The increase in numbers of tourists drawn to the canyon country by guidebooks and magazines raises questions about exploiting and overusing a fragile landscape.
Jobs for the environment
JOBS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT A proposed bill to protect the Northern Rockies ecosystem would create thousands of new jobs, according to an economic study released by an environmental group, Alliance for the Wild Rockies. The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, recently introduced by New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, would designate 20 million acres of wilderness…
Babbitt begins range reform
Despite requests for yet another delay by Western senators plus a lawsuit from the livestock industry, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt traveled to Grand Junction, Colo., Aug. 22 to launch the first phase of his grazing reform. Accompanied by Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, Babbitt announced members of three Resource Advisory Councils in Colorado, where ranchers, environmentalists…
Start spreading the news
START SPREADING THE NEWS For environmentalists eager to get their message across but not sure where to start, a couple of grassroots communication guides have hit the bookstores. Getting the Word Out in the Fight to Save the Earth, by Richard Beamish, tells how to publicize and promote an environmental cause. Beamish, who has plenty…
A pothunter is nailed at last
Earl Shumway, the notorious pillager of Anasazi burial sites in Utah, has been convicted of looting. Shumway had built a record of illegal pillaging of historic sites since 1984, bragging that he was untouchable (HCN, 12/26/94). When asked by The Salt Lake Tribune to describe Shumway, Utah state archaeologist Dave Madsen was brief: “Pothunter. Looter.…
Write-em cowboys
WRITE-EM COWBOYS England may have spawned the Sex Pistols band, but in southern Oregon it’s the Tex-Pistols who headline the Rogue River Roundup Sept. 22-24, the Northwest’s first-ever cowboy poetry gathering. The event features poets and artists in Medford, Ore., as well as a Western art, craft and gear show. Tickets are available through the…
The public was railroaded
THE PUBLIC WAS RAILROADED Railroads and Clearcuts: Legacy of Congress’s 1864 Northern Pacific Land Grant Derrick Johnson and George Draffan with John Osborn. Inland Empire Public Lands Council, Box 2147, Spokane, WA 99210, 1995, $15. 198 pages, paper. Review by Ken Olsen The Northern Pacific Railroad snookered us out of ground it wasn’t entitled to,…
Salvage logging means deep cuts
The rescissions bill signed by President Clinton July 27 directs the Forest Service to cut salvage timber – defined as dead, dying or at-risk trees – -to the maximum extent feasible.” What does that mean? An Aug. 18 letter from the Forest Service’s Washington, D.C., office to all regional foresters begins to spell this out.…
Navajo Nation bails out timber mill
The Navajo Nation has fired the remaining workers at its defunct sawmill and paid $500,000 from general funds to bail out Navajo Forest Products Industry, the business it created in Navajo, N.M. Tribal leaders say they had no alternative: Defaulting on the company’s loan would have damaged the tribe’s credit rating and lost the mill…
Right-of-way or give-away?
When Congress reconvenes after Labor Day, the House is expected to mark up a new bill that could allow states and counties to bulldoze roads across national parks and wilderness areas. The legislation, introduced July 20 by Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, attempts to preserve rural rights-of-way that might not be recognized under recently proposed Interior…
Pay-for-wolf play
Tourists who fail to catch a glimpse of wild wolves restored to Yellowstone National Park can troop to the nearby Grizzly Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Mont. For an undisclosed price, the privately owned center recently purchased a 10-member pack from a Montana breeder and unveiled the animals to the public Aug. 7. Director Gale…
Owl shuts down the Southwest
In a ruling reminiscent of the Northwest spotted owl conflict, federal Judge Carl Muecke ordered the 11 national forests of Arizona and New Mexico to halt all logging until their forest plans adequately protect the Mexican spotted owl. The Aug. 24 temporary injunction, which immediately stopped all timber operations, came in response to a lawsuit…
Taking aim at the Forest Service
Somebody in Nevada doesn’t like Toiyabe Forest Ranger Guy Pence, and to show it they’ve bombed both his office (HCN, 4/17/95) and a van parked at his Carson City home; the latter attack occurred Aug. 4. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., blames the attacks on “the ugly underbelly of the county supremacy movement in Nevada.” When…
Colorado learns bear facts
As encounters between bears and people – in cars, campgrounds and backyards – increase around Colorado’s burgeoning mountain communities, the state’s Division of Wildlife is conducting ground-breaking studies on the wily bruin. Veteran researcher Tom Beck has captured 42 bears so far near Kremmling, Colo., and is tagging and radio-collaring them as part of a…
Burns would shear wolf funding
Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., wants to kill one federal environmental program to fund another. His amendment to the recently passed Interior appropriations bill would cut wolf reintroduction budgets and give the money to whirling disease research. Burns told The Billings Gazette that “whirling disease represents a real threat to Montana’s economy and environment, while wolf…
Hazardous burning plan snuffed
With years of citizen opposition and a zoning ordinance looming over them, a cement company has announced it no longer wants a permit to burn hazardous waste in its Montana City cement kiln. Local environmental groups that fought the project say it’s been a long, hard fight. “They have been absolute hard-core corporate bulldogs about…
Bart goes to bat
BART GOES TO BAT Inspired by a veteran Hollywood actor named Bart who happens to be a 1,500-pound grizzly bear, the recently expanded Vital Ground Foundation in Montana aims to protect grizzly bear habitat through conservation easements, land acquisition, and public education. “Our vision from the beginning was to do something worthwhile for the environment…
Just burn it
JUST BURN IT A year after the Storm King fire in Glenwood Springs, Colo., claimed the lives of l4 firefighters, the Clinton administration announced that it wants to fight fire with fire. The administration’s new policy, which advocates the use of more controlled and prescribed burning, results from reviews of federal firefighting efforts that began…
Group tries to change how trees are cut
KALISPELL, Mont. – Strange bedfellows, the logger and the conservationist. Yet here in the Flathead Valley the two have joined forces to try to revolutionize the way America’s public forests are managed. “Our goal is to look at the entire forest,” says Steve Thompson of the Montana Wilderness Association. “Environmental goals are the prime concern…
U.S. House to the environment: Die!
Attacking the environment through the yearly appropriations process is not new. But this year’s Congress may take it to new heights. No less an authority than House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., has acknowledged the scope of policy changes hooked on to appropriations bills: he called them “without precedent going back to 1933.” The attacks range…
And you thought cows were bad…
I pull apart the sooty rocks, exposing wads of foil, blobs of heated plastic and paper plates. The trash goes in my yellow Woodsy the Owl bag; the ash I scatter in the bushes. This soggy alpine meadow here in Idaho offers no good burial sites for a summer’s accumulation of cinders, and I do…
How to get rural people to stand proud and tall
It usually takes something substantial – a dam or the earth’s 5 billion people – to annoy David Brower. But just credit him with having founded the Sierra Club and watch the scowl form. The annoyance is part vanity. The Sierra Club is now 103; Brower is a youthful 83. His reaction is also part…
Heard around the West
Everyone agrees that environmentalism has been hit out of the ballpark by “Wise Users’ and Republicans. But no one knew why we’d whiffed until Glen Martin of the San Francisco Chronicle did an analysis. Deconstructing his article (it used to be called reading between the lines) shows that Greens spend too much time hiking and…
Dear readers
High Country News is put together every two weeks in much the way a Jackson Pollock-type painting is put together. And that is the approach we have taken to the ceremony marking the paper’s 25 years in the West: impromptu, short on formal presentations and long on directness. We’re thinking of Saturday, Sept. 9, as…
Forest Service wants to play by a new set of rules
While reform of the Endangered Species Act captures headlines across the West, some conservationists say an equally important law is also in danger. It is the National Forest Management Act, or NFMA, which has governed watersheds, soils and wildlife for nearly two decades. Forest Service officials now propose wholesale changes in the regulations that implement…
Devastation at the center of his universe
For many of us, some places become more special than all others. One of mine is a raw asymmetrical land, lacking the scenic appeal of Colorado’s alps. It’s a quiltwork of lodgepole pine, spruce and Douglas fir, with heroic patches of alpine larch and whitebark pine hugging the highest and rockiest slopes. There’s old-growth ponderosa…
I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
TORREY, Utah – J.W. Powell had returned from an extended summer vacation of camping, backpacking and whitewater boating. He found every outdoor-lover’s dream: beautiful, untouched backcountry and not another tourist on the trail. Best of all, this place was a secret, not even shown on the maps. So Powell did what many avid hikers are…
Grow up, dig in, and take root
Outside magazine recently picked six or seven towns – mostly in the West – as great places to live. But those seduced into pulling up stakes by the glossy photos and idyllic promises in July’s cover story should first consider a few facts. Here are three days’ worth of headlines from the Spokesman-Review, the newspaper…
The road to wilderness is paved with outdoor magazines
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook. When Larry Burke first started Outside magazine, he named it after his boat Mariah, meaning “winds of change.” That was in the mid-1970s, right around the time Patagonia started making jackets out of stuff that looked…
For guilt-free wilderness trips
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook. For guilt-free wilderness trips Leave No Trace, Inc., is a new nonprofit group that provides information about “light on the land” backcountry skills (HCN, 6/12/95). Contact the group at P.O. Box 997, Boulder, CO 80306 (303/442-8222).…
How the BLM killed a cow to save a canyon and stop the paperwork
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook. For 10 or more years she was an orphan trapped in a wilderness prison with no means of escape. Finally, she was spotted and a rescue launched. Within sight of freedom, she was killed. One bullet…
Did federal negligence help kill two hikers?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook. SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Who’s to blame when a backcountry hike turns deadly? Expert witnesses are being interviewed now for a trial next year that will ask that question. The case revolves around a disastrous…
BLM land: outstanding opportunities for crowding
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook. A year ago, Bureau of Land Management rangers in southern Utah stumbled upon a remote, never-looted Anasazi ruin. To protect the site, they decided not to publicize its existence, but agency staffers’ jaws dropped recently when…
Dear Friends
Suddenly, late summer It turned hot, and then it turned humid in this mountain valley that receives only 9 to 11 inches of rain a year. Although our swamp coolers can’t keep up, we tell ourselves to enjoy this damp and still warm August weather – slant light announces that fall isn’t far away. Lots…