WYOMING Last winter, in about six months, university students designed a cleaner snowmobile – a feat the four major snowmobile manufacturers haven’t been able to accomplish in 10 years, says Teton County Commissioner Bill Paddleford. Paddleford co-founded the Clean Snowmobile Challenge, held in Jackson, Wyo., to find alternatives to two-stroke engines that emit more than […]
Beth Wohlberg
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Backtracking
“Western road maps are full of old trails: the Lewis and Clark Trail, the Oregon Trail, the Sante Fe Trail, the Outlaw Trail, and the Nez Perce Trail. Their vague lines connect the West that was to the West that is. They may even stretch to the West we imagine will be. But underneath them, […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Take a walk
If anyone walking along the sidewalk were to make deafening noises, spew poisonous gas into innocent faces, and threaten people with a deadly weapon, they would be arrested. Yet a few feet away, on the public roadway, it is considered normal behavior.– Steve Stollman, a cycling/pedestrian advocate in New York City, quoted in Divorce Your […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
From cumbersome to collaborative
The National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the federal government to assess the environmental impacts of its actions, has become synonymous with contentious public hearings and cumbersome environmental impact statements. But it shouldn’t be, argues Daniel Kemmis, director of the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Missoula, Mont. “(NEPA) represents a national recognition […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Looters beware: Tribes are fighting back
Lori Watlamet can’t hold back tears when she talks about the looting of an old Native Indian village site in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River Gorge. In May, with a reporter in tow, the law enforcement officer walked over a bluff that protects the site from plain view and her heart sank. Watlamet, a member […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
New developer thinks big
UTAH An unlikely company is proposing to build what most developers can’t – a dense community in an area where large homes and large lots are the norm. Kennecott Utah Copper Corp., which has mined copper in the Salt Lake Valley for almost 100 years, plans to build 12,000 homes, apartments and condominiums and 4 […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
A whir of wings
Just before sunlight hits New Mexico’s Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in November, visitors can hear the squawking of ducks, geese and cranes. In a roar of wings, thousands of these birds take flight at dawn – an event most viewers consider a highlight of the annual Festival of the Cranes. “Then, during the […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
Farm Bureau not for farmers
Washington, D.C.-based Defenders of Wildlife wants to expose the American Farm Bureau Federation. In its 98-page report, Amber Waves of Gain: How the Farm Bureau is reaping profits at the expense of America’s family farmers, taxpayers and the environment, Defenders accuses the Farm Bureau of bowing to conglomerates, carrying an anti-wildlife agenda and aligning itself […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
Finding fresh flora
A month ago, Scott Sundberg added another plant to his growing list of Oregon flora – kudzu, an exotic vine usually found in the South. With this discovery, the Oregon Flora Project tallies 4,430 species, subspecies and varieties of plants identified in the state. The project was started by Sundberg, a professor at Oregon State […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
Salmon Corps
In the Northwest, where thousands of people have rallied to save salmon, the salmon are helping young, at-risk Native Americans. The Salmon Corps – a partnership of five tribes, the federal Americorps, the city of Portland, government agencies and several corporations – trains Native Americans, aged 18 to 25, in stream restoration work, while they […]
Posted inAugust 28, 2000: The mine that turned the Red River blue
Republicans attack sovereignty
WASHINGTON Native Americans throughout the West say they’re disgusted with Republicans in Washington state: Delegates at the state GOP convention this summer passed a resolution to abolish tribal governments. John Fleming won his party’s support when he complained that as a non-Indian living on the Swinomish reservation in northwestern Washington, he can’t vote in tribal […]
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
No recreation fees – for now
WYOMING There’s at least one way to get around the government’s recreation fee-demonstration program. Just one week before the Forest Service installed signs telling visitors that they’d have to pay to enjoy the Snake River in Wyoming, an anonymous donor offered $50,000 to keep river access free. Then the nearby Jackson, Wyo., community added its […]
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
Who speaks for the sheep?
Desert bighorns are caught between waterholes and wilderness
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
One big bighorn
The biggest bighorn sheep skull you’ve ever seen is on display this summer at the National Bighorn Sheep Interpretive Center in Dubois, Wyo. It was found in the 1970s, among the remains of camels, cheetahs, musk ox, short-faced bears and bison that fell thousands of years ago into an 80-foot-deep limestone cave in Wyoming’s Bighorn […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Barberry bush beats bacteria
A compound from a barberry bush found on Colorado’s Western Slope is helping researchers fight antibiotic resistance. Some bacteria, particularly those that cause staph infections, can become resistant to antibiotics by pumping the drug out of cells before it begins to work. Colorado State University professor Frank Stermitz and Tufts University professor Kim Lewis discovered […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Government writes wolf success story
NATION The federal government has declared its wolf recovery program a success. With wolf numbers at nearly 3,500 today – up from practically zero in the 1950s – the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed on July 11 to downlist the gray wolf from “endangered” to “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in most of […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Loggers win one
WASHINGTON A county jury says the state of Washington must pay a logging company almost $10,000 an acre if it wants to protect spotted owls on private land. SDS Co. was forced to halt logging on 232 acres of its land in 1992 after state biologists found evidence of an owl nest in the area. […]
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
Caterpillar concoction causes concern
OREGON, WASHINGTON The U.S. Forest Service is using ground-up caterpillars and another biological insecticide to target an infestation of tussock moths on national forests in the Pacific Northwest. In a widespread outbreak in the 1970s, the moths defoliated trees across 700,000 acres in Oregon and Washington. The agency hopes that the caterpillar concoction, which carries […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Painting the prairie
Crowded Prairie: Four Painters, an exhibition at the Ucross Foundation Art Gallery in Ucross, Wyo., features 34 paintings by Karen Kitchel, Chuck Forsman, John Hull and James Lancel McElhinney. “Each (painter) has something to say that is very serious about the environmental impact of our technology on the land,” says Gordon McConnell, curator of the […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Help Hells Canyon
Managers of Hells Canyon on the Oregon-Idaho border, the deepest river-cut canyon in the world, are hoping for more direction in dealing with increasing numbers of visitors, longstanding grazing and logging and a mandate to protect the area. Until June 20, the public can have a say in the future of the canyon by commenting […]