Soul Searching environmentalists fear they’ve become isolated and ineffective, but the story of Libby, Montana, and its dying residents, shows that the movements missteps are only part of the story.
A Lively Exchange with the Interior Department
HCN GOT IT WRONG ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION To the Editor: The Dec. 6 feature article, “Taking the West Forward,” contains a thoughtful overview of issues facing the West but it grossly mischaracterizes the Bush Administration’s policies and programs. The article states the administration has “opened the region’s resources to development” when in fact public…
Where were the environmentalists when Libby needed them most?
The story of an ailing town in northwestern Montana calls into question the health of the environmental movement
HCN has it wrong on Bush
The Dec. 6 feature article, “Taking the West Forward,” grossly mischaracterizes the Bush administration’s policies and programs. The article states the administration has “opened the region’s resources to development” when in fact public lands, at the direction of Congress, have been open for years. More typically, this administration has restricted development in previously open sensitive…
The Editors Respond
We appreciate Rebecca Watson’s invitation to Westerners, and we salute the many positive efforts Interior is undertaking to protect wild places and involve the public. But we do not believe HCN has mischaracterized the Bush administration’s record. On the subject of opening land to development: In 2001, the Department of Agriculture rewrote the Roadless Area…
From folk singer to fierce activist — the life of Katie Lee
Among desert rats and river lovers, folk singer and activist Katie Lee is legendary. A Hollywood actress in her youth, Lee started running Southwestern rivers in her 30s and became an outspoken defender of her beloved Colorado River. She fought the damming of Glen Canyon, and celebrated its beauty and mourned its loss in All…
You, too, can be in the know about California’s H2O
Mention the word “cyborg” in Sacramento, and the name of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pops immediately to mind. It’s easy to forget that the state he governs — part natural waterscape, part ingeniously engineered plumbing system — is a hydraulic cyborg that could probably kick even the Governator’s butt. One number pretty much speaks for…
The Basket Maker
The Basket Maker Kate Niles 224 pages, hardcover $22.95.BR> GreyCore Press, 2004. This first novel by a college writing instructor in Durango, Colo., tells a searing story of incest and compassion from five perspectives, including the ghost of the Ute Chief Ouray. Surprisingly, the device works, and we are gripped. This article appeared in the…
The Meat You Eat: Corporate Farming and the Decline of the American Diet
The Meat You Eat: Corporate Farming and the Decline of the American Diet Ken Midkiff 240 pages, softcover $23.95 St. Martin’s Press, 2004 Midkiff shows us the ugly underbelly of industrialized meat production: “Mad cow” disease scares, farm animals shot full of massive doses of hormones and antibiotics, and giant farms producing giant amounts of…
Follow-up
Despite the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s argument that it is exempt from certain provisions of the Endangered Species Act, a federal court in Oregon says the agency must, in fact, comply with that law. At the end of January, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones ruled that the agency acted unlawfully when it downgraded…
Of Chiles, Cacti, and Fighting Cocks: Notes on the American West
Of Chiles, Cacti, and Fighting Cocks: Notes on the American West Frederick Turner 297 pages, softcover $16.95 Fulcrum Press, 2004 First published in 1990, this book of deft essays is back in print and as engaging as ever; it even includes some new work. Whether he’s describing cock fights, the artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s solitary ways…
Snowmaking on sacred slopes stirs controversy
The U.S. Forest Service will soon decide whether to allow the owners of an Arizona ski resort to create artificial snow from the city of Flagstaff’s treated wastewater. Since 1937, recreational refugees from Phoenix and Flagstaff have enjoyed the 777-acre Arizona Snowbowl ski area in the San Francisco Peaks. On average, the resort gets 260…
State sues over Sierra forest plan
In early February, the state of California sued the U.S. Forest Service for approving a new management plan that more than triples logging in national forests in the Sierra Nevada. In January 2004, the Forest Service rolled out a major revision of the 2001 Sierra Framework, a comprehensive plan for 11 national forests that was…
Coal company takes refuge in a blind spot
Last spring, the government of British Columbia allowed Montanans only four days to comment on plans for an open-pit coal mine six miles north of Glacier National Park. To environmentalists on both sides of the border, who have fought similar mine proposals for three decades, the hurry seemed suspicious. Montana’s congressional delegation, along with many…
Nun calls the faithful to an ‘ecological ministry’
NAME Joan Brown VOCATION Head of the Ecological Ministry of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, Order of St. Francis AGE 51 HOME BASE Albuquerque, New Mexico MOST NOTED FOR Taking on social and environmental issues with a Catholic sensibility INSPIRED BY Catholic priest and philosopher Thomas Berry, who said, “If we lose the grandeur of…
Buildup to disaster: A Libby timeline
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Where were the environmentalists when Libby needed them most?” ASBESTOS 1916 — In an old mine shaft about seven miles from Libby, prospector Edgar Alley notices his candle causing a strange rock to expand; he’s discovered veins of vermiculite, which contains tremolite asbestos. 1939…
Let’s not ram more boats through the Grand Canyon
Each year, nearly 5 million people visit the Grand Canyon, most of them traveling to the South Rim, where they spend as much time looking for a parking place as they do looking at the canyon. Only a small fraction venture below the rim on a trail. Another 22,000 people a year see the canyon…
An identity crisis, a decade or two late
“Environmental ‘bad boys’ predict end of movement,” reads The New York Times headline. The story is one of many in recent months about Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, rabble-rousing California media consultants who have sent environmentalists into a tizzy with their essay, “The Death of Environmentalism.” The essay argues that environmentalists have become increasingly isolated…
Dear friends
FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT Eric Barlow, the brother of HCN board member Michele Barlow, made it onto Vanity Fair’s list of the “Best Stewards of 2004,” for his work protecting the Barlow family’s Wyoming ranch — and others like it — from oil and gas development. Eric, a veterinarian and former Marine, has been a…
A bold, if impractical, new plan for Yellowstone bison
A new governor sparks debate with a controversial solution
Texas water case is ‘takings’ on steroids
Farmers want $500 million in damages from Mexico, but critics say the water wasn’t theirs in the first place
Evolution of a timber family
My family owns a timber company in Washington state, and for us, money grows on trees. Every time we buy something, we see the physical signs of our consumption in our backyard. Paying for my recent college education, for example, took about 300 truckloads of second-growth Douglas fir, cedar and hemlock trees. A $60 pair…
Resort homes threaten scenic Mono Lake
Developers around California watch to see if a county can trump federal preservation rules
Heard around the West
COLORADO Avalanches were so frequent this winter in the San Juan Mountains of western Colorado that for days the town of Silverton and its winter population of 400 were cut off. In early January, two miles of the highway leading to the town became “entombed” by snow, reports the Denver Post, as 62 avalanches pummeled…
Rancher wins big in libel suit against enviros
Calling itself “nature’s legal eagles,” the Center for Biological Diversity has earned a national reputation by suing the federal government. Largely through its lawsuits, the center has forced the listing of fully one-quarter of the 1,264 plants and animals now protected under the Endangered Species Act. So it was no surprise to find the Tucson-based…