As some irrigators get loose with the law, Oregon’s Umatilla River is being depleted.
Elk farming leads to wildlife slaughter
Gunners from the ground and the air shot dead 120 deer and other wildlife this August so that Montana officials could test the animals for tuberculosis. State veterinarians said tests were necessary because elk had developed TB at a game farm along the Bighorn River, north of Hardin, and the disease had been transmitted to…
Eight charged with bombing a river
A former rafting guide and seven other men may be sent up the river for bombing a Class 6 rapid. A federal grand jury in Phoenix, Ariz., indicted William K. Stoner, 34, and his co-conspirators Oct. 13 on charges they blew up Quartzite Falls in Arizona’s Salt River Canyon Wilderness. The boaters are accused of…
Paved “paradise’ for workers
In Telluride, Colo., you can live in your car, but only if you park it in the right place. After passing an ordinance prohibiting car camping on all public land and rights-of-way within town limits, on Oct. 18 the Telluride Town Council designated a public parking lot as an alternative. The “campers’ are people who…
Wake up, pragmatists
Dear HCN: Your Aug. 22 editorial is right: “The West has internalized much of what environmentalists fought for (in the Reagan-Bush years)”; it is time for environmentalists to enter the “twin tents of ecosystem management and consensus.” But the “generation of environmentalists that stopped the Reagan-Bush lawlessness may not have the skills or temperament to…
Who’s who in water spreading
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Water for the taking. WaterWatch, based in Portland, is one of the nation’s first statewide groups focused solely on water quantity, rather than water quality. It has filed legal challenges to Oregon’s system of issuing water-use permits, which, says founder Tom Simmons, has turned…
Llamas: They expect YOU to know what you’re doing
DURANGO, Colo. – Juan stares at me with soulful brown eyes. We have spent six hours on high trails without seeing anyone else, descending finally to a timberline camp. Above us looms a cirque of tundra painted with the muted, water-color palette of high country autumn. Heavy trout rise just beyond casting range in this…
Dear friends
Dead deer come to town Hunting season has begun with a bang, so to speak, in the mountains that surround Paonia. Staffers have had to compete for parking on Grand Avenue with vehicles festooned by dead deer, and out one office window which faces a very busy meat packing plant, we can see a procession…
Ranchers blamed for transfer of BLM veteran
A 31-year Bureau of Land Management veteran says the agency is transferring him from Wyoming to Utah because of his by-the-book stand on grazing. Darrel Short, area manager for Wyoming’s Kemmerer Resource Area, says the agency kowtowed to rancher pressure in issuing the transfer, and he is challenging the move under the federal law protecting…
Utah vandalism includes spiked trees
In late September a nervous-sounding caller warned a secretary in the Fish Lake National Forest office in Richfield, Utah, that the Deep Creek timber sale had been spiked. The 66-acre sale northwest of Capitol Reef National Park hadn’t generated much controversy, but loggers who inspected after the phone call said they found many metal spikes.…
Maulings: More grizzlies feeling more stress
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – When hunting guide Nate Vance left his tent in the early morning darkness he quickly realized that the figure moving heavy logs off the food cooler was not the cook. “I heard a “woof” and I smelled that awful breath,” Vance says. “I knew I had stepped into a bad situation.…
After a heavy harvest and a death, Navajo forestry realigns with culture
NAVAJO, N.M. – On the austere, high-desert plateau of the Navajo Nation, the Chuska Mountains rise unexpectedly, an oasis of alpine forests and crystal-clear lakes. For centuries the Chuskas have been the source of building materials, game animals and grazing land, a place to gather medicinal herbs and spiritual strength. But in the past four…
Faith in a martyr helps the cause
Note: this article is a sidebar to the news article After a heavy harvest and a death, Navajo forestry realigns with culture “Leroy Jackson died because he tried to protect the land,” says Diné CARE president Earl Tulley. “If he didn’t stand up against logging, he’d still be alive.” Jackson, a Diné CARE co-founder, was…
‘People of the Earth’ stress ‘natural laws’
Note: this article is a sidebar to the news article After a heavy harvest and a death, Navajo forestry realigns with culture “As Native people we can’t really separate our environment from us, so it’s hard to call us environmentalists,” says Diné CARE activist Adella Begaye. “We stress cultural values, the natural laws learned from…
Environmentalists mostly skunked by Congress
California Democrat Dianne Feinstein paced the chamber of the U.S. Senate, Saturday morning, Oct. 8, just minutes before the adjournment of the 103rd Congress. The number 59 glowed on the electronic scoreboard. Feinstein and a huddle of grim-faced Democrats knew they needed one more vote to end a month-long Republican filibuster frenzy that had prevented…
If you hear the alarm, stop breathing
That doesn’t mean take a deep breath and hold it, says the man at the front of the room. It means STOP BREATHING. Pull on your gas mask, clear it of air to get a tight seal, and breathe through it until further notice. No one gets into the new Chemical Agent Disposal Facility at…
Wise-use power is overblown; the real threat is apathy
The 103rd Congress, which just wrapped up most of its business, was the worst environmental Congress since the first Earth Day 25 years ago. The conventional wisdom in the mainstream press is that this poor record comes from the diminished clout of the environmental movement and the rise of the wise-use movement. But is the…
Water for the taking
Some irrigators get loose with the law
Ripples grow when a dam dies
Four years after the defeat of Denver’s proposed Two Forks Dam, water development in Colorado has changed drastically. No longer is Denver the imperialistic leader of Front Range urban development. And no longer are environmentalists a fringe influence, forever fighting the good fight against dams and forever losing. The change is visible at three major…
For the full scolding
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Water for the taking. The Bureau of Reclamation has a new role in the West, and it’s high time the agency focused on management, not development, concludes an Interior Department audit on the unauthorized diversion of water. The July 1994 audit, Irrigation of Ineligible…
On Friday, the fish took some of it back
Note: This article is a sidebar to the essay titled “Ripples grow when a dam dies” Chips Barry, who heads the Denver Water Department, says his major responsibility is not the acquisition of new water supplies. “It’s to hang on to what we’ve got in the face of instream flow and endangered species and interstate…