The National Park Service may be downsized and reorganized.
Noose threatens planning supporter
Ellen Gray locks her office door when she’s at work. Since she was threatened during a public meeting in Everett, Wash., this month, her job as director of the Pilchuck Audubon Society’s SmartGrowth Campaign seems a high-risk occupation. Gray had just testified about a proposed land-use ordinance at a Snohomish County Council hearing when a…
We are not elitists
Dear HCN, It seems to me that we environmentalists are in danger of shooting ourselves in the foot – again! In retrospect, it’s clear that a major mistake was made in giving the appearance (sometimes maybe more than that) of not caring about workers who lost their jobs in mining, timbering or elsewhere. This gave…
Leave forests alone
Dear HCN, To suggest that logging in some way is a way towards forest health is like the medieval doctors who thought the best way to save a dying patient was to bleed them to rid them of “bad blood.” From an ecological perspective, there is no forest “health” problem. Disease, insects, and yes, even…
Call it “Realtorville’
Dear HCN, In driving around the West for the past five weeks we largely confirmed the picture you described in “Grappling with Growth,” Sept. 9, of pell-mell, frantic growth and the growing gap between obvious wealth and poverty. Not only are the monster “homes’ ugly and in bad taste, but they are usually located on…
Unnatural in Yellowstone
Dear HCN, Having just returned from a four-day camping trip to Yellowstone National Park, I was interested in Dave Tillotson’s letter (HCN, 9/5/94). Unfortunately, what I would like to tackle is a little more difficult than a vehicle ban: visitor stupidity! A huge number of park visitors blatantly ignore warnings about approaching wild animals and…
More people, more damage
Dear HCN, I have worked in the backcountry of Dinosaur National Monument for four years and have had numerous encounters with groups from the Colorado Outward Bound School. They have been using this area for a number of years and frankly, it shows. Mark Udall of COBS says they “thoroughly instruct … students to diligently…
A passion for less
Did you know that the average American spends one year of his or her life watching TV commercials, that every year in this country 1.3 million acres are blacktopped, and that each day, nine square miles of rural land are turned over to development? Americans overconsume, yet remain unhappy, according to statistics in All Consuming…
Drilling in Wyoming
After a two-year moratorium, drill rigs may soon rumble into action in the Thunder Basin National Grassland. The Forest Service has rejected an appeal by the Wyoming chapter of the Sierra Club and Friends of the Bow to reduce oil and gas leasing within the nearly 2 million-acre grassland in northeastern Wyoming. The decision “just…
Fighters for justice
Gail Small: I am a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe. I am an environmental attorney, activist, and founder of Native Action – one of the few grass-roots environmental groups based on a reservation. The 500,000-acre Northern Cheyenne reservation is located in the beautiful ponderosa pine country of southeastern Montana, (and is) rapidly being surrounded…
Stupid shooting
The large cactus on Arizona’s Tonto National Forest near Phoenix wasn’t menacing anyone, yet it now stands riddled with holes, the shooting target of vandals. The three arms of the approximately 250-year-old saguaro were shot until they fell to the ground. The Maricopa County attorney’s office will arraign five suspects, all under age 20, who…
Crude awakening
The Exxon tanker spill was a drop in the bucket compared to what the U.S. oil industry routinely wastes. In Crude Awakening, The Oil Mess in America: Wasting Energy, Jobs and the Environment, Friends of the Earth says we lose the equivalent of 1,000 Exxon spills each year through leaks, evaporation and inefficient use. Author…
War on wheels
Jeeps, dirt bikes and four-wheelers roar off designated roads in the wildlands of Utah and rip up desert wildlife, says the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management stands by and lets the damage happen, the group charges. SUWA wants President Clinton to issue an Executive Order closing all public lands to…
Mount Usher-in-More
While the National Park Service may be talking about minimizing vehicle gridlock at Grand Canyon and Yosemite, Mount Rushmore in South Dakota is planning a $16 million parking lot to handle the memorial’s annual 3 million visitors. Superintendent Dan Wenk proposes charging drivers $4 to $5 to park to help fund the parking lot. Mount…
Pests and pesticides
If you don’t like chemical pesticides but don’t like pests either, then Pesticides in our Communities: Choices for Change may be for you. It tells how to substitute boric-acid powder, powdered sugar, corn syrup and stale beer for dichlorvos (Vapona), chlorpyrifos (Raid Roach, Hot Shot Roach), and carbaryl (Sevin). Published by Concern Inc., a Washington,…
Owl defenders awarded $1 million
The federal government must pay $1 million to lawyers who fought to protect the northern spotted owl during a six-year legal battle with the Bureau of Land Management. Federal District Court Judge Helen J. Frye awarded $966,317 in attorney fees to the Seattle-based Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, while the Western Environmental Law Center of…
The honeymoon is over
The Honeymoon Is Over Back in about 1969, middle America married the environment … After 25 years of marriage, the relationship is growing a little thin … People who care about rivers – that’s you and me – need to court our spouses anew (and) persuade middle America that we really do care about mainstream…
Reprieve for the Uintas
More than 218,000 acres in the Uinta Mountains near Salt Lake City have been spared the drill. Although the Forest Service approved an oil and gas exploration permit that Chevron applied for in 1989, the company announced this summer that it would withdraw. Chevron had only one hurdle left before drilling: the signature of Salt…
Rocky Mountain Naturalist
-Go out into the wilderness and meet yourself,” advised Enos Mills, called the father of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. “If any normal person under 50 cannot enjoy being in a storm in the wilds, he ought to reform at once.” Radiant Days: Writings by Enos Mills contains the work of this naturalist and activist…
Desert Images
Phil Lauro of Dillon, Colorado, is not a fan of photographers who shoot mediocre images and then expound on how wonderful, creative, important and awe-inspiring they are. Rather, he says, “I just shoot whatever looks neat to me.” For “His bite is worse than his bark,” pictured above center, Lauro shot just one frame before…
Another water project is drowned
After almost 20 years of controversy, Homestake II has joined the growing ranks of defeated Colorado water projects. On Nov. 17, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld Eagle County’s decision to reject construction permits. The ruling, which recognized Colorado counties’ broad discretion in land-use matters, could be appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court. But regardless…
He felt the earth move when scientists nuked western Colorado
Twenty-five years ago Americans walked on the moon for the first time, and a federal agency set off an atomic bomb 8,426 feet underground in rural western Colorado. I was there at 3 p.m. on Sept. 10, 1969, a stowaway on the surface, you might say, when our government detonated the 43-kiloton bomb. It released…
BLM: The Next Generation
Note: this is a sidebar to the news article titled “The BLM: New faces and new attitudes“ BLM: The Next Generation * Nina Hatfield, Assistant Director, Business and Fiscal Services * Maitland Sharpe, Assistant Director, Resource Assessment and Planning * Hord Tipton, Assistant Director, Resource Use and Protection ALASKA Tom Allen, state director Sally Wisely,…
Judge hints that Clinton’s forest plan is dead
SEATTLE, Wash. – A federal judge in Seattle is considering sending President Clinton’s Northwest forest plan back to the government for more protection for owls and salmon. Jittery forest advocates admit that such a ruling could be a mixed blessing. It could put virtually all remaining old-growth forests off-limits to logging; it could also fuel…
Shrink to fit
National Park Service may be downsized and reorganized
Parks as cash cows
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. National parks bring in lots of money but they don’t get to control how it’s spent. Private companies are the main beneficiaries of tourist traffic, and for the most part they have free rein over how to spend the tourist gold.…
For the white and well-to-do
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. If Karl Hess has his way, the nation’s parks will become less commercial, less crowded and pricier, as visitors are asked to pay the true costs of operating the parks. But raising entrance fees could run directly into another priority: the…
A trial run at Glacier
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. In the late 1980s, Republican Rep. Ron Marlenee came over from his eastern Montana district to make speeches in the Flathead Basin. In those speeches, he demanded that Gil Lusk get back inside Glacier National Park. At the time, Lusk had…
Who will run the new Park Service?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. When and if the National Park Service is allowed by the Congress to reorganize itself, it will still have 366 Park Service units and close to 300 million visitors a year. But the management of those parks and visitors and how…
An urban park is surrounded by controversy
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The words from the park superintendent seemed to jump off the page at Ike Eastvold, an environmentalist who leads groups through Petroglyph National Monument. “Tour content must not include political or inflammatory information directed at either the National…
Dear friends
Moving on and up Just as we are about to send yet another batch of interns – Meg, Shara and Chip – out into a cruel and uncaring world, we hear that previous graduates of HCN’s program, despite their experience here, are doing well. Cathy Ciarlo went on to earn her law degree from Northwestern…
The BLM: New faces and new attitudes
A new generation has ascended to top leadership posts at the Bureau of Land Management. In the last eight months, acting BLM Director Mike Dombeck has filled 17 key positions, appointing three assistant directors, eight state directors and six associate state directors. Six appointees are women, two are minorities, and two have never before worked…
Foul hunting tactic under attack in the West
To many Westerners, luring an unsuspecting black bear with rotting meat and then shooting it is cruel and unsporting, not to mention messy. “It’s such an exceptional practice,” says Aaron Medlock, a former Fund for Animals attorney who now works for the Humane Society of the United States. “It’s so different from regular hunting.” Lawsuits…