The environmental and community challenges brought to Washington’s Olympic Peninsula by runaway sprawl and development have some ‘re-inhabiting locals’ almost nostalgic for the clear-cut timber companies of 30 years ago.
Timber counties get new money
NATION Since 1908, counties with national forests have received 25 percent of Forest Service timber receipts to pay for schools and roads. In recent years, rural communities have struggled financially as logging has declined (HCN, 12/20/99: Counties grab for control of national forests). Now, after several years and six legislative versions, President Clinton is expected…
Sprawl will be televised
ARIZONA, COLORADO It seemed obvious. The media love controversy, and in Arizona and Colorado, growth-control initiatives on the Nov. 7 ballot have been extremely controversial (HCN, 10/23/00: Arizona’s 202 takes aim at sprawl). So of course the public-minded, public-broadcast stations would want to air Subdivide and Conquer, a film about sprawl. Yet the film has…
A watershed worth its weight
WASHINGTON Ellsworth Creek near the mouth of the Columbia River is a typical Northwest forest ecosystem, with 800-year-old red cedars, clear-cuts, salmon, the federally protected marbled murrelet, rare salamanders and frogs, and nearly 100 inches of annual rainfall. Now it’s in line for one more thing – protection. The Nature Conservancy of Washington wants to…
Is a dredging project drowning?
NORTHWEST After 10 years and millions of dollars in studies, plans to deepen more than 100 miles of the Columbia River shipping channel have hit troubled waters (HCN, 1/17/00: A dredging dilemma). Last August, the National Marine Fisheries Service responded to a lawsuit threat by rescinding its earlier approval. The agency cited new worries about…
Greens are still seeing red
WYOMING After 100 years of failed attempts to protect southwest Wyoming’s Red Desert, environmentalists say it’s do or die. Oil and gas companies plan to sink 10,000 to 15,000 wells by 2010, and a coalition of conservation groups, ranchers and outfitters doesn’t think the Bureau of Land Management’s plan will protect the area. Mac Blewer…
Efficient energy is efficient business
It is rare that business sense and environmental quality interest intersect to make a resource-use decision so obvious. But the recent rise in Northwest power prices has turned energy conservation into good business, says Lyn Oha Carey of Washington State University’s Cooperative Extension Energy Program. The program’s Energy Ideas Clearinghouse Web site offers many ways…
Bypass bickering
Fred Dexter of Nevada’s Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club agrees that heavy traffic between Phoenix and Las Vegas mandates another bridge over the Colorado River near Hoover Dam. But Dexter is crusading against the plan the Federal Highway Administration has chosen: a four-lane bridge at Sugarloaf Mountain, just downstream from the dam and within…
News battle emerges in Utah
UTAH Thanks to a petition to higher-ups from editorial staffers at the Salt Lake Tribune, a news story involving the paper itself reached the light of day. In mid-October, the Wall Street Journal and other national newspapers picked up details of a struggle between the Tribune, an independent daily with about 135,000 readers, and the…
Take a walk
If anyone walking along the sidewalk were to make deafening noises, spew poisonous gas into innocent faces, and threaten people with a deadly weapon, they would be arrested. Yet a few feet away, on the public roadway, it is considered normal behavior.– Steve Stollman, a cycling/pedestrian advocate in New York City, quoted in Divorce Your…
The latest bounce
For more than four months, the Bureau of Land Management has threatened to fine, and impound the cattle of, three ranchers who refused to remove their cattle from the Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument in southern Utah (HCN, 9/25/00: Ranchers test an agency’s image). Now, the agency has followed through: Late last month, the BLM impounded the…
Into the depths
Scientists from the federal government and the University of New Hampshire pulled off an amazing feat this July: They went to 600-feet-deep Crater Lake in Oregon and, “took all the water out of it,” says Jim Gardner of the U.S. Geological Survey. Gardner and his team managed this without actually moving any water: They used…
Grassbanks in the West: Challenges and Opportunities
A conference on Grassbanks in the West: Challenges and Opportunities brings together environmentalists, ranchers, the Forest Service and writers Nov. 17-18 in Santa Fe, N.M. Speakers include former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, writer and Valle Grande Grassbank director Bill deBuys, poet and Animas Foundation director Drum Hadley and High Country News publisher Ed Marston. For…
Northwest Mining Association
The Northwest Mining Association holds its 106th annual meeting, “Winds of Change,” in Spokane, Wash., Dec. 4-8. Contact the NWMA at 10 N. Post St., Suite 414, Spokane, WA 99201-0772 (509/624-1158), www.nwma.org. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Northwest Mining Association.
On the trail
In July, Arizona’s growth-control initiative looked unstoppable: A poll by KUET, the Phoenix public television station, showed Proposition 202 winning, 68 percent to 17 percent. But the opposition, heavily supported by the development industry, has used its $4.1 million in contributions to mount a no-holds-barred media campaign (HCN, 10/23/00: Arizona’s 202 takes aim at sprawl).…
Cowboy Poetry Gathering
The 17th annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev., Jan. 27 to Feb. 3, 2001, aims to keep the ranching tradition alive and kicking. Contact the Western Folklife Center, 501 Railroad St., Elko, NV 89801 (888/880-5885) or on the Web at www.westfolk.org. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline…
Snake River salmon and steelhead
How much do people value the restoration of Snake River salmon and steelhead runs? Environmental economics students and faculty from Reed College in Portland, Ore., and Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., are trying to find out using a confidential Web survey. Find the survey at people.whitman.edu/~crouter/survey/intro.htm. This article appeared in the print edition of…
Don’t step on a bomb
COLORADO During World War II, up to 17,000 soldiers, including the famed ski troopers of the 10th Mountain Division, trained at Camp Hale near the town of Leadville, Colo. The men learned to ski, climb rocks and bivouac in 30-below weather. David Brower, who wrote the division’s mountaineering manual, was there, as were Vail visionary…
‘Reckless charges’ refuted
Dear HCN, The first lesson you learn if you want to be a conservation activist is that you have to know what you’re talking about. Otherwise, you lose credibility. Unfortunately, Larry Tuttle’s letter (HCN, 9/25/00: Response to ‘squishy-soft’) reflects that he has yet to learn that lesson. Our suggestion? Visit the Northern Plains Resource Council’s…
The other side of the story
Dear HCN, I was disappointed to read your newspaper’s article of Sept. 25 titled “Backyard Boom” by Rebecca Clarren and the associated sidebar article titled “The playing field has to be leveled.” What concerns me the most is that there does not appear to have been an attempt to verify sources or obtain the other…
Gorton story a disappointment
Dear HCN, As a former 18-year resident of Washington state (1982-2000), journalist and participant in politics there, I found Steve Stuebner’s article on Slade Gorton a disappointing concoction of free advertising for tribal and environmental biases. The article had its moments in viewing a tight race for the Senate, featuring a strong Democratic candidate who…
Heard around the West
Is this a tale for Ripley’s Believe It or Not? A moose in Whitefish, Mont., threw itself at a car driven by a woman who loves moose so much her license plates read moosie1 and moosie2. The suicidal moose, probably a victim of raging hormones during the rutting season, “really shook up the driver,” reports…
Outlaws on an upscale road
When I moved to Teton County, Wyo., two decades ago, I lived in a sagging, second-hand pup tent for the summer. The tipi I moved into that winter felt palatial by comparison. Almost everyone I knew then lived in wall tents, tipis, yurts, or cabins with no plumbing. Even when the temperature fell past 30…
A hunter for gun control
In my family, we talk about hunting like it’s religion. My mom bemoans the fact that none of us have the kind of faith in God that “seems to hold other families together,” but at least, she sighs, there’s Hunting. Opening day’s the occasion we all come home for, more than Thanksgiving or Easter, more…
‘Re-inhabitation’ revisited
The new invasion of the rural Northwest
Dear Friends
A forest history award On March 29, 1999, High Country News published Lynne Bama’s story about public-land exchanges and the turn-of-the-century politics that led to checkerboarded lands in the West. Her story vividly outlined how private land came to dot public lands, and how attempts by federal agencies to consolidate their holdings led to controversy…
Congress moves on local proposals
Babbitt’s ‘monument tour’ led to some legislative solutions
Will a watched refuge ever revive?
Buenos Aires managers see slow progress, but ranchers are champing at the bit
CARA’s not quite the girl she used to be
WASHINGTON, D.C. – When we last left Cara, our maiden in perpetual distress, she had escaped from the railroad tracks to which she had been tied by evil members of the House of Representatives, who hoped that an onrushing freight train or mass indifference would do her in. Not Cara, a game kid if ever…
Idaho resorts near ‘wild’ river must go
Judge says the Forest Servicemisinterpreted thelaw
Colorado’s Coal Basin starts a new life
Students and the state help recover aformer miningtract