A gimpy 2-year-old wolf that once charmed wildlife watchers in Yellowstone National Park recently gave Utahns a wake-up call of the wild. “Wolf No. 253” from the famous Druid Peak Pack in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley stumbled into a leghold coyote trap 30 miles northeast of Salt Lake City on Nov. 30. He had trekked 200 […]
Brent Israelsen
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
Greens not welcome in Escalante
ESCALANTE, Utah – Heavy machinery rolled into town the week of April 12. Construction was imminent on the $7.5 million New Wide Hollow Reservoir that would provide water for a couple dozen ranchers in this rural southern Utah town. Then, on April 15, under pressure from environmentalists who say the reservoir would harm the Escalante […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Tribe hopes to dam its way to jobs
For decades, the Uinta Mountains have been seen as a watering can for swelling suburbs and thirsty croplands in northern Utah. Under the Central Utah Project (CUP), a massive, 40-year effort to capture Utah’s share of Colorado River Basin water, snowmelt from the Uintas has been dammed, plumbed and piped to cities along the Wasatch […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Battle likely over Utah wilderness
As expected, Utah’s Republican delegation has introduced a wilderness bill covering portions of the state’s spectacular canyon country. And as expected, Utah environmentalists hate it. HR 1745 designates wilderness in 49 areas, totaling 1.8 million acres. Most areas are small parcels, ranging between 7,000 and 90,000 acres. The largest include Desolation Canyon on the Green […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Counties may shrink Utah wilderness
On a frozen night in mid-February, about 300 people crammed into an art gallery in Salt Lake City for an old-fashioned rally. While writer Terry Tempest Williams spoke about the need for wild places, a jar was passed among the crowd until it was stuffed with bills; sign-up sheets were filled with names of people […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
White Mesa Utes beat back Superfund tailings
BLANDING, Utah – The small band of White Mesa Utes, who live on a reservation about 10 miles south of here, hadn’t scored any big victories since the 1920s, when the U.S. government recognized their need for a homeland. But the Utes won a big one in December, when Assistant Energy Secretary Thomas Grumbly decided […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
A clash of cultures: tribal versus nuclear
BLANDING, Utah – They came together to build a Native American cultural center seven miles south of here, near a small hill known as Avikan. In Ute that means a “place where I can lie down.” The members of a small nonprofit foundation bought 640 acres encompassing a kiva and a short rock-wall structure believed […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
City Slickers should leave wilderness rough
MOAB, Utah – A Hollywood production company has been slow to restore land damaged during the filming of a stampede scene in City Slickers II. Federal land manager Brad Palmer said the movie crews trampled about 30 percent more acreage than they were supposed to in an area above the Colorado River, just off the […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Vandals destroy desert tortoise dens
As a vacation and retirement destination, southwestern Utah boasts a mild year-round climate and the world-famous Zion National Park. It’s also home to the most viable population of the Mojave desert tortoise, a creature threatened with extinction. For years biologists and environmentalists have been studying ways to keep the prehistoric reptile from succumbing to new […]
Posted inMay 2, 1994: A struggle for the last grass
Utah utility takes aim at Colorado air
The U.S. Forest Service determined last summer that air pollution was reducing visibility and increasing degradation from acid rain in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness Area in northern Colorado’s Routt National Forest. It should come as no surprise, then, that Colorado forest officials, environmentalists and air-quality managers – not to mention the Environmental Protection Agency and […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Canyonlands, Arches are invaded from above
The slickrock canyons near Moab, Utah, have already been discovered by four-wheel-drivers and mountain bikers, but now tourists are discovering mesas and redrock bluffs from the air, primarily by helicopter. Last year, two helicopter companies hung out their shingles in Moab and began giving expensive bird’s-eye-view tours of Arches and Canyonlands national parks, as well […]