Nathan Nielson’s opinion piece (“Leviathan in the desert,” HCN, 10/31/16) is made from whole cloth. The yarns Nielson spins are of “federal absorption”; vandalism run amok; neglect and economic crisis; future limitations placed on the gathering of wood, herbs and piñon nuts; a lack of support for a Bears Ears National Monument; and a coming […]
Charles Wilkinson
Posted inArticles
Bears Ears: Correcting an off-base argument
In the debate over a national monument, don’t be swayed by myths.
Posted inWotr
The Forest Service faces a test in Arizona
Arizona’s flammable ponderosa pine forests stretch from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon above the Mogollon Rim to the White Mountains in the east. Most of that land — glory country for recreationists, as well as the watershed for the Grand Canyon, the Phoenix area and many nearby towns — lies within four national […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Vine Deloria Jr.: Writer, scholar and inspired trickster
The modern tribal sovereignty movement has had no single great inspirational leader, no Martin Luther King Jr., no César Chávez. After all, Indian country contains more than 500 separate and independent peoples, each with its own history, traditions, and officials. Yet if one person may be singled out, it is Vine Deloria Jr. A Standing […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
West braces for Big Buildup II
In the boom times of the 1950s, Western city leaders embarked on the Big Buildup. It was an intensive resource-development campaign that wrote a critical part of the story of the modern West across the grand tableau of the Colorado Plateau – the Four Corners area, the high redrock desert, the canyon country, including the […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
A court deems a lake worthy of water
Note: This essay accompanies this issue’s feature story. The water developers of Los Angeles and their lawyers knew from the first paragraph that they were in trouble. Court opinions about Western water invariably carried a pragmatic, detached, utilitarian tone. This case was supposed to be about the needs of a thriving but thirsty metropolis – […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Clinton learns the art of audacity
Editor’s note: On Sept. 18, just before President Clinton announced the creation of the nation’s newest monument, writer and University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson talked about the historical precedents for protecting land through presidential action. GRAND CANYON, Ariz. – The grandest, most electrifying moments in American conservation history have always been reserved for […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Will an illegal BLM study seal southern Utah’s fate?
I’m writing a book on the Colorado Plateau and it has been one of the joys of my life. The library work has been fascinating but the best research has been with a backpack and a boy. Philip, then 13, and I headed out from Boulder, Colo., for southern Utah just after his classes ended, […]
Posted inMay 3, 1993: Now that Denver has abdicated ... who will coordinate and inspire the West?
A tribute to the man who imagined the West we now seek to build
A writer reflects on the life and death of Wallace Stegner. To read this article, download this HCN issue in PDF format. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A tribute to the man who imagined the West we now seek to build.
Posted inMarch 30, 1987: The Northern Utes take on Utah
The end of multiple use
Although we are now in a transition stage, forces are in motion that will bring to an end the domination of national forests by timber harvesting. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/19.6/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inOctober 13, 1986: The Columbia River: An Age of Reform
A great loneliness of the spirit
The authors follow a young salmon, or smolt, from its spawning place in the high country downstream, past innumerable physical and bureaucratic barriers, to the ocean. (To read the full text, click on the “View a PDF from the original” link below, or download a PDF of the entire issue: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/18.19/download-entire-issue) This article appeared in […]