Greens want to draft Nader Third parties have had a miserable political history. Their candidates either get forgotten in the media hoopla or face charges of spoiling the race. But beginning with the “96 presidential campaign, the Green Party hopes to establish third parties as an election choice of the future. Its goal is to […]
Heather Abel
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
The nuts and bolts of Western gambling
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot.” Americans spend more money on games of chance than movies, concerts and theaters combined. In 1994, Americans lost $40 billion of the $482 billion they wagered. Since state-sponsored lotteries and video gambling started the current gambling craze in […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Greenbacks shape campaigns
Dollars continue to plague and divide candidates. For Idaho Republican Rep. Helen Chenoweth, misuse of money has become a potential Achilles’ heel. According to the state’s Democratic Party, Chenoweth’s campaign illegally hired a company she owns. Now, Chenoweth won’t say why her campaign paid $35,000 for rent and office space to her Consulting Associates although […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Who owns these bones?
Tucson, Ariz. – The television’s flickering light reveals salmon-colored femurs on card tables, mastodon skulls on a flowered bedcover, dinosaur eggs atop the TV. Japheth Boyce is on the phone, dealing. “Yes … $2,000 … I just can’t go any lower … Well, what can you trade me? … Room 169, Ramada Inn, tomorrow 7 […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Dinosaur bones have really increased in price
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Who owns these bones? “Dinosaur bones have really increased in price. It wouldn’t matter to me if they were not worth anything. I’d sure love to go find more of them.” – Lin Ottinger Lin Ottinger has watched Moab turn into a tourist mecca and […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Fossils are being destroyed by people who are loving them to death
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Who owns these bones? “Fossils are being destroyed by people who are loving them to death, people who are making a profit.” – Bruce Louthan Bruce Louthan is the district archaeologist for the Moab BLM. He relies on public education to stop fossil looting. “Amateur […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
I was a sheep rancher in western Wyoming
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Who owns these bones? “I was a sheep rancher in western Wyoming. One day a gun trader came riding by and I traded a bunch of fossils for a rifle.” – Rick Hebdon Rick Hebdon owns Warfield Fossil Quarries in Thayne, Wyo., and sends tourists […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
People respond to owning a piece of the earth’s crust
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Who owns these bones? Buying a personal dinosaur has never been easier. In the past few years, fossils have entered two new commercial arenas – the internet and the art auction. Web surfers can order fossils from several home pages including “Artifacts-R-Us: Your One-Stop Shop […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 1996: Can a Colorado ski county say 'Enough is enough'?
Budget impasse leaves BLM scrambling
From under a blanket of snow, the Miles City, Mont., Bureau of Land Management office should be preparing for spring. Ranchers need permits to send their sheep into pasture. Roads that have decayed over winter need repairs. Outfitters need permits for spring river trips, and mining companies want their environmental assessments completed. But the BLM […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
Williams leaves, Montana scrambles
Williams leaves, Montana scrambles The script in Montana will read like it does every election year: Candidates will debate how much of the state’s mountains and forests should be protected and how much should be open to industry. But for the first time in nearly 18 years, the moderating voice of Democratic Rep. Pat Williams […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Big shoes empty in Oregon
Big shoes empty in Oregon After 28 years, the door to both of Oregon’s senate seats has swung wide open. The race to replace Republican powerhouses Mark Hatfield, who has announced his retirement after November, and Bob Packwood, forced to resign, begins with the Jan. 30 election for Packwood’s spot. Because many see the race […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Who felt the federal furlough?
While his colleagues paced anxiously at home during the 21-day federal furlough, Forest Service timber contracting officer Lathrop Smith administered 13 green timber sales in southwestern Colorado. He was hampered – -there were no soil scientists, hydrologists or biologists’ – but stayed on the job. Smith was not alone. Although most of the West’s federal […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Allard takes aim
Last April, the League of Conservation Voters awarded Colorado Rep. Wayne Allard a score of zero for his environmental votes during his first 100 days in office. Now, Allard’s rating might dip into the negative numbers. A provision of Allard’s in the 1995 Farm Bill would prohibit the Forest Service from changing management plans to […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Judge says counties aren’t supreme
In a blow to the county supremacy movement in Nevada, a federal court charged an Elk County resident with trespassing and ordered him to remove his cattle from a national forest. The court said Cliff Gardner illegally moved livestock onto the Humboldt National Forest in May 1994 despite repeated Forest Service requests that he apply […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Thundering against Thunderbolt
When the U.S. Forest Service set aside a steep and damaged portion of the Boise National Forest for a timber sale called Thunderbolt early this fall, environmentalists in Idaho filed one of the first lawsuits against a salvage sale. Now the 13 million board feet has sold for $1 million, and the Sierra Club Legal […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Idaho hunters ask public to bear with them
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. Lynn Fritchman is used to spending time with dead bears. The third-generation Idaho hunter inspects bears for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game after they’ve been killed by hunters. But over the years Fritchman heard […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Lakotas want Crazy Horse off silver screen
Lakotas want Crazy Horse off silver screen As a Turner Network Television crew packed up its cameras after filming Crazy Horse in Hot Springs, S.D., members of the Lakota tribe picked up their pens to sign a petition against the latest TNT movie focusing on Native American history. Descendants of Crazy Horse and Lakota Sioux […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Watch out for guns
It was killing season again, and in Colorado it might have been safer to romp through the woods in blaze orange than to stay near a hunting camp. A 16-year-old girl in the Uncompahgre National Forest hopped off her four-wheeler while unloading her rifle Oct. 21, only to shoot her father in the leg. He […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Voters say yes to elk, no to takings, jets
In state and local elections Nov. 7, environmental initiatives followed the law of the pocketbook: Measures that would have cost taxpayers money usually failed. Although fiscal conservatism spelled defeat for slow-growth initiatives in Colorado and Utah, it also contributed to a major victory for environmentalists in Washington state, where voters defeated Referendum 48 – the […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
The anecdotal war on endangered species is running out of steam
Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth stepped up to the podium at the Wise Use Leadership Conference in Reno, Nev., this summer and charged the Endangered Species Act with a series of assaults: Californians lost homes to the 1993 fire because they were not allowed to clear weeds where endangered kangaroo rats live. Snails smaller than a […]