As the Wilderness Act nears its 40th birthday, it takes a
new kind of wheeling and dealing to protect wild lands, and
there’s no better place to see the new face of the movement
than Las Vegas, Nev.
Also in this
issue: The Border Patrol wants to erect 249 miles of
fences along the Arizona-Mexico border, and some environmentalists
are worried about their impact on desert wildlife.
The Latest Bounce
New Mexico will continue to uphold two of its oldest — and bloodiest — traditions. State Sen. Steve Komadina, R-Corrales, introduced a bill earlier this year that would have outlawed cockfighting and dogfighting. But the state’s Senate Conservation Committee rejected the bill, upholding New Mexico’s standing as one of only two states in the nation…
Thank you, readers
Thank you, readers! The Spreading the News Campaign came to a successful conclusion Dec. 31, 2002. Your generous contributions have provided a stunning $1.36 million to support High Country News’ new media and intern programs. With your help, we’re reaching millions of Westerners: Radio High Country News, our weekly half-hour show, is now broadcast on…
Land-use laws attacked from all sides
Although it died on the floor of the Oregon Supreme Court last October, Oregon’s controversial property-rights initiative, Measure 7, may live again. The initiative, approved by voters in 2000, would compensate landowners for decreased property value caused by local and state land-use rules. The regulations, conceived in the 1970s, aim to preserve farmlands and forests…
Cut the anti-immigration rhetoric
Dear HCN, I am so tired of seeing these uncomplicated, sentimental appeals that place themselves on the side of pro- or anti-immigration and grace your pages with alarming regularity. I am appalled by the embedded hypocrisy that decries immigrants (read: brown-skinned) encroaching on “our” public space and representing a danger to “our wildlife” when “we”…
Empower immigrants — don’t knock them out
Dear HCN, As the saying goes, there are none so blind as those who will not see. Such blindness must be willful indeed, when the impaired need look no further than nine pages away to sees the light. In his essay, “A son of immigrants has a change of heart” (HCN, 2/3/03: The son of…
‘Baby factories’ are the problem
Dear HCN, None of the writers in HCN — including Marston (HCN, 2/3/03: The son of immigrants has a change of heart), Nijhuis (HCN, 12/23/02: Holding open the door to the good life up north) and Pritchett (HCN, 2/17/03: Anti-immigration myopia) — understand that the world population grows by 11,000 babies per hour, 264,000 per…
Poverty — and U.S. policy — are the roots of Mexico’s problems
Dear HCN, In my view, Ed Marston’s column “A son of immigrants has a change of heart” (HCN, 2/3/03: The son of immigrants has a change of heart) is wrong in several particulars. First, overpopulation is, as it was in the Rev. Malthus’ day (a couple of centuries ago, when he first suggested that the…
U.S. is to blame for immigration
Dear HCN, Oh, come on, Ed! Your apology for anti-immigration sentiment bespeaks loss of nerve (HCN, 2/3/03: The son of immigrants has a change of heart). That is not vintage Marston. Despair overwhelms me, too, sometimes, as our grotesque problems proliferate daily. But you know very well, or should know, that Mexican immigration is a…
Heard Around the West
Who said you’re never safe when a state Legislature is in session? In Idaho, women who choose to breast-feed infants came under attack from lawmakers who find the practice offensive. After Rep. Bonnie Douglas, D-Coeur d’Alene, introduced a bill protecting a woman’s right to breast-feed her baby in public, Rep. Peter Nielsen, R-Mountain Home, was…
Grasslands take a step toward nature
Efforts to restore an ecosystem are bold but controversial
Locals fight new railroad
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Grasslands take a step toward nature.” The new national grasslands plans ignore one potential impact entirely: The nation’s largest railroad construction project in more than a century. The Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad got a green light…
Pure and simple, wilderness is not
My first encounter with a federally protected wilderness area came in the early 1980s. I was 23 and working for a conservation group in Washington, D.C., so I understood the concept. I even knew people who had dedicated their lives to trying to convince Congress to designate roadless chunks of the public domain as “wilderness,”…
While America waits for war, the environment suffers
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the best of times, it’s tough to get the average American to pay attention to such arcane matters as whether it should be legal to sue the Forest Service if it fails to protect wilderness in Alaska, or whether to pay logging firms to thin one section of forest by letting…
Get off and walk – wilderness is for wildlife
Like many mountain bikers, I’m happiest when I’m charging up and down hills through the West’s spectacular public lands. I live in Durango, Colo., arguably the mountain bike capital of the world, and I ride every day. While I’ve spent most of my cycling years on roads, in the last five years I’ve been spending…
Let bikers in, and we’ll stand behind wilderness
I’m a mountain bicyclist. The pleasure of my life is pedaling through wild places, experiencing the views, the changing colors and textures of the plant life, the occasional animal sightings. On the trail, I’m renewed, and my commitment to public-land preservation is strengthened. I think that’s the way most mountain bikers feel, and historically, we’ve…
Wilderness on the move
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The wild card.” IDAHO: Rep. Mike Simpson, R, is considering introducing a Nevada-style wilderness/development bill that would protect parts of the Boulder-White Cloud and Pioneer Mountains in central Idaho. The Idaho Conservation League is also working with local county commissioners and cattlemen to negotiate…
The wild card
As the Wilderness Act nears its 40th anniversary, protecting wild lands requires a new kind of deal-making.
Peaks and valleys: Protected wilderness by year
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The wild card.” The 1964 Wilderness Act instantly protected 9.1 million acres of wilderness. Since then, the wilderness system has grown to over 106 million acres. Much of that came in the late ’70s and mid-’80s, as wilderness areas identified by the Forest Service’s…
Dear friends
A wintry gathering As a gentle snow fell from a gray winter sky, 130 High Country News readers and friends jammed into the Cache La Poudre Grange in Bellvue, Colo., just outside Fort Collins. They brought splendid food and drink (thanks, New Belgium Brewery!), and a bevy of story ideas for the HCN staff. Issues…
Wilderness provides a ‘safe haven’ for this cowboy
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The wild card.” When I meet Cal Baird at a truck stop about 30 miles south of Vegas, he clears a space for me in the passenger’s seat of his Ford pickup (“I don’t know how we ever got by without extended cabs —…
Fences go up along the Mexican border
Interior Secretary Norton ‘troubled’ by impacts on desert wildlife
Off-roaders torpedo a wilderness alternative
When it comes to protecting land, Utah knows only deadlock