Bruce Babbitt endorses a consensus grazing reform proposal developed in Colorado.
Consensus may not be the best way to reform grazing
Editor’s note: The following letter was sent to Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt by Dan Heinz, a 25-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service. Heinz is now an environmental consultant and field agent for the non-profit American Wildlands, 16575 Callahan Ranch, Reno, NV 89511 (702/884-1998). Dear Secretary Babbitt, Your willingness to listen to the grass…
West’s buttons popping
West’s buttons popping The 10 fastest growing states in the nation are in the West. According to federal Census Bureau figures, Nevada grew fastest in 1992-93, with a 3.9 percent growth rate, followed by Idaho at 3.1 percent and Colorado at 2.9 percent. Reid Reynolds, a Colorado state demographer, attributes the surge to strong economies…
Bullet holes in bungalows
Bullet holes in bungalows In Prescott, Ariz., living near a national forest can be dangerous. Stray slugs from target shooters have pockmarked residents’ hot tubs, porches, roofs and patio furniture. “They think they’re out in the middle of nowhere and they can just shoot,” says Carol Brownlow, a Prescott homeowner, in the Arizona Republic. On…
The new West is as restless as the old
The new West is as restless as the old Most people move to the rural West in search of community, says sociology professor Pat Jobes, who teaches at Montana State University in Bozeman. What they find rarely measures up to their enthusiasm and optimism. “It’s a predictable, unchanging pattern,” says Jobes, who has studied migration…
Comment on curbing a dam
Comment on curbing a dam The Bureau of Reclamation will host a series of meetings and public hearings on the Glen Canyon Dam draft EIS from Jan. 27 through March 24. The Bureau will accept public comments until April 11. Information Meetings, 5-9 p.m., will be held in Washington, D.C., Jan. 27, at the Stouffer…
Lift construction suspended
Lift construction suspended Yellowstone National Park has suspended improvements on a small ski area in the park. Last month, workers began installing a used poma lift at Undine Falls ski area, five miles east of Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo., to replace a rope tow that was considered unsafe. But after receiving phone calls and letters…
Poachers target grizzlies
Poachers target grizzlies Bear researchers say the remote Selkirk Mountains, between Washington, Idaho and British Columbia, could support up to 90 grizzlies. Instead, the current population of about 30 bears has dropped by one. In late November an unknown person shot Sy, a 15-year-old female grizzly, who was the last bear in the Selkirks wearing…
Lost and found study
Lost and found study Under former Utah Gov. Norm Bangerter, the bumper sticker “Wilderness: land of no use” became popular. At the same time, managers under Bangerter ignored a 1991 draft state study that said wilderness could actually benefit Utah’s economy. Gov. Mike Leavitt recently unearthed the report after the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance pressed…
The third man
The third man The number three man in the Forest Service, Deputy Chief James Overbay, has retired. Overbay, a member of the agency’s old guard, was replaced by Gray Reynolds, regional forester for the Intermountain Region of national forests in southern Idaho, Nevada, Utah and western Wyoming. Environmental activists in the Intermountain Region were not…
Idaho governor fights for a bombing range
Gov. Cecil D. Andrus, protector of endangered salmon and enemy of nuclear waste, has embarked on a quixotic crusade for a military bombing range in southwest Idaho. Andrus, serving the last year of his fourth term, says he must secure a new bombing range for the Air Force, or Mountain Home Air Force Base will…
Judge bumps snail off endangered species list
The tiny Bruneau hot springs snail is having a large impact in Idaho – and perhaps the entire country. On Dec. 14, U.S. District Judge Frank Ryan removed the 4-millimeter animal from the endangered species list. It was the first successful challenge of an animal or plant listing under the federal Endangered Species Act. Ryan’s…
Draft plan foresees a freer-flowing Colorado River
If a draft plan for managing the massive Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona gains final approval, the Colorado River could run through the Grand Canyon much as it did before dam-builders arrived there in 1963. The Glen Canyon draft EIS, released by the Bureau of Reclamation Jan. 6, would protect the canyon from the…
Reform was killed by “100 peacocks in heat”
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Turmoil on the range. Brant Calkin, who until a few months ago was head of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, one of the region’s most aggressive environmental groups, thinks he knows why the Rangeland Reform ’94 initiative crashed and burned. He says…
Turmoil on the range
Ranchers’ clout drives grazing reform in new directions
Cows are evicted from Utah
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – A federal judge has kicked cattle out of the canyons of southeastern Utah’s Comb Wash. Both environmentalists and ranchers say the decision could lead to sweeping changes in grazing on public lands. Department of Interior Administrative Law Judge John Rampton’s Dec. 20 decision in the three-year-long Comb Wash case found…
Dear friends
How Gifford Pinchot got to be chief In his autobiography, Breaking New Ground, Pinchot writes on page 136 (Island Press edition, 1987) of his decision to accept the position of chief: “But the position of chief of the Forestry Division was under the classified civil service. Before I could hold it, I had to pass…
BLM union comes to Moab
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Turmoil on the range. MOAB, Utah – Citing frustration with their agency’s treatment of natural resources and employees, Bureau of Land Management staffers in two agency offices here voted to unionize. In response, Moab District BLM managers filed an objection to the…
A stark victory in Utah
In May 1989, Gene Nodine, head of the BLM’s Moab, Utah, office, told Arizona law professor Joe Feller: “You don’t know enough about this (public-land grazing) to question what we’re doing.” In retrospect, that was a rash statement. For in December 1993, John Rampton, an administrative law judge for the Department of Interior, ruled that…
Tiny reporter at a small paper writes a big story
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – In July 1987, newly hired Albuquerque Tribune reporter Eileen Welsome was thumbing through declassified government documents on radioactive waste dumps at the local Air Force base when a footnote caught her eye. It was about plutonium experiments on humans. Stunned, she went to her city editor with the story idea. As Welsome…
Montana town puts out unwelcome mat
BOZEMAN, Mont. – This quiet, mountain-ringed college town just north of Yellowstone National Park has now been discovered by everyone from movie stars to footloose entrepreneurs and just plain folks. But to the people who live here the influx is more invasion than discovery. This is how a local artist feels about newcomers: “If I…