Three years after cows were banned from some Southwestern rivers, the San Francisco River in the Gila National Forest shows signs of recovery, but struggling ranchers and uneven wildlife numbers prove that the struggle over desert grazing is still alive.
Remembering internment in Idaho
For just over three years, between August 1942 and October 1945, more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were unwilling residents of the Minidoka War Relocation Authority Center in southern Idaho (HCN, 10/8/01: Lessons of an intolerant past). This fall, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts will host Whispered Silences, a multidisciplinary exploration of internment in…
The Latest Bounce
Earthjustice is appealing a federal district judge’s decision to revoke Oregon coastal coho salmon’s status as a threatened species. In September, the judge ruled that there is no difference between wild and hatchery-raised coho, and that the combined population no longer merits special protection (HCN, 10/8/01: Coho salmon lose federal protection). The Columbia-Snake River Irrigators…
WOTR columns are propaganda
Dear HCN, I want to take this time to comment vociferously about a trend I see in HCN‘s Writers on the Range columns. And I am not at all happy with it! There have been at least three columns published this year in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that are a bunch of bull! If I…
Freedom or irresponsibility?
Dear HCN, I had to respond to the following statement from the Sept. 10 article about shooting in Arizona: ” ‘I go out to these places, carpeted with spent brass (cartridges), a car door over here, a TV or a propane bottle over there, and what I see is unbridled freedom…’ ” I lived in…
Sharper than a serpent’s tooth
Dear HCN, I have been on a crusade to stamp out redundancies and the use of the plural when referring to the Sierra Nevada, which means Snowy Range. It is just plain Sierra or Sierra Nevada, not Sierras or Sierra Nevadas, Sierra Nevada Mountains, or Sierra Nevada Range. Your Aug. 27 issue did get it…
Kudos for Craig
Dear HCN, I just wanted to congratulate you and Craig Childs on the wonderful article about desert streams (HCN, 9/10/01: The rise and fall of a desert stream). I thought that was the most inspirational and entertaining reading that I have ever seen in HCN (which is saying a lot, by the way). I enjoyed…
Monument of tall trees will stand
CALIFORNIA In late September, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected a challenge to the newly designated Giant Sequoia National Monument in the southern Sierra Nevada. The monument protects 330,000 acres of forest ecosystem, including nearly half of the world’s remaining giant sequoia groves. Timber and off-highway vehicle groups, as well as Tulare County, where…
Pigs run hog wild in the Olympics
WASHINGTON An unprecedented number of feral pigs are causing a ruckus in a valley near Washington’s Olympic National Park. According to park officials, the pigs have invaded from the nearby Quinault Indian Reservation, where the tribe has hunted the animals for nearly 15 years. Since April, the wild hogs have breached the perimeter of the…
Power plant creates noisy dispute
IDAHO Sparks are flying over a proposed power plant in southeastern Idaho’s rural Canyon County. Ida-West Energy Company says it must build the plant in order to fill a projected deficit in its southern Idaho service area of 250 megawatts by 2004. But first the plant needs a county permit. Ida-West officials say the permit…
ESA didn’t kill firefighters
WASHINGTON As flames sped through Okanogan National Forest on July 10, ground dispatchers delayed a helicopter water-drop because they were unsure whether siphoning water from the Chewuch River would violate the Endangered Species Act. That afternoon, four firefighters died (HCN, 7/30/01: Tragedy re-ignites wildfire debate). But an investigative report, released on Sept. 26 by the…
Pygmy owls lose one in court
ARIZONA Since the federal government listed the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl as endangered in 1997, it has been a point of conflict between developers and slow-growth advocates in Tucson (HCN, 8/30/99: A pocket-sized bird takes on Sunbelt subdivisions). Now, a federal district judge has removed some federal protections for the tiny owl’s habitat. In July…
Trumpeter swans for the taking
UTAH A struggling population of rare trumpeter swans may be the unintended victims of an ongoing tundra swan hunt in Utah. That’s the word from some anonymous Fish and Wildlife Service biologists, who say their agency has ignored science and bowed to political pressure from Utah wildlife officials. Federal biologists have worked for years to…
Good Neighbor Handbook
Has your once-peaceful town been overrun by trophy homes, off-leash dogs and transplanted neighbors that just don’t seem to care? In eastern Washington, the Methow Conservancy is taking steps to prevent these sorts of unintended excesses. They’ve published the Good Neighbor Handbook: A Guide for Landowners in the Methow Valley. Authored by former HCN intern…
Grassfires burn bigger
In Montana’s Gallatin National Forest this past summer, rays of sunshine filtered through pine trees, diffusing in the smoky haze produced by ravenous flames. While such scenes make for alluring photographs and dramatic headlines, a new study says that wildfires in national forests account for less than 15 percent of acreage burned this year to…
Healing the Gila
Three years after the Forest Service booted cows off some Southwestern rivers, the battle over grazing in the desert is still not over
One rancher stands in defiance…
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. GLENWOOD, N.M. – It took seven years for environmentalists to get cattle off 230 miles of rivers and streams across the Southwest. It took nearly three more years to get livestock off one mile of river controlled by rancher Hugh B. McKeen. Until late…
Dear Friends
Sympathy from all over It appears that it’s the rare town, city or school that didn’t come up with a creative way to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Penny drives have been popular in the West, and displays of letters from kids to police and firefighters were shared…
…while another quietly moves ahead
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. ALMA, N.M. – Eight years ago, long before the Forest Service signed the agreement to reduce cattle numbers along rivers in the Gila National Forest, Sewell Goodwin voluntarily pulled his 300 cattle off the San Francisco River. With a little help from the agency,…
Remembering Mike
One of the country’s statesmen died Oct. 5, 2001, at the age of 98. Mike Mansfield grew up in Great Falls, Mont., and worked in the copper mines of Butte before launching one of the longest and most distinguished political careers in history. It was punctuated by his staunch opposition to the Vietnam War. Below…
High Country News: Friend or foe?
Over the past months, High Country News has received a number of letters and e-mails from readers upset about the tone of an article or an opinion expressed in one of the Writers on the Range columns. You’ll find one such letter below from a Bozeman, Mont., reader blasting Writers on the Range for running…
A monorail for the mountains?
Colorado considers a space-age alternative to asphalt
Park boss gored by grazing feud
Four-decade controversy continues in Dinosaur National Monument
A graceful gazelle becomes a pest
The exotic oryx is wearing out its welcome in the Chihuahuan Desert
Heard around the West
Living with wildlife in the West can be a lot like living with a spouse – annoying. Just when you think you’ve figured out how to make the relationship hum, new quirks appear. And since black bears and coyotes can’t talk about it, we have to be canny enough to figure out what’s going wrong…
The Rio Grande’s unsung diplomat
River activist ‘Uncle Steve’ Harris makes waves rather than headlines