“What we ought to do is establish parks for motorized recreational use, and shove all the ATVs and all the jet skis in there and let ’em run over the top of each other and break each other’s eardrums,” says Ric Bailey, the outspoken director of the Hells Canyon Preservation Council, a coalition of commercial […]
Danielle Desruisseaux
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Coffee is bad for birds
You pour yourself a cup of coffee and listen for the chirp and twitter of birds outside. But as you sip, you notice the quiet: What’s happened to the songbirds? The answer could be right in your cup. Songbird populations are dropping as foreign coffee plantations “modernize” to keep up with America’s thirst for the […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
The West braces for the big melt
The West is shaking off one of the wettest winters ever, and the snow keeps falling. Instead of April showers, a spring blizzard hit Wyoming early in the month, killing thousands of cattle and sheep trapped in fence-line snowdrifts. Record snowpacks are piled up in the high country, aided by late April storms: Parts of […]
Posted inApril 28, 1997: Evangelical Christians preach a green gospel
Hopis extend eviction deadline
Hundreds of Navajos braced themselves against the threat of forcible eviction on the eve of April 1. That was the deadline for more than 250 families living on Arizona’s Hopi Partitioned Land either to sign a 75-year lease with the Hopi tribe, or move (HCN 3/31/97). Navajo supporters rallied nationwide, staging protests in San Francisco, […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Bringing back the small family farm
In their mid-40s and newly married, Bob and Bonnie Gregson dropped out and bought a 13-acre farm near Seattle, Wash. in 1988. When the couple left their corporate jobs and city lives, they dreamed of making a “reasonable, community-oriented, non-exploitive, earth-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing living.” They managed to succeed, after some trial and error, as […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Cows aren’t “wild and scenic’
For the second time in six months, a federal judge has slammed grazing on public lands. Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Ancer Haggerty ruled that grazing was a “non-point source” of pollution, forcing Oregon cattlemen to comply with the federal Clean Water Act (HCN, 10/28/96). Now, he’s ordered cattle off parts of southeastern Oregon’s […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
BLM ditches law-enforcement rules
With hundreds of millions of acres of federal land sprawled across a sparsely populated West, Bureau of Land Management rangers often legally fill in for state and county law officers. But last fall, when the BLM published “plain English” regulations that detailed the agency’s existing authority over gun use, drunken driving and other matters, some […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Planes beat out quiet
After hearing the complaints of air tour operators, the Federal Aviation Administration recently delayed setting up new flight-free zones over the Grand Canyon for another year. Critics blasted the postponement, which came 10 months after President Clinton ordered an immediate reduction of noise at the park. The FAA is trying to shrug off the National […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
It’s cows as usual in Oregon
Last fall, Oregon activists envisioned cattle fenced away from riverbanks, and streams tested for purity after a district court ruled that grazing was polluting water on the state’s Forest Service lands (HCN, 10/28/96). It hasn’t happened yet. Instead, state officials are scrambling to draw up “emergency” grazing rules so ranchers can turn out their cows […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Will an elusive cat evade federal listing?
When a southern Arizona rancher recently cornered a black-spotted beast the likes of which he’d never seen before, he shot it with his camera. Turns out he’d found a jaguar – the largest cat in the Western Hemisphere and an animal that’s been seen north of the Mexican border only a handful of times in […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Tepee blockade spurs talks
In early January, a small group of Navajos blocked Mobil Oil Corp. offices near Aneth, Utah, with a 20-foot tepee, demanding a halt to oil and gas drilling on their desolate corner of the reservation. The tribe’s Aneth Chapter accused Mobil of contaminating local springs, ruining prime grazing lands and not hiring enough Native Americans. […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Tarnished trophies
Safari hunters are bringing home exotic and endangered loot through a loophole in the Endangered Species Act, says a report by the Washington, D.C., group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Worse yet, PEER says, agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are greasing the process rather than policing it. By law, no permit can […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Boats may get bounced
Personal watercraft, those zippy, grown-up toys with names like Jet Ski, Sea Doo and Wave Runner, may soon be banned from Lake Tahoe. Some members of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the California-Nevada coalition that governs local development, have recommended ridding the lake of them, and a decision on the controversial issue is expected Feb. […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Lost and found
When last summer’s fires scorched more than 4,700 acres in Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park, one of the park’s rare petroglyph panels, Battleship Rock, was damaged beyond repair. Vegetation surrounding the site burned so hot that the rock’s surface and its 1,000-year-old pecked designs fractured and flaked off. But the fire also revealed sites park […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
A-LP makes a hit list
Colorado’s Animas-La Plata project, the controversial water development plan entangling two rivers, two tribes, and nearly every politician in the state (HCN, 11/11/96), has been named one of a dozen “corporate welfare” schemes on a Washington hit list. The list was announced by Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, chair of the House Budget Committee. His coalition […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Hunters need young blood
Generation X doesn’t hunt. That’s the conclusion of a National Shooting Sports Foundation’s recent survey, which found that only 8 percent of hunters are between the ages of 18 and 24, down from 17 percent in 1986. The last decade has seen the percentage of hunters in the 25-34 age bracket drop as well, down […]