Public hearings on the rewriting of the Endangered Species Act stir up controversy among environmentalists and their opponents.
The result of groundwater pumping is obvious in Nevada, too
Dear HCN, We read with great interest and a sense of déja` vu Steve Stuebner’s article on the Big Lost River being dewatered due to groundwater pumping (HCN, 2/20/95). Déja` vu because here in Nevada we are dealing with the imminent collapse of a desert lake ecosystem, and groundwater pumping for agriculture is playing an…
Overstaying their welcome?
Overstaying their welcome? A hot springs near a town of 200 in southwestern New Mexico was a popular picnicking and swimming area for locals before a horde of unwelcome guests arrived. Now, campers, vans and tents colonize the area near Glenwood for weeks at a time and many of the town’s residents call it an…
A question of logging
Jon Roush, president of the Wilderness Society, found himself in an embarrassing position last month. The Nation magazine lambasted him for selling timber worth $140,000 from his western Montana ranch. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair questioned why a man paid $125,000 a year to protect wilderness would log private land adjacent to a national…
Shrinking salmon
Not only are salmon runs diminishing in the Pacific Northwest, the fish themselves are also shrinking, according to several recent studies. A study conducted at five Washington hatcheries revealed size decreases from 11 percent to 27 percent over a 12-year period, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. That means some salmon that used to average 6 pounds…
A superb issue
A SUPERB ISSUE Dear HCN, As a longtime reader of HCN, I am writing to commend your paper on the superb April 17 issue, and particularly on your lead story, “The New West’s servant economy.” The environmental movement has been criticized – sometimes justly – for ignoring the human condition, as if humanity is not…
Inciting to violence is not acceptable
INCITING TO VIOLENCE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE Dear HCN, At a recent news conference, a reporter asked House Speaker Newt Gingrich if he felt that the anti-government rhetoric of the new Congress might be partly responsible for encouraging actions like the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Gingrich replied that it was a “grotesque and…
Salvage bill sells out democracy
SALVAGE BILL SELLS OUT DEMOCRACY Dear HCN, This is an open letter to Colorado Sens. Brown and Campbell, who recently voted for the salvage logging bill: I am writing to express my outrage at your vote to exempt the logging industry from environmental laws. There can be no justification for allowing a particular industry to…
Soft-path approach to saving species
Note: this article is one of several in this issue about the Endangered Species Act. “Hank Fischer: least popular man in Montana,” shouts a 1978 headline in High Country News. The Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife earned that label by fighting the federal Animal Damage Control and its use of compound 1080 to…
Interior wants to kill a success
Note: this article is one of several in this issue about the Endangered Species Act. Ask a rancher in the West which he’d rather see traveling down the dusty road to his spread, a rattlesnake or a biologist from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the rancher might just choose the snake. Many Montana…
Five states squirm as bull trout declines
Note: this article is one of several in this issue about the Endangered Species Act. What’s spotted, lives in pristine habitat on national forests and could put some loggers out of work if protected under the Endangered Species Act? No, it’s not that feathered denizen of the ancient forests, the northern spotted owl. It’s a…
A war of ideologies, with endangered species as weapons
Big Bill Rose, my brother Tom’s redheaded boyhood friend, works for Union Pacific and lives in a mountain canyon west of Denver. Tom and I were visiting him some years ago, and the talk came around to Two Forks Dam. This proposed behemoth, since canceled, would have flooded the nearby canyons and mountain villages. Bill…
Armed, crazy and lost in the Wild West
Back in December, I covered some Western militia meetings as part of a nationwide report on the militia movement. In the wake of recent events, those gatherings have taken on a more sinister glow. What struck me at the time was that every person I randomly interviewed was a recent transplant to the Northwest. It’s…
Heard Around the West
The terms of the engagement are clearly expressed in the West’s local papers, especially in the Casper Star-Tribune. This small but extraordinary daily, which tries to cover all 97,000 square miles of Wyoming, gives enormous space to local news, and at times, fills two or three broadsheet pages with letters to the editor. If the…
Dear friends
Semi-special Since several recent issues have been labeled “special” because of their long planning time and extra pages, we were loath to call this edition on the Endangered Species Act a special issue too. But as the publication date approached, pages filled with yet more dimensions of the story. So we compromised: no extra pages…
Wolves born outside the park
After an international journey, nine weeks in a chain-link pen, a trek over Montana’s Beartooth Mountains and the loss of her mate, a female wolf brought to Yellowstone National Park in January delivered pups near Red Lodge, Mont. “All of a sudden I heard a whimper, kind of a squeal, and there they were,” ”…
Critics attack a snow job in Utah
Even though Salt Lake City is nearing the end of a four-year, privately financed, $7 million quest to host the Winter Olympic Games for 2002, the subject has barely surfaced in Utah. Yet a decision is imminent: On June 16 the International Olympic Committee will select from four cities, and Salt Lake and Quebec appear…
Politics and threats keep cows on public land
Facing political pressure and rumblings of violence, the Forest Service retreated in late April from a plan to cut cows from 650 down to 100 on the 227-square-mile Diamond Bar grazing allotment in New Mexico’s Gila and Aldo Leopold wildernesses. Instead, it reduced Kit and Sherry Laney’s herd to 450 through Feb. 28, 1996. Forage…
Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Note: this article is one of several in this issue about the Endangered Species Act. VANCOUVER, Wash. – Environmentalists chanted, “Habitat, habitat, have to have the habitat.” Some carried stuffed animals and paper fish. A straggly line of loggers dressed in prison garb marched past them, wearing buttons proclaiming “Property Rights ESA Hostage.” Inside the…
A tough law meets tough foes
Note: this article is one of several in this issue about the Endangered Species Act. In his classic 1940s essay, “Round River,” Aldo Leopold made the case for conserving biological diversity: “saving all the parts’ of the natural world. “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering,” Leopold wrote. That…
A full-court press to save ecosystems
Note: this article is one of several in this issue about the Endangered Species Act. Boulder, Colo. – Jasper Carlton, head of the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, sits at a table in his suburban townhome, intently sketching a map of the Selkirk ecosystem in northern Idaho. “I spent time in those mountains for weeks on end…