The fate of 95 species of Southwestern wildlife is hanging in the balance. It’s been over a year since the species were proposed for listing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the nonprofit Southwestern Center for Biodiversity says it will sue if nothing is done by June 13. Seventy-one of these species, including […]
Emily Miller
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
The roads less funded
Last year, it was a photo finish. A bill to stop paying for logging roads on national forests fell two votes shy of making it through the House of Representatives. This year, Reps. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., and John Porter, R-Ill., want to see if they can push the measure over the top. A letter they […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Dear Michael Dombeck
The Forest Service isn’t doing enough to protect fish, wildlife and plants. And this time it’s not environmentalists who say so, but people inside the agency. Biologists and botanists – 170 from 30 different forests – collaborated recently on a letter to Chief Michael Dombeck, warning him that “many forests now find their fish, wildlife […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
The system cuts a new chief down to size
Four months ago, environmentalists thought incoming Forest Service Chief Michael Dombeck made a promise to do things differently. “The unfortunate reality is that many people presently do not trust us to do the right thing,” he told Congress in February of 1997. “Until we rebuild that trust and strengthen those relationships, it is simply common […]
Posted inMay 26, 1997: The sacred and profane collide in the West
Mount Zirkel’s acid trip
Two Colorado power plants are cleaning up their act, but it may be a case of too little too late. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey studying the Mount Zirkel Wilderness near Steamboat Springs, Colo., have found that air pollution from coal-burning power plants in the towns of Hayden and Craig harms wildlife. The plants […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Rancher shoots for test case
Brucellosis-infected elk are a major threat to Wyoming’s economy, says Meeteetse-area rancher Martin Thomas. Serious enough, he will argue in court, to warrant the assault-rifle attack that left nine elk dead and lots of wildlife-management questions unanswered (HCN, 3/3/97). On March 31, Thomas pleaded not guilty to charges that he illegally gunned down elk near […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Utah Paiutes put the brakes on chaining
When over 250,000 acres of central Utah’s public lands burned in last summer’s wildfires, the Bureau of Land Management began its routine land-clearing procedure: chaining. But soon after the BLM tractors started up this spring, dragging a heavy chain between two vehicles to uproot dead trees and create a new seed bed of churned-up earth, […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Shutdown attempts go up in smoke
-It’s like standing on the dock and watching the Titanic set out to sea,” says Craig Williams of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Kentucky-based organization that monitors chemical weapons activity around the U.S. “Nobody wants to listen to us.” Williams is talking about the chemical weapons incineration plant in remote Tooele, Utah, (HCN, 9/16/96) […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Taking range reform by the horns
Almost a year after last summer’s devastating droughts parched the Southwest, Navajo ranchers are warming up to the idea of range reform. A joint Bureau of Indian Affairs-Navajo Nation plan may revoke some 900 grazing permits on Navajo land. This step is the most recent in a long-standing effort to reduce overgrazing on much of […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Potatoes raise a stink in Idaho
Something’s rotten in Ririe, Idaho, a town of less than 1,000 close to Idaho Falls. At least, the residents who live near the Idaho Pacific potato processing plant think so. “You’ve got to hold your breath for at least a half a mile driving out on the road (by the plant),” says LuWayne Gallup. “It […]