Rockin’ and rollin’ The rural inland West is going out of its way to make Californians feel welcome. First we had summer fires that blanketed the area in smog. After the fires came the mud flows, including one that blocked Interstate 70 west of Glenwood Springs, Colo. Then on Sept. 13, moments after midnight, western […]
Ed Marston
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Dear friends
‘Assault on the Male’ Paonia residents got a sneak preview in the town hall of “Assault on the Male,” a BBC documentary that showed on the Discovery Channel Sept. 4. The preview and talk were courtesy of Theo Colborn, a Paonia resident and former local pharmacist who spends most of her time in Washington, D.C., […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
This boom will end like all the others – in a deep, deep bust
In 1982 a plumber named Jeff Everett and I competed to see who was the greater fool. I won. The competition centered on a 1,000-square-foot building we owned at 124 Grand Avenue, on Paonia’s two-block-long main street. It had been home to Betsy’s and my first newspaper – North Fork Times; by 1982 it stood […]
Posted inAugust 22, 1994: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly
Bruce Babbitt in the lion’s den
Elsewhere in this issue (page 4), writer Michael Riley describes how Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt attended a ranchers’ barbecue. At the barbecue, as Babbitt knew they would, speaker after speaker tore into him. Throughout the talks, Riley reports, Babbitt chatted quietly with ranchers and local officials. Babbitt’s visit to the barbecue was another example of […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
As witness for prosecution, chief aids defense
Although Jack Ward Thomas testified against him in his Great Falls, Mont., trial, former forest supervisor Ernie Nunn believes the Forest Service chief was also partially responsible for his acquittal. “I think he signaled the judge that those were not significant charges.” The signal came twice. First, as the top appeals officer within the Forest […]
Posted inJuly 25, 1994: 'Unranchers' reach for West's state lands
A calm book on diet, health and the environment
A CALM BOOK ON DIET, HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT In the Impacts of Livestock Production, Peter R. Cheeke writes about the animal rights movement, antibiotics in livestock, competition between people and domestic animals for grains, and the environmental aspects of livestock production. He does it in a calm way, without demonizing those who criticize the […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
BLM reversed on grazing permit transfer
The Oregon Natural Resources Council, with legal help from the National Wildlife Federation, has thrown 500,000 acres of public grazing land in south-central Oregon into legal limbo. The Department of Interior Board of Land Appeals overturned a decision by the Bureau of Land Management transferring grazing permits to the new owners of the MC Ranch, […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Dear Friends
Good-bye, for a while High Country News takes its semi-annual vacation, skipping the July 11 issue. It will return with the July 25 issue. The idea is to give readers a chance to catch up on the issues that have been piling up in bathrooms and on espresso tables. Pun-ishing address change There is nothing […]
Posted inJune 13, 1994: A doomed species?
Dear friends
1984 Redux A decade late, High Country News has caught up to George Orwell’s 1984. With the help of a grant from the Surdna Foundation, a team here has begun to create an electronic index and archive of back issues. Almost certainly we will introduce new errors as we transfer information from print to electrical […]
Posted inMay 30, 1994: Can mining come clean?
Colorado Central
Those who can’t get enough of writer Ed Quillen in his Denver Post columns and occasional articles in High Country News (Ed most recently wrote about landfills in the March 7, 1994, HCN) can now subscribe to his Colorado Central, a monthly, very non-slick magazine. The paper’s beat is the central Rocky Mountain towns between […]
Posted inMay 16, 1994: Babbitt is trying to nationalize the BLM
Dear friends
Back from Buzzworm Lisa Jones recently moved her base of operations from one side of Paonia’s Grand Avenue to the other to start work as a researcher and writer on High Country News’ land grant university project. A staff writer at HCN in 1990 and 1991, Lisa has spent most of the last three years […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Dear friends
We want advice If all goes well, subscribers should soon receive the annual High Country News survey. The paper’s surveys don’t ask what kind of car you drive, or your annual income, or where you vacation. But we do ask questions to guide us in putting out the newspaper. And if you haven’t responded to […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
How federal agencies and range scientists wasted a century
Rangeland Health: New Methods to Classify, Inventory, and Monitor Rangelands The Committee on Rangeland Classification, Board of Agriculture, National Research Council; National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. 1994. Paper, 180 pages. Order from: The Society for Range Management, 1839 York St., Denver, CO 80206; 303/355-7070; $22. Review by Ed Marston What have those guys been doing […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
A grand intellectual critique
John Ralston Saul has developed a theory to explain what ails the world: rationality run amuck. Language, in the hands of bureaucrats or modern poets and novelists, is designed to obscure, as in environmental impact statements, or is all style and no substance. The ultimate rationalizers – Robert S. McNamara and Henry Kissinger – destroy […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Dear friends
Locals win awards Two women from Paonia travelled to Austin, Texas, on March 5 to receive awards from the National Wildlife Federation at its annual banquet. Betsy Marston, the editor of High Country News, accepted the communications award – a statue of a whooping crane – on behalf of the paper. Theo Colborn, who was […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
How to turn lemonade into lemons
The environmental movement seems intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. With a perverse political sense that values bad news and dismal foreboding over progress and natural evolution, environmentalists are putting a tragic, apocalyptic spin on every event. Take the firing of former Bureau of Land Management head Jim Baca. It was unfortunate. […]
Posted inMay 16, 1994: Babbitt is trying to nationalize the BLM
Babbitt is trying to nationalize the BLM
Lake Tahoe, Nevada – Fifteen months after taking over at Interior, and a few months after suffering demoralizing defeats in the U.S. Senate and among his environmental supporters, a confident, energetic Bruce Babbitt came to Lake Tahoe to put his stamp on the Bureau of Land Management. The occasion was the first-ever BLM Summit: a […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Can San Luis resist ‘regional chaos’?
It was a Colorado state helicopter that turned Maria Mondragon-Valdez around on the subject of the 77,000-acre Taylor Ranch. Originally, she supported a proposal for a split purchase of the mountain tract she and other San Luis Valley residents call La Sierra, and which they believe was stolen from their community in 1960. The proposal […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Jim Baca says the Department of Interior is in deep trouble
A few days after Jim Baca was fired from his job as director of the Bureau of Land Management, he said: “I will look into New Mexico political races and maybe run for governor. Maybe it’s the governors who are running policy on public land.” Baca says he did anger several Western governors. “I went […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
Dear friends
Spirited in Boulder Board members of the High Country Foundation from around the West braved clear skies and balmy January weather to gather in Boulder, Colo., for the group’s annual budget meeting. Eleven out of 16 board members made it to Boulder, and 10 made it to the all-day meeting on Jan. 15. (Board president […]