During my first semester in college, I wrote a paper for an environmental studies class in which I cited an article by “journalist Donella Meadows.” “A journalist, and much, much more,” my professor wrote in the margin, high praise from a man not given to excess. In recent years, Meadows was known to many as […]
Chip Giller
Posted inFebruary 19, 1996: Can a Colorado ski county say 'Enough is enough'?
Wyden squeaks in
Wyden squeaks in Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden eked out an 18,000-vote victory over State Sen. Gordon Smith in the Jan. 30 election to replace Sen. Bob Packwood. With the national media noting that environmental issues took center stage in the race, environmentalists have been quick to tout Wyden’s victory as part of a backlash against […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Clinton says: Stop logging
President Clinton says he’s distressed because the salvage rider he signed in July opened up the wrong ancient forests to logging. Faced with growing civil disobedience in the Northwest, the president said last month that he wants Congress to change the law. As interpreted by a federal judge, part of the salvage law mandated the […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Logging deal struck in Southwest
Some timber cutting has resumed in the Southwest’s national forests, Christmas trees and all. An Oct. 19 agreement reached between environmentalists and the Forest Service frees up about 30 million board-feet of timber for harvesting. The negotiations came after a federal judge in August halted logging on national forests in Arizona and New Mexico until […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Babbitt protests a $1 billion giveaway
-How can a public official give away $1 billion without going to jail?” asked Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as he signed over 110 acres of public land in Clark County, Idaho, worth $1 billion, to a Danish mining company for $275. To drive home the need for reform, Babbitt signed the deed with an ink-dip […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
We don’t crack the whip
WE DON’T CRACK THE WHIP Global capitalism and not rugged individualism shaped the West from its start, writes William G. Robbins in Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West. Building on the work of historians William Cronon and Patricia Limerick, Robbins charts the loss of local economies across the West and the […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Save wild connections
SAVE WILD CONNECTIONS “In every biotic community, there are story lines which fiction writers would give their eyeteeth for: Desert tortoises with allegiances to place that have lasted upward of 40,000 years, dwarfing any dynasty in Yoknapatawpha County. Fidelities between hummingbird and montane penstemon that make the fidelities of Port William, Kentucky, seem like puppy […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Sue stays put
Two years ago, 28 FBI agents and National Guardsmen raided the Black Hills Geological Institute in South Dakota, seized a dinosaur named Sue, and carted her off to a basement in Rapid City (HCN, 9/21/92). Last October, the Supreme Court let stand an appeals court decision that ruled the agents had acted correctly in confiscating […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Rocky Mountain Naturalist
-Go out into the wilderness and meet yourself,” advised Enos Mills, called the father of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. “If any normal person under 50 cannot enjoy being in a storm in the wilds, he ought to reform at once.” Radiant Days: Writings by Enos Mills contains the work of this naturalist and activist […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Parks as cash cows
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. National parks bring in lots of money but they don’t get to control how it’s spent. Private companies are the main beneficiaries of tourist traffic, and for the most part they have free rein over how to spend the tourist gold. […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
The BLM: New faces and new attitudes
A new generation has ascended to top leadership posts at the Bureau of Land Management. In the last eight months, acting BLM Director Mike Dombeck has filled 17 key positions, appointing three assistant directors, eight state directors and six associate state directors. Six appointees are women, two are minorities, and two have never before worked […]
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Greens under attack
The press has followed the wrong story, says David Helvarg, author of The War Against the Greens: The “Wise-Use” Movement, the New Right, and Anti-Environmental Violence. Zealous anti-environmentalists like to portray themselves as victims of an elite movement that has swept across the country, Helvarg says, and the national press, led by New York Times […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Ranchers blamed for transfer of BLM veteran
A 31-year Bureau of Land Management veteran says the agency is transferring him from Wyoming to Utah because of his by-the-book stand on grazing. Darrel Short, area manager for Wyoming’s Kemmerer Resource Area, says the agency kowtowed to rancher pressure in issuing the transfer, and he is challenging the move under the federal law protecting […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Wilderness Act at 30
Is there a difference between a wilderness in a national park and a wilderness in a national forest? Why are cows and sheep allowed to graze in wilderness? Are airports permitted? The Wilderness Act Handbook, reissued by The Wilderness Society, aims to answer these and other questions about this country’s 96 million acre National Wilderness […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Timber industry takes a stand
Stung by the Sierra’s Club’s book, Clearcut, the timber industry has struck back with a glossy 28-page rebuttal. Closer Look: An On-the-Ground Investigation of the Sierra Club’s Book, Clearcut, makes the case that clearcutting can improve forest health. The Sierra Club’s 1993 book presented aerial photographs of nearly 100 denuded sites to represent the industry’s […]