New Fish and Wildlife Service Directory Mollie Beattie wants to restore agency’s integrity and purpose.
Texan fights out-of-state wastes
In Sierra Blanca, Texas, someone burned Bill Addington’s family lumber yard to the ground last September. Addington says the arson was a message to him and others: Stop protesting the importation of sewage sludge and nuclear waste. Addington heads a citizens’ group of over 70 people which has resisted waste disposal from other states for…
Taking back Santa Fe
Hoping to rein in the runaway development that has transformed Santa Fe, N.M., into a mecca for tourists and the affluent, a new group is registering voters for the city elections March 1. Take Back Santa Fe has trained dozens of volunteers who are going door-to-door to register people to vote. Organizer Gloria Mendoza says…
Slip sliding away
Preventing land from washing into streams, rivers and lakes may not be the sexiest topic around, but for 25 years the International Erosion Control Association has held an annual conference in an attempt to make it so. This year’s conference, scheduled for Feb. 15-18 in Reno, Nev., tackles “Sustaining Environmental Quality: The erosion control challenge,”…
Look also within, Utah
Dear HCN, Grateful thanks to Rep. Kelly Atkinson, D-West Jordan (Utah), for his expression of concern regarding Umetco Minerals’ plan to bury radioactive waste in Uravan, Colo., on the San Miguel River and a short 20 miles from the Utah-Colorado border (HCN, 11/29/93). While it’s true we all live downstream, I would suggest that Utah…
Agriculture in the round
For the past three years, up to 400 people have gathered in Denver for Colorado Gov. Roy Romer’s Agricultural Outlook Forum. This year, on Feb. 18, Romer wants the gathering to focus on the ecology and economics of sustainable farming. Experts such as Marty Strange, who founded Nebraska’s Center for Rural Affairs, and Ralph Grossi,…
No cows, no way
Dear HCN, WAKE UP High Country News! How loudly does the land have to scream before you come to your senses? The Western public lands you so graciously sacrifice to the rancher only account for 2-to-3 percent of the annual forage of livestock. Pocket change. Get all cows off public lands permanently and watch 300…
Idaho’s unsettling sediment
A new government study shows that Idaho’s Lake Coeur d’Alene is one of the most contaminated bodies of water in the world. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 85 percent of the 50-square-mile lake bed is contaminated with 75 million metric tons of sediments containing silver, copper, lead, zinc, cadmium, mercury and arsenic. The contamination…
Upstarts today are establishment soon
Dear HCN, Rifts like the one in the Northwest environmental community described in Kathie Durbin’s article (HCN, 12/27/93) are often portrayed as moral questions: hardliners vs. sellouts or realists vs. idealists. In fact, these splits are perfectly predictable given the rules of the political game. Organizations such as the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society work…
Join the eagles
Eagle watchers will convene in Klamath Falls, Ore., Feb. 18-20 during the largest gathering of bald eagles in the lower 48 states. They will also attend the 15th annual Klamath Basin Bald Eagle Conference, sponsored by the Klamath Basin Audubon Society and other non-profit groups and federal agencies, to look at the successes of bald…
Sheep erase history
Dear HCN, A major blow to Hells Canyon prehistory has been soil erosion caused by over-grazing domestic stock, mainly sheep. Soil provides the context and something close to a set of rules or guidelines for making sense out of archaeological remains. Without the soil that surrounds them, artifacts are like words in a language without…
Wanted: Wild poets
Poets who find their inspiration in nature may want to enter the ninth annual wilderness poetry competition sponsored by the Utah Wilderness Association. The group welcomes poems on the theme of wilderness, its preservation and spiritual nature. The winning poet receives $100, and the winning poem and five honorable mentions will be printed in the…
Risky business
Dear HCN, A recent letter to the editor in HCN belittled collaborative groups that try to solve natural resource conflicts as being too small and too slow. I ask, which is more effective: slow, steady progress, or rapid suit and countersuit that characterize our current attempts to control resources? Are the salmon making a comeback…
Canyonlands backcountry plan
In an attempt to preserve the wildness and solitude of eastern Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, the National Park Service wants to restrict camping, backpacking and mountain biking in heavily used and ecologically important areas of the park. In a 66-page environmental assessment, the agency lays out five alternatives for managing backcountry use of the 337,000-acre…
Cow stomp and more
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance will hold a conference for anti-grazing activists in Salt Lake City on Feb. 19. “Take Back the West” is designed for people discouraged by the Interior Department’s efforts at grazing reform. It includes talks about Babbitt’s soon-to-be-released grazing regulations and the wise-use movement. Grazing activist George Wuerthner and writer-naturalist Terry…
Work for (a) change
Would you like to build trails and fences on a nature preserve this summer? How about researching and writing on conservation issues in Idaho? The Northern Rockies Action Group recently published the third annual Making a Change: A Student Guide to Social Change Internships in the Northern Rockies, which describes internships with environmental and social…
Baca at the barricades
A movement is under way within the Clinton administration to remove Jim Baca as director of the Bureau of Land Management. Baca has had a difficult year, butting heads with ranchers and miners over federal land reforms and with Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus over a proposed bombing range (HCN, 1/24/94). On Jan. 27, top officials…
Babbitt takes a fall
At Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, Jan. 21, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt tripped on a rock and fell on his face, requiring several stitches on his head at a local hospital. Barely an hour later, he was back at the monument, telling the press that he was ready to negotiate with Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez…
Timber industry mounts an offense
The timber industry this winter launched a $1.5 million campaign in the Pacific Northwest to derail President Clinton’s Option 9 forest plan and lift court injunctions on timber sales. In addition to radio and television ads, the industry created three citizen committees in Washington, Oregon and northern California that have sent mailings to 1.5 million…
Recycling cans changes an industry
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Northwest is asked to give up 18 dams. Andy Kerr’s proposal to dismantle or not build 18 dams rests in part on the fact that Americans in 1992 recycled 67.9 percent of their aluminum cans. That recycling saved an immense amount of…
A battle for turf on a flat-top mountain
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – The aspen and conifer forests that cover most of Grand Mesa just east of here look peaceful from a distance. But up on top of the world’s largest flat-top mountain, recreational vehicle drivers are engaged in a protracted war with other forest visitors. It’s feet vs. machines. Hikers, skiers, hunters and…
Damnable dams
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Northwest is asked to give up 18 dams. The Oregon Natural Resources Council makes the case for eliminating 13 finished, one unfinished and four proposed dams. Historically, questions about dams have been limited to where dams should be built, but now the…
Judge tells wilderness outfitters to decamp the Frank
The Forest Service will no longer allow outfitter camps in Idaho’s Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness to feature propane refrigerators, wood cookstoves or piped water. These changes stem from rulings issued last fall by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan in response to a lawsuit filed by the environmental group, Wilderness Watch.…
Grazing talks split both sides
Most environmentalists hate the idea that Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt would let a group of moderate ranchers and environmentalists from Colorado try to create a consensus plan on grazing reform. It’s like watering down a diluted version of a weak plan that was off to begin with, says Peter Angst, public-lands specialist with the…
Grazing: the shape of the future
Most combatants in the public-lands grazing battle are still in their bunkers, happily sending shells into opposing camps. Nevertheless, there hangs over this familiar and comfortable scene a small but dark cloud: the willingness among some former enemies to talk to each other. The possibility of negotiations is as unsettling in the West as it…
Sore loser in Utah
“Some of those people down there must get up in the morning and flip a coin to see if they’re a girl or a boy that day. Then they ride their bikes off into the tules,” says Uintah County Commissioner Max Adams, still angry that Grand County backed out of a deal to pay for…
Fearless direction on the educational front
The Meridian, Idaho, school board’s instructions for teaching about the environment specify: “Discussion should not reflect negative attitudes against business or industry who do the best job under present regulations considering economic realities,” reports the Los Angeles Times. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Fearless direction on the…
Can she save ecosystems?
Mollie Beattie got an uncomfortable preview of the realpolitik that still pervades the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last summer while she waited for Senate confirmation as the agency’s director. One Republican senator after another anonymously exercised the right to place a “hold” on her confirmation. Some, no doubt, were simply curious about this 46-year-old…
Dear friends
Spirited in Boulder Board members of the High Country Foundation from around the West braved clear skies and balmy January weather to gather in Boulder, Colo., for the group’s annual budget meeting. Eleven out of 16 board members made it to Boulder, and 10 made it to the all-day meeting on Jan. 15. (Board president…
Idaho group takes over some public land
For the first time in Idaho history, an environmental group has wrested control of state-owned rangeland from a rancher. At a Jan. 28 auction in Idaho Falls, the Idaho Watersheds Project outbid Challis rancher Will Ingram for rights to lease a 640-acre tract of state land for the next 10 years. “We’ve experienced great frustration…
Some dams self-destruct
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Northwest is asked to give up 18 dams. The Oregon Natural Resource Council’s 18-dam “hit list” is already growing shorter. An Oregon irrigation district voted Jan. 5 to remove the Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River. “This is not the decision…
Babbitt has a bad day in New Mexico
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – For two hours, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt preached the joys of consensus to New Mexico ranchers and environmentalists. And for two hours, the ranchers and environmentalists snapped at each other with the same gusto that has marked their exchanges for the past decade. The Jan. 20 meeting at the University of New…
Wyoming county tries to put itself on the map
By the time you read this, 200 avid sportsmen will have enjoyed a festive three-day “coyote shoot” in which the killers of the most and biggest animals take home $500 prizes. Sponsored by the Campbell County Chamber of Commerce in northeastern Wyoming, the Feb. 3-5 shoot is not unique. Similar events go on throughout the…
Why care about a snail the size of pinhead?
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Can she save ecosystems? MOLLIE BEATTIE: Even if not a single job were created, wildlife must be conserved. Why? Because we are linked to it, and it is in our immediate self-interest to care about it. When we see the snails and…
Agency ends cattle grazing at Idaho refuges
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Can she save ecosystems? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently revoked grazing privileges at two national wildlife refuges in eastern Idaho and is poised to do the same at two others in the state. Annual permits to run cattle in the…
Can this mixed marriage work?
ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. – Moving from the Wyoming Stock Growers Association to managing a ranch for The Nature Conservancy is not a major shift, Bob Budd says. Budd, 37, resigned as executive director of the ranching organization in December to manage the 35,000-acre Red Canyon Ranch, which The Nature Conservancy is acquiring (HCN, 11/29/93). The…
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: A chronology
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Can she save ecosystems? 1885: Congress creates the Section of Economic Ornithology within the U.S. Department of Agriculture and appoints prominent naturalist C. Hart Merriam to head it. Merriam begins an exhaustive survey of the geographic distribution of the nation’s birds and…
Northwest is asked to give up 18 dams
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has said he wants to blow up a dam. Andy Kerr of the Oregon Natural Resources Council aims higher: He wants 18 dams destroyed across Oregon, Idaho and Washington – a drastic measure intended to save salmon runs now teetering on the edge of extinction. “Many people believe dams are engineering…