Tucson activists fight development of the desert’s ironwood forest.
Inspector commits “career suicide’
Steve Jones’ 20-year career in federal safety inspection may be over. He was fired Sept. 14 by the contractor that is building and operating a chemical weapons incinerator at Utah’s Tooele Army Depot. Jones says he’s spent a frustrating three months trying to track down safety violations there. Now Jones is commiting what he calls…
A climbing plan for Devils Tower
One hundred and one years ago, when William Rogers and Willard Ripley were the first climbers to top Wyoming’s Devils Tower, they also started a controversy. In the following decades the tower became a climbing mecca. Yet to some Native Americans it has always been a sacred place. To try to satisfy both interests, the…
Mike Synar loses
Oklahoma Rep. Mike Synar, D, one of Congress’ leading advocates for federal grazing reform, lost a Democratic primary runoff Sept. 20 to a little-known retired school principal. Virgil Cooper defeated the eight-term congressman 52 percent to 48 percent. Ranchers cheered the defeat of the outspoken critic of “welfare cowboys’ using public lands in the West,…
No room at the top
Climbing one of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks used to be a solitary joy. These days 50,000 people top the state’s famous “fourteeners’ each year, and in one weekend on Mt. Harvard near Buena Vista, 133 signatures filled the summit register. Marketed in myriad guidebooks, the climbing craze is shattering solitude and trashing ecosystems, reports the American…
Mining reform: dead or alive?
As Congress prepares to adjourn for the year, chances that it will pass legislation reforming the 1872 Mining Law grow slimmer by the day. Sen. Harry Reid, D, who emerged as a key negotiator for the Western Democrats, says the Senate would have approved a draft put forth by a House-Senate conference committee in early…
Save the temperate forests
Because of logging gridlock in the Northwest, some timber companies have turned their saws toward the Northern Rockies. Forest activists will plan their response Nov. 9-13 at the Second International Temperate Forest Conference in Missoula, Mont. The Native Forest Network, a coalition of environmentalists, wants the gathering to attract indigenous peoples, conservation biologists, and non-governmental…
False alarm
Two years ago, the Department of Interior reported that nonprofit conservation organizations such as The Nature Conservancy were making “substantial” money buying land and selling it to federal agencies. Various conservatives and wise-use groups seized on the report, saying it proved that environmentalists exploit the federal government as ruthlessly as any corporation using the public…
Peak writing experience
Ten Native American writers from around the country will read from their work and participate in panel discussions Oct. 7-9 in the mountain town of Telluride, Colo. The Native American Writers Forum will take up the appropriation of Native American lore by non-Indian writers and how Native American literature and tribal oral histories can be…
Yellowstone makes bragging hazardous …
Poachers may want to avoid Yellowstone National Park this fall. Rangers have begun photographing the park’s most spectacular wildlife so that pictures are available if the animals are killed and their heads mounted as trophies. “This way, if we find that poachers have gotten one of these animals, we know exactly what to look for…
Evolving wetlands
-Change in the West: The Evolution of the Watershed Approach” is the title of the sixth annual conference of the Colorado Riparian Association, Oct. 5-7 in Alamosa, Colo. Representatives from federal agencies, The Wilderness Society, The Nature Conservancy and Western universities as well as local ranchers will talk about shifting demands on riparian areas, case…
… As park poacher holds on to trophies
A professional bowhunter who admitted poaching protected elk in Yellowstone National Park for nine years may get to keep his spoils. Federal prosecutors say they will not press Donald E. Lewis to hand over his illegal animal trophies to the government, as mandated by a plea bargain Lewis and his hunting partner, Arthur Sims, agreed…
Leopold floats us to an understanding
A View of the River Luna B. Leopold. Harvard University Press, 1994. 298 pages. $39.95 plus $3.50 postage and shipping; Customer Service Dept., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 02138 (800/448-2242). Review by C.L. Rawlins Anyone concerned with flowing water – river rats, lawyers, architects, irrigators, fly fishers and land managers – will learn to love…
Oh, what a war on the West!
Dear HCN, I fell asleep in my overstuffed chair in front of the TV the other night. Suddenly, gunfire broke loose on the street outside my door and I was snapped into full alert. I leaped to my feet and grabbed my trusty Benjamin air rifle and gave it a couple of pumps. Thinking it…
No rush to log
Dear HCN: Your coverage of the push for salvage logging in the wake of an intense fire season was both timely and insightful (HCN, 9/19/94). Kathie Durbin’s interview with Tom Graham, a rehabilitation worker on the Tyee Creek Fire, exposed one of the central fallacies of public forestry. Mr. Graham suggested that the fire had…
Water planning in the desert
Residents of the driest state in the nation use more water per person than almost anyone else in the country. But change may be forced on Nevada by sustained drought and record population growth. The State Division of Water Planning is drafting a new policy to guide water-planning decisions for the next 20 years. The…
The clueless West
Dear HCN, The “Grappling With Growth” issue of Sept. 5 was the best yet, albeit downright despairing. I’ve been traveling around the West, up and down, back and forth, for almost 20 years and have yet to find a community that really had a clue as to what was happening to it. Quite frankly, the…
Hikers can bear grizzlies
Restoring grizzly bears to Washington’s North Cascades and Idaho’s Selway-Bitterroot ecosystems won’t interfere with hunters, hikers or horseback riders, says a conservation group in Bellingham, Wash. The group, Greater Ecosystem Alliance, examined closures of trails and campgrounds caused by grizzlies in 11 national forests and two national parks. All had little effect on recreation. Blocked…
No bust yet
Dear HCN: Congratulations on your “Grappling with Growth” issue (HCN, 9/5/94). It will circulate around these quarters and be referenced for some time to come. I read Ed Marston’s essay on a possible bust and wanted to respond with some different interpretations. My counterparts in southern Utah see the ups and downs of the California…
Bigots in Big Sky
-Montana is and always will be WHITE MAN’S COUNTRY,” reads a recruitment pamphlet distributed by white supremacist groups in rural areas of the state. More than 20 such hate groups, targeting African Americans, Jews, homosexuals and Native Americans, blight the landscape in Big Sky country, according to a 57-page report by the Montana Advisory Committee…
Saved from subdivision
A letter-writing campaign to members of Congress last year helped protect 18,000 acres of privately owned land within central Colorado’s Roosevelt National Forest. The area, known as Cherokee Park, was owned by Union Pacific Railroad and targeted for sale to developers for recreational homes. Once alerted, the Trust For Public Land, a San Francisco-based organization,…
Sole source
The EPA may grant special protection status to an aquifer that covers 14,000 square miles in eastern Washington and portions of western Idaho. A local environmental group, the Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute, petitioned the agency in 1992 to designate the Eastern Columbia Plateau aquifer as the “sole source” of drinking water for the area. The EPA…
New look at a river basin
The market-oriented environmental group that helped McDonalds get rid of Styrofoam wants to save the Colorado River Basin. The Environmental Defense Fund recently launched its Colorado River Basin Initiative, a project that begins by re-evaluating the Colorado River compact. The compact has dictated water use in the basin for the past 70 years. EDF hopes…
One down, three to go
Following the belief that conservation, like charity, begins at home, Ecotrust was founded three years ago in Oregon to save temperate rain forests in North America. The organization chose four rain forests to concentrate on. Now, thanks to a Canadian timber company, it can devote its resources to the three rain forests still at risk.…
Parental care for uranium tailings only goes so far
A couple of miles from Moab, Utah, and just 300 feet from the Colorado River sprawls a rare deposit: uranium tailings that haven’t yet been orphaned. The parent of the pile, Atlas Minerals Co., is the first uranium developer that can be held responsible for cleaning up its own mess. Typically in the West, nuclear-weapons…
Ranchers arrested at wildlife refuge
The arrest of rancher Dwight Hammond for running cattle on a wildlife refuge provokes a wise-use backlash in Oregon.
Forest Service accomplishes appeal-proof timber sales
The Forest Service says it has improved the procedure by which citizens can appeal timber sales, but in the agency’s Northern Region, citizens have reason to suspect the opposite. Since the Forest Service revised its procedures in January, 23 citizen appeals have been filed against timber sales in the region. Only one has been upheld.…
An agency icon at 50
CAPITAN, N.M. – Dear Boys and Girls: I’m writing this letter in a beautiful forest where Smokey Bear was born. I came because I’d read that he turned 50 years old in August, and I wanted to see his old stomping grounds. You won’t believe what I found. First of all, everything is named after…
Burning nerve gas makes me ‘volatile’
For the past two years, I have actively opposed the construction of massive chemical weapons incinerators, both in Tooele County, Utah, where I live and at seven other sites across the nation where chemical weapons are stockpiled. As common folks like me (I’m a librarian) who get involved in controversial issues often say, “It’s been…
The Southwest’s writers are terrified liars
One of the best modern novels about the real Southwest is in technicolor. It takes place in Prescott, Ariz.: A rodeo performer returns to his hometown, finds out that his brother is bulldozing the home ranch and slicing it up into ranchettes and subdivisions, that his dad is about to hit the road for prospecting…
Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
TUCSON, Ariz. – Plumber Neale Allen likes to tell the story about driving down a strip where builders were bulldozing cacti for homes and shopping centers, and getting tough questions from his 7-year-old daughter Sarah. “She asked me why they had to scrape everything and kill plants and animals,” recalls Allen, who is 42. “It’s…
Dear friends
Rockin’ and rollin’ The rural inland West is going out of its way to make Californians feel welcome. First we had summer fires that blanketed the area in smog. After the fires came the mud flows, including one that blocked Interstate 70 west of Glenwood Springs, Colo. Then on Sept. 13, moments after midnight, western…
Judge rocks Montana’s open-pit mines
Montana’s hard-rock mining industry has enjoyed smooth sailing through state courts and regulatory agencies. But now a district court judge in Helena has rocked the boat, ruling that reclamation at open-pit mines must include the pit itself. Mining in Montana may never be the same. On Sept. 1, Judge Thomas Honzel ruled that the state…