Jon Roush, president of the Wilderness Society, found himself in an embarrassing position last month. The Nation magazine lambasted him for selling timber worth $140,000 from his western Montana ranch. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair questioned why a man paid $125,000 a year to protect wilderness would log private land adjacent to a national […]
Elizabeth Manning
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Shrinking salmon
Not only are salmon runs diminishing in the Pacific Northwest, the fish themselves are also shrinking, according to several recent studies. A study conducted at five Washington hatcheries revealed size decreases from 11 percent to 27 percent over a 12-year period, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. That means some salmon that used to average 6 pounds […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Bleak future for cutthroat
Fishery experts agreed at a February conference that there’s no practical way to eliminate the illegally planted lake trout that are killing native cutthroat trout in Yellowstone Lake. “There isn’t a fix, there isn’t a silver bullet – even suppression is a forever commitment,” federal biologist Lynn Kaeding told the Billings Gazette. A draft report […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Will the bill’s authors please stand?
A memo to Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., shows lobbyists wrote most of a bill scaling back the Endangered Species Act. The Feb. 28 memo from Gorton aide Julie Kays says in part: “The coalitions delivered your ESA (Endangered Species Act) bill to me on Friday” I know you are anxious to get the bill introduced. […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Forest Service lops off timber task force
Agents of the Forest Service’s elite Timber Theft Task Force received two form letters at an April 6 meeting with Forest Service law enforcement director Manuel Martinez. The first letter thanked them for their service; the second said their unit was immediately dissolved. “It defies understanding that you’d take the most successful agents in the […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Big groups drop appeal
Big groups drop appeal Eleven environmental groups, including the Wilderness Society and National Audubon Society, have decided not to appeal a recent federal court decision upholding President Clinton’s Pacific Northwest forest plan, known as Option Nine. While the groups agree the plan fails to protect and restore the heavily logged ecosystem, they say they’ll focus […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Wild again
After several days of milling around their newly opened pens, all 14 Yellowstone Park wolves are wild once more. Most of the wolves remain in packs, but two young wolves are traveling solo, according to park spokeswoman Marsha Karle. The wolves have killed a buffalo and possibly an elk inside the park, which Karle says […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Blow-up over nuclear dump
Blow-up over nuclear dump Nevadans have tried for years to convince the rest of the country that Yucca Mountain, 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is a poor choice for the nation’s only permanent nuclear-waste dump. Now they have some powerful allies. Federal scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory recently disclosed an internal debate about […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Timber theft detectives feel a chill
In 1993, investigations by the Forest Service’s elite Timber Theft Task Force led to eight felony convictions and $3.5 million in fines, including the largest timber prosecution in U.S. history against an Oregon-based timber-scaling company (HCN, 8/23/93). The following year, the task force failed to produce a single prosecution, despite abundant evidence that people were […]