The most important institutions in the West enter a critical period.
Extinction was the message
In the heart of Boise, Idaho, close to 100 “salmon” recently tried to run a faux gantlet of four “dams,” mimicking the difficulties of real-life migration for salmon and smolts swimming the Snake River to the Pacific Ocean. Costumed volunteers played the salmon and the Snake River dams: Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and…
Wilderness becomes a career path
The Forest Service is about to give designated wilderness the bureaucratic attention it deserves, according to Jim Lyons, the nation’s front-line politician overseeing the agency. The Forest Service is creating a new Washington, D.C.-based job, national director of wilderness, which “will be on a par with other program managers, such as timber, range and minerals,”…
Say what?
The NPS wants help ASAP in de-jargonizing its PR under NEPA. Translated, that means for the first time in 12 years the National Park Service is considering changes in procedure under the National Environmental Policy Act, the mother of all environmental protection. Passed in 1969, the act describes which environmental impacts the federal government must…
Caribou population still too small
Since the woodland caribou in Montana’s Selkirk Mountains were listed as an endangered species in 1983, the caribou population has more than doubled, from 23 animals to 50. But without intensive management by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Selkirk’s caribou are doomed, says David Tallmon, a biologist at the University of Montana. The…
Wild in Montana
Two former high-ranking Forest Service officials known for their blunt criticism of the agency headline the Montana Wilderness Association’s 36th annual convention in Great Falls, Dec. 2-3. Tom Kovalecky, retired supervisor of the Nez Perce National Forest, and John Mumma, former regional forester for the northern region of the Forest Service, will speak about changes…
Blow, whistleblowers, blow
Continuing to emphasize openness at the Department of Energy, Secretary Hazel O’Leary proposed reforms Oct. 17 to protect whistleblowers. Employees who raise concerns about fraud or safety, for example, would be protected against retaliation and litigation costs related to lawsuits brought against them by contractors, and the agency would form a special department for employee…
Who are you calling redskin?
When you go to a Saints’ football game “and a little mascot dressed like the pope runs around and sprinkles holy water on all the drunks, then you should start protesting. And us Indians will be right there beside you,” says the director of the American Indian Movement, Clyde Bellecourt. He makes the comparison in…
From Oregon to Wyoming
A former county commissioner in Oregon has taken over the reins of the Wyoming Outdoor Council. New executive director Tom Throop was a commissioner in Deschutes County, Ore., where he helped begin a recycling program and rewrite county land-use laws to protect farmlands and forests. Throop, 47, who spent eight years in the Oregon Legislature,…
Greens under attack
The press has followed the wrong story, says David Helvarg, author of The War Against the Greens: The “Wise-Use” Movement, the New Right, and Anti-Environmental Violence. Zealous anti-environmentalists like to portray themselves as victims of an elite movement that has swept across the country, Helvarg says, and the national press, led by New York Times…
Off campus: A sociologist tries to help Idaho’s small towns
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about land grant universities in the West. When sociologist Aaron Harp interviewed for a job at the University of Idaho, he was asked if the university had an obligation to save the state’s rural communities. “That’s a loaded question,” says Harp. “And having…
Three agricultural fallacies
The poet laureate of cultivated land challenges the ‘experts’
Dear friends
Another special issue It must be something about the fall that brings to culmination many months of research and interviews. On Sept. 4 we published a special, 24-page issue called Grappling with Growth, which has just gone to a third printing to accommodate requests for copies. With this issue we offer the first of several…
A small town in Oregon gets ugly
After tarred-and-feathered effigies of two environmental activists were strung up in the center of Joseph, Ore., Sept. 30, the local newspaper headlined its story: “Enviros can learn a lot from a couple of dummies.” Some residents then organized an economic boycott aimed at driving the two environmentalists out of town. Were these tactics reminiscent of…
Fall damps fires of ’94
The arrival of autumn rain and snow brought relief to the West’s firefighters. The summer of 1994 has been the most intense fire season in memory, according to the federal fire center in Boise, Idaho. Nationwide, 3.9 million acres burned this year, nearly twice the yearly average from 1989 to 1993. It was not the…
Land-grant universities
Their roots loosen as the Westchanges beneath them
Between past and future
Washington State University tries to get there from here
Sexy weapon thwarts bugs
Codling moths find frustration at end of pheromone trail
Budget cutters whack at researchers
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Sexy weapon thwarts bugs. Jay Brunner is hunched over a microscope, watching a tiny wasp crawl over a bright-green caterpillar called a leafroller. The ant-sized wasp has laid about 10 eggs on the leafroller’s dense web. When the young wasps hatch, the entomologist…
Apple growers become patrons of science
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Sexy weapon thwarts bugs. Washington’s asparagus growers will pay WSU scientists $12,000 this year to figure out how to prevent asparagus spears from softening during canning. Pea and lentil growers will spend about $50,000 on researching soil conservation. And the tiny cranberry industry…
A tale of two ag programs
Evergreen State provides an alternative to giant Washington State
On campus: A department head tries to change the academic culture
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about land grant universities in the West. If the West’s land-grant universities are to evolve, faculty like Glen Whipple are keys to that evolution. Whipple is head of the Agricultural Economics Department at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Just as important, he…