure from Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus not to testify against the proposed Owyhee Canyon bombing range, both the Idaho Fish and Game Department and its appointed commission came out against it (HCN, 1/24/94). At a recent public hearing, department representatives opposed the northern portion of the bombing range, saying it seriously threatens the protection…
Blah, blah, blah
Dear HCN, I don’t care much for Jeffrey St. Clair’s writing. This was my reaction to the first essay of his that I saw in your paper; and the feeling is only reinforced by his second essay (HCN, 3/21/94). Both pieces seek to validate accusations with such meaningless generalizations as “ecological cleansing” and “intellectual venereal…
A leaking public lands fund
The Clinton administration recently proposed spending $254 million of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The amount – less than anything proposed by the Bush administration – shocked some environmentalists. They hoped Clinton would tap more of the $900 million that flows each year into the fund, primarily from offshore oil drilling royalties. Environmentalists calculate…
Watch out for the military
Dear HCN, Steve Stuebner’s article on the Idaho Training Range (HCN, 1/24/94, p. 5), a proposed Air Force bombing range that will turn approximately 3 million acres of southwest Idaho into a virtual battle zone, accurately reflects the stakes for Idaho’s environment. Environmentalists in other Western states ought to pay close attention to the Pentagon’s…
Northwest forest watchers
Who says writing letters doesn’t work? Last fall Okanogan National Forest in Washington received over 700 letters protesting a draft environmental impact statement for the Granite Mountain Roadless Area. As a result, forest officials dropped plans to build at least 30 miles of new roads and log 15 million board-feet of timber. Leaders of Methow…
Lions can’t choose
Dear HCN, I had to read “Three mountain lions killed at Glacier” twice to believe it. “The risks to the residents were extraordinary,” a ranger is quoted as saying. Residents? Which residents? It sure did turn out to be risky for the lions. Since when are our national parks supposed to be safe suburbs for…
Explosives “rearrange’ a class 6 river rapid
Someone finally got the best of Quartzite Falls, one of the toughest rapids in North America. They blew it up. Most boaters had to portage around the dangerous class-six rapid in Arizona’s Salt River Canyon Wilderness, and two were killed last year trying to run it. But a powerful blast sometime this winter smoothed it…
Charisma counts
Although Americans want a balanced and healthy ecosystem and favor the right of all species to exist, turtles and otters are valued above rodents and insects. Donald Coursey, public policy specialist at the University of Chicago, says his national survey “showed a difference between the public’s walk and their talk.” Conducted last fall, the survey…
Landfills: It depends on the size
Dear HCN: Please accept our thanks for the article on solid-waste management in rural areas (HCN, 3/7/94). It may well be the fairest treatment we have seen of these rules designed partly to keep today’s landfills from becoming tomorrow’s Superfund sites. One point, however, could have alarmed some small landfill operators. In discussing the Natural…
A word for the wild
The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act protects rivers and streams – no matter how small – from development and pollution. In Colorado, the Cache la Poudre remains the only river protected under the act. The non-profit Colorado Environmental Coalition would like more free-flowing rivers designated, but needs help to identify the most remarkable in Colorado.…
Not the whole story
Dear HCN, Terri Martin of the National Parks and Conservation Association voices alarm about the RS 2477 road right-of-way loophole now being employed by wise-use groups to frustrate the public interest (-Other Voices’ HCN, 3/21/94). In the interest of truth, she should tell the whole story. Rather than pursue a compromise on the issue of…
Of cows and acres
Dear HCN, I would like to make a technical point. Increasingly, people are quoting the quasi-statistic that “anywhere one has to talk acres per cow, rather than cows per acre, is no place to be grazing livestock.” Even the world’s most intensively managed irrigated pastures do not often support a stocking rate in excess of…
From driveways to watersheds
Suburbs and ranchettes sprouting across the Western landscape often add pollution to already burdened watersheds. Residential pollution comes from oil, pesticides, and fertilizers washed off driveways and yards. The University of Nevada Cooperative Extension in Reno has launched an effort to reduce nonpoint pollution of the Truckee River by educating residents about sources of pollution…
Whose traditional homeland?
Dear HCN, Maria Mondragon-Valdez wrote in your March 7 issue about the contentious issue of who should own the 121-square-mile Taylor Ranch in southern Colorado. She questioned whether a corporation or state entity should be able to “dominate and exploit resources at the expense of a community which considers the landscape part of its traditional…
Wolves get green light
Wolves will roam wild again in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho as early as fall. Although 60,000 people opposed wolf reintroduction, 100,000 people told the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service they supported its draft environmental impact statement for wolf recovery. Ed Bangs, project leader for the agency in Missoula, Mont., said many people commented…
Consensus on tape
The consensus approach to public-land grazing is like ecosystem management: a largely undefined process. To ground matters, Oregon State University has produced a 29-minute video titled, “The Miracle at Bridge Creek.” It examines how the Oregon Watershed Improvement Coalition brought together the various players on public-land grazing to improve several Oregon watersheds. The video is…
Slow down all the herds
Dear HCN, The problem with George Wuerthner’s comments in a recent issue (HCN, 3/24/94) is that while he appears to be correct in his criticism of the extractive industries, in reality he’s about 10 percent correct and 90 percent missing the point. Our choices lie not between urban subdivisions and traditional grazing. Nobody’s talking about…
Hopis attack false kachinas
In recent years, tourists have bought tens of thousands of kachinas, many of which are mass produced by Navajos. “We can’t keep up with the demand,” says Steve Roberts, manager of a factory in Thoreau, N.M., where the carved, wooden figurines representing ancestral Hopi spirits are turned out. But, the Navajos may not be able…
Heroes and zeroes
Western politicians rack up some of the worst environmental voting records, according to the Washington, D.C.-based League of Conservation Voters. Scoring below 11 percent were Republican senators Dirk Kempthorne, Idaho; Conrad Burns, Montana; Pete Domenici, New Mexico; Bob Packwood, Oregon; Malcolm Wallop, Wyoming; and Larry Pressler, South Dakota. Experts from 27 environmental groups chose the…
Bats need a home
A Nevada legislative mandate to seal some 3,000 abandoned mines in Nevada threatens bats that roost in the shafts. Biologists who study bats say that as cave exploration has grown in popularity, “cavers’ have scared bats out of their natural habitat. Many now take refuge in abandoned mines. At a recent workshop with Nevada officials…
Recylcing service goes regional
Recyclers in the Rocky Mountain West will soon have the opportunity to link up by computer. RecycleNet, an electronic bulletin board based in Colorado, plans to expand services this summer to Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, thanks to a $10,000 federal grant. The service encourages those in hands-on, day-to-day recycling programs…
Talk wild
This summer some 330 high school students will build trails in parks and national forests as volunteers for the Student Conservation Association. But their minds require a workout, too. The non-profit SCA needs people to visit backcountry crews and spend time talking to them about natural resource issues. Previous “Educators Bureau” speakers have shared information…
Sacred places revisted
Dear HCN, Rob White in his essay “Sacred Places’ (HCN, 3/7/94) offers no alternative to what he sees as the evil of “making” places sacred. He states that it’s wrong, spiritually. Then what is right? Self-imposed exile from all non-urban places? Purely scientific investigation, excising any spiritual “response’? Absolute secrecy and muteness about what may…
Wallop bows out
Sen. Malcolm Wallop, Wyoming’s senior Republican senator, has decided to bow out of politics after serving for 18 years in the U.S. Senate. A major player in federal water and energy policy, Wallop had considered a run for Wyoming governor, but decided instead that his “political Energizer bunny” had run out. He will return to…
They’re still cutting and running
Dear HCN, Kudos to HCN and writer Sherry Devlin for the timely piece on Western timber issues (-Timber companies export logs – and jobs – to Asia’) (HCN, 3/21/94). During research in 1988 for my book, Cut and Run: Saying Goodbye to the Last Great Forest in the West, I learned how successful the timber…
Sea lions slated for killing
Northwest lawmakers are urging legislation that would permit state wildlife officials to kill sea lions that feast upon a decreasing stock of steelhead at Seattle’s Ballard locks. Under the bills, which would amend the Marine Mammal Protection Act, states could petition the federal government to kill non-threatened sea mammals if they continue feeding on vulnerable…
Observations from a cattleman
Dear HCN, I read your paper with interest, amusement and sometimes disgust. First, I want to inform you that I am a 73-year-old cattleman as well as a staunch environmentalist. Despite your beliefs to the contrary, a man can be both and many are. I’m even in favor of the reintroduction of wolves. The majority…
The salmon win one
Judge tells agencies to obey the law
Seattle resident turns open sewers back into streams
After John Beal returned to Seattle from the Vietnam War, he and his family often picnicked on a wooded hillside where a large pond fed a meandering stream. Twelve years ago, developers bought the property and sold it to a sand-and-gravel pit operator. “I watched over a period of five years as it was absolutely…
Salmon: the Clinton-Babbitt train wreck
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The salmon win one. In 1991, at the Citizens’ Salmon Congress in Hood River, Ore., Michelle DeHart of the Fish Passage Center spoke eloquently – again – about the death of salmon. The center is the tribal and Northwest states’ office that monitors the…
A guide to the players
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The salmon win one. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built and operates four federal dams on the lower Snake River, and four more on the Columbia River. Fishery agencies estimate these dams and reservoirs account for about 95 percent of all human-caused mortality…
New plan will protect salmon habitat
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The salmon win one. After months of delay, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have proposed temporary regulations to protect rivers and streams on public lands in the Pacific Northwest. Known as “Pacfish,” the new plan establishes buffer zones along…
Dear friends
Odds and ends Diane Sylvain, who sends checks to HCN’s writers, artists and photographers, calls them mystery free-lancers: people whose work we’ve just used, but for whom we no longer have correct addresses. At the moment, we’re trying to reach William L. Payne, Will C. Wright, Roger Holcomb, Alan McKnight, Roxann Moore, Phillip Renault and…
Wilderness developer accused of fraud
Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell has asked a U.S. District Attorney to investigate Tom Chapman for fraud, following a tip from one of the developer’s former business associates. Chapman is notorious for starting to build a massive, $1 million log cabin on a private inholding in the West Elk Wilderness near Paonia, Colo. After much…
A forester thrives in the belly of the beast
Wildfire is burning in the Wet Mountain Valley near Colorado Springs, Colo. I smell the smoke before I see it. I might be glad for a stirring burn: we’re a century or so overdue. But three generations of us are here for a family reunion. Just a few steps west of our cabin, the San…
Coal firm may pull its straw out of aquifer
MOENKOPI, Ariz. – Hubert Lewis recalls hot summer days when he and other children of this Hopi village would get relief from the cool water in Moenkopi Wash. Moenkopi – which in Hopi means “a place where water flows’ – sits right above one of the few waterways that traverse the arid reservation in northeastern…
Babbitt backs plans to kill predators
In a series of deft administrative maneuvers, the Bureau of Land Management side-stepped protests by environmental groups that had restricted federal predator-control activities on millions of acres of public land in the West. With approval from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, the BLM is now issuing predator control plans with a provision that puts them immediately…