Nevada’s dirt-poor Lincoln County is rich in water, but conservationists have reservations about Vidler Water Company’s plans to market it, and the city of Las Vegas has its own needs– and plans – for that water.
Also in this issue: As drought dries up the Rio Grande, New Mexico’s congressional delegation goes after a court decision upholding the endangered silvery minnow’s right to water.
Judge says Klamath plan needs revisions
A federal judge has sent the Bureau of Reclamation back to the drawing board with the management plan for the Klamath River Basin. In Oakland, Calif., Judge Saundra Brown Armstong called parts of the plan “arbitrary and capricious” and demanded that the National Marine Fisheries Service revise its biological opinion, on which the management plan…
Bison range fight is not about Indian rights
Your story about the hand-over of three national wildlife refuges to a Montana tribe oversimplified a very complex issue (HCN, 7/7/03: Back on the range?). Despite your portrayal of talks between the Department of the Interior and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes as a unique attempt to reunite the tribes with bison and lands…
Climbers need to police themselves
Thanks for showing both sides of the climbing-impact issue (HCN, 7/7/03: Invasion of the rock jocks). I am a 41-year-old who has been climbing for over 25 years. I’ve done both bolt-free traditional and bolted sport-route first ascents. As much as I would like to deny it, climbers do impact the environment in many adverse…
Climbers are a sign of bigger problems
Examining the attitudes, rhetoric and actions of the new generation of rock climbers is illustrative of an ethic that places personal “freedom” above conservation (HCN, 7/7/03: Invasion of the rock jocks). Repeatedly, The Access Fund has, as the executive director proudly proclaims, “played hardball with land managers,” by associating with the very worst stewards of…
It’s time to pay in proportion to our impacts
I’m following the debate about bicycles vs. horsepackers vs. hikers with the same bemusement that I do the debate of wilderness vs. protected vs. multiple use. The real essence of the debate is that some fat guy in a quad runner with a case of Bud Lite, a carton of Marlboros, and an AR15 is…
Red Earth: desert poems resurrected
I’ve seen her pass with eyes upon the road — An old bent woman in a bronze black shawl, With skin as dried and wrinkled as a mummy’s, As brown as a cigar-box, and her voice Like the low vibrant strings of a guitar. And I have fancied from the girls about What she was…
Calendar
The Seattle Audubon Society has field trips planned through September, including a tour of the lower Duwamish River and a geological look at Mount Rainier. For more information, call 206-523-4483 or visit www.seattleaudubon.org. The first statewide Gunnison Sage Grouse Summit will be held in the Telluride, Colo., area on Sept. 24-25. Until Aug. 15, the…
Project puts tribal lands back on the map
Speak of maps, and most people think of lines drawn on paper. But American Indians have navigated the land for thousands of years using mental maps created from generations of stories and oral history. For them, the landscape is a fusion of familiar landmarks and mythical or real events that happened there. Since 1999, the…
Sustainable forestry for beginners
While most how-to forestry guides are tailored for Eastern landowners, former HCN intern Bryan Foster has brought the issue west in his new book, Wild Logging. Foster introduces readers to Western landowners, foresters and loggers, describing the physical work of marking timber sales, cutting trees, performing prescribed burns and removing felled timber. As he tells…
The Latest Bounce
A federal judge has kicked President Clinton’s Roadless Rule to the curb: In mid-July, U.S. District Judge Clarence A. Brimmer ruled that the U.S. Forest Service violated the Wilderness Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by declaring 58.5 million acres off-limits to road building, mining and logging (HCN, 7/30/01: Bush fails to defend roadless…
Want to protect a river? Get out and swim it
On the whole, professional conservationists are an office-bound bunch. They spend their days toiling to protect wild rivers and clean air, but don’t get outside often enough; the habitat these folks frequent is behind a desk, near a pile of papers. Enter Christopher Swain. A former acupuncturist and Iron Man competitor, Swain moved to Portland,…
Rural ‘Water Warriors’ take on a water wrangler
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Pipe Dreams.” Thirty-five miles southwest of Las Vegas, on the California/Nevada border, Sandy Valley is a desert haven for free-living refugees from the urban rat race. The valley’s institutions range from Dust Devil Pizza to the Sky Ranch Airport — “A Flying Family Community”…
County’s hopes rest on a roller-coaster power market
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Pipe Dreams.” The 2001 energy crisis, and the sky-high power prices that came with it, touched off a stampede of new power plant proposals throughout the West. North Carolina-based Cogentrix Energy arrived in Nevada with a plan to build an 1,100 megawatt gas-fired power…
When did we become such gear-toting wimps?
When I read that the Outdoor Industry Association threatened to move its biannual gear show out of Salt Lake City as a protest against Utah’s wilderness policies, I was taken aback. Not by the announcement, but by the reported magnitude of the show: 15,000 visitors spending $24 million in the region to pore over high-tech…
Pipe Dreams
LINCOLN COUNTY, NEVADA — Out here in a rock-strewn, desolate sweep of creosote bush and blackbrush called the Tule Desert, there’s a patch of land bulldozed clear of vegetation. Standing in the middle of it is a well called PW-1. It doesn’t look like much; just a 32-inch-diameter steel pipe, painted black and sticking out…
A brave new world of water
Talk about turning over public resources — timber, minerals, land — to the cold hand of capitalism, and environmentalists get pretty uncomfortable. If nothing else, California’s electricity crisis has taught us to be wary of corporations with the power to manipulate the supply of essential resources. So it’s not surprising that when a private company…
Dear friends
We’re back! Following a two-week hiatus, the High Country News staff is back on the job, looking a little sunnier, and feeling refreshed. Temperatures on Colorado’s Western Slope have been rocketing over the 100-degree mark every afternoon, so it’s good to be back under the swamp cooler. Visitors Truckloads of HCN subscribers have ducked in…
Truce remains elusive in Rio Grande water fight
New Mexico’s biggest river dries up as battle rages in courts and Congress
Journey to the bottom of Navajo Lake
José “Ed” Marquez, 67, squints into the late afternoon sunlight, scanning what remains of Navajo Reservoir. “When they started filling the lake in 1961, I couldn’t imagine that this town I’d grown up in would soon be under water,” he says, waving his hand over the miles of dried and cracked mud now taking the…
Is the Southwest’s ‘last real stinker’on its last legs?
Closing down the Mohave power plant would be good for the air, but bad for tribal economies
Heard Around the West
COLORADO Your poinsettia isn’t wilting, it’s trying to warn you. June Medford, a Colorado State University biologist, came up with the idea to genetically engineer plants to tattle on terrorists. How would the plants accomplish this? By changing color in the presence of a biological or chemical agent. The potential is huge, claims USA Today:…
Plains tribe harnesses the wind
Some tribes try their hands at renewable energy, but traditional energy sources hold more allure than ever