Arizona’s San Pedro River – the Southwest’s last natural low-desert river – still faces a number of threats to its survival.
Paying for lost salmon
Paying for lost salmon Each member of Washington’s Colville Confederated Tribes recently received a federal check for $5,989 to compensate for land taken to build the Grand Coulee Dam 62 years ago. But despite the money the Indians received, the land and the rich salmon fishery that the dam destroyed are still missed. Martin Louie…
Endangered Species Act defender issues call to arms
Dear HCN, Thank you for publishing the edition covering the (endangered) Endangered Species Act, (HCN, 5/15/95). I work as a biologist, surveying and trying to mitigate detrimental effects to threatened, endangered, and sensitive species and their habitats. There is a great deal of misunderstanding concerning the effects of the act’s enforcement, with people continuing to…
There’s more to the story about crowded Grand Canyon
Dear HCN, Dennis Brownridge brought up some interesting points in his article about the National Park Service’s “Proposed Action” of their Draft General Management Plan for Grand Canyon National Park (HCN, 4/3/95). Unfortunately, his treatment of the subject was, while not necessarily wrong, at least remarkably biased, and did not begin to offer the whole…
Dennis Brownridge replies
Christa Sadler has repeated park officials’ claims about what the proposed plan would do. However, a careful reading of the entire document and unpublished supporting studies, and hard questioning of park staffers, reveals that the plan is “not as advertised.” Addressing some of Ms. Sadler’s specific interpretations: * The plan would not encourage people to…
Eight is enough
Eight is enough After losing their father to an illegal shooting outside of Red Lodge, Mont., eight wolf pups and their mother are in a holding pen in Yellowstone National Park. After some agonizing over the decision, federal biologists decided to move the single-parent family to the one-acre enclosure. For now, the mother receives fresh…
Rescuing Colorado’s rivers
Rescuing Colorado’s rivers The rivers of Colorado have a new advocate. The nonprofit Colorado Rivers Alliance aims to protect and restore Colorado’s rivers and hopes to gain members from all streams of life, including environmentalists, farmers and politicians. Although the group’s mission is broad, it has more specific intentions as well, such as re-establishing riparian…
Having it all
Having it all Can a city like Boulder, Colo., really have it all? Is it possible for a community to have open space, a sound economy, adequate schools, a healthy environment and affordable housing, all at once? A June 22-23 workshop, sponsored by the Boulder Housing Authority, will address those issues and invite participants to…
Leave no trace
Leave no trace By promoting “light on the land” recreation, a new nonprofit group aims to protect wilderness areas. Funded in part by a grant from the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, Leave No Trace Inc. will work with manufacturers of camping gear and federal-lands staffers to educate backcountry users about minimum-impact recreation. “Since the outdoor…
Family inspiration
Family inspiration Fictional and real-life families are the focus of this year’s Fishtrap gathering of writers in northeastern Oregon, July 3-9. Orphaned in Eden: The Search for Family in the West features workshops and discussion groups with literary agent Lizzie Grossman, novelist Craig Lesley and poet Naomi Shihab Nye, among others. Workshops will examine fictional…
A humming good race
A humming good race This summer, the Rockies will host a kinder, gentler type of car race – one without roaring, polluting engines. The first annual Sun Sprint of the Rockies solar and electric car-race, a 500-mile run from Aspen, Colo., to Moab, Utah, is set for July 11-21. Racers will travel about 50 miles…
Deconstructing the rural West
Patrick Jobes has written a profoundly pessimistic analysis of the fate of the West’s attractive, or amenity, towns in the April/May 1995 issue of Western Planner. Fortunately, the article by the Montana State University sociologist is so densely written that its full, depressing impact may hit only those who reread it several times. Based on…
Rants and raves about cutting government agencies
Dear HCN, Jeff Burgess rants and raves (HCN, 3/20/95) about the grazing fees for ranchers being too low (yawn). It always makes me laugh when I read this as federal land in no way compares to private grazing rentals. Lessees must develop water, cost share fencing and do a host of other things that are…
Who needs ski resorts anyway?
Dear HCN, I very much enjoy your excellent paper, even if quite a few of the articles sadden me as they chronicle the transition of an honest working man’s West into a characterless, la-de-da, recreational theme-park West. But “The New West’s servant economy” truly shocks and depresses me (HCN, 4/17/95). That these ski resorts, catering,…
How an ex-clown brought order to a boom town
PARK CITY, Utah – In 1884, the editor of the town newspaper scolded that “there is too much promiscuous shooting on streets at night.” More than a century later, the common complaint is there is too much promiscuous construction each day. This is the land of perpetual nail pounding, where subdivisions materialize overnight. They march…
Can land trades stop a subdivision and clean up a mine?
REDSTONE, Colo. – The public doesn’t often benefit from the closure and cleanup of a Western mining operation. But it could at Mid-Continent Resources’ defunct coal mines outside this small town. Through an ambitious series of land swaps, the Forest Service hopes to add about 5,800 acres of the mining company’s land to the adjoining…
Heard around the West
The Oregon Natural Resources Council has recruited 40 or so “cow cops” to observe public land grazing, and some ranchers are not pleased. In a letter to federal agencies, the Grant County Stockgrowers’ Association said it “will regard so-called inspection of our allotments as an act of trespass’ and call in real cops to arrest…
Moab area acts to regain control of public lands
MOAB, Utah – Visitors flock here like swallows returning to Capistrano, decked out in spring plumage of spandex, their vehicles sprouting bike racks and kayaks. Locals call this the “silly season” in Utah’s southeastern canyon country. But thanks to a dramatic change in visitor management at several of the area’s most popular attractions, this season…
Learning the trick of quiet
Some 50 years ago a bachelor farmer paid tribute to his mother by giving land to Idaho in her name. The park, named for her – Mary Minerva McCroskey State Park – is only 4,400 acres balanced on a narrow ridge called Skyline Drive. No one would ever mistake it for wilderness. Logging clear-cuts border…
A Montana county unearths a major welfare queen: itself
CHOTEAU, Mont. – Adam F. Dahlman never doubted the old saying that for every dollar American taxpayers fork over to Uncle Sam, the government gives back 50 cents and instructions on how to spend it. But that was before Dahlman, a commissioner in Teton County, north of Great Falls, took a long look at how…
Grazing reform ‘reformed’
After waging a defensive battle for more than two years, public-lands ranchers and their allies in Congress have gone on the offensive. The Livestock Grazing Act of 1995, introduced May 25 by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., would kill Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s two-year effort to reform grazing practices on 270 million acres of land overseen…
In one man’s hands, this lynx became a teacher
John Weaver saw his first lynx in the wild and experienced a vision of sorts. The Forest Service biologist was hiking in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, when he came upon a Canada lynx sitting on its haunches about 50 yards away. “The longer I looked at that lynx,” Weaver says, “the more it…
Feds decide that the Canada lynx can slink for itself
Note: this is a sidebar to a news article titled “In one man’s hands, this lynx became a teacher.” When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied the Canada lynx a place on the list of endangered species last December, conservation groups cried foul, saying the agency ignored the recommendations of its field biologists. Politics…
The Southwest’s last real river: Will it flow on?
SAN PEDRO RIVER RIPARIAN NATIONAL CONSERVATION AREA, Ariz. – For 40 miles after flowing across the Mexican border into Arizona, the San Pedro River looks like a strip of rain forest marooned in the desert. Announced by its bright green cottonwood and willow trees, the river winds northward from headwaters in the Sierra Madre through…
Sandy Anderson
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The Southwest’s last real river: Will it flow on? Sandy Anderson, 41, with her husband, Alvin, owns the Gray Hawk Ranch, a popular birdwatching retreat along the San Pedro River a few miles east of Sierra Vista. They bought the property in 1984. Her…
Harold Vangilder
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The Southwest’s last real river: Will it flow on? Harold Vangilder, 52, is a Sierra Vista city councilman, a program development specialist at the University of Arizona’s Sierra Vista campus, a retired Fort Huachuca civil servant and a founder of the pro-growth Fort Huachuca…
Dear Friends
It must be spring Wyomingites Geneen Marie Haugen and David Titcomb stopped by on Memorial Day, hoping to get away from the snow and rain. “Fat chance,” they reported. With no television reception or newspaper delivery at their house, they told us they like picking up High Country News for the latest scoop – even…
A 77-year-old cow watcher from Arizona
Reader Pauline Sandholdt wrote to let us know that a photo caption in our May 1 issue had blown a “considerable hole” in her confidence in High Country News. The picture in question appeared on page 19 of our special issue on land grant universities headlined, “Reform comes to “Ag” Schools.” It depicted cattle in…
Man, weather conspire against salmon
The giant spring runoff that was supposed to safely whisk baby Snake River salmon over dams to the Pacific Ocean has been cut down to size. Mother Nature accomplished part of the feat. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did the rest. A series of wet winter storms had buoyed the hopes of salmon advocates…
County votes to control private-land logging
Alarmed by a rancher’s plans to log trees at the top of a watershed, a southern Colorado county is drafting regulations to stop the cut and protect the area’s water supply. Costilla County in the high, cold San Luis Valley now has no control over its watershed because the high mountain tracts – considered a…