A recent vandal attack in central Oregon’s Warm Springs Indian reservation left the three tribes that make up the reservation at a loss for words. Literally. In early August, two 12-year-old boys broke into the trailer that houses the reservation’s heritage program and caused over $10,000 in damage. What hurt the most was the destruction […]
Jamie Murray
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
New facts about old fish
They have weathered volcanic eruptions and landslides, seen woolly mammoths come and go and outlived the dinosaurs. Now the Pacific Northwest’s white sturgeon are enduring the scrutiny of scientists who want to understand more about North America’s largest fish. The scientists working for Washington and Oregon have been tagging white sturgeon in the Columbia River […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Something fishy about this pollution
Industrial waste. Raw sewage. Atlantic salmon. One of those wasn’t considered an environmental threat until recently. Environmentalists from Washington charge that escapees from large floating salmon farms in Puget Sound should be regulated just like factory and sewage-plant discharges. They say Atlantic salmon raised in hatcheries compete with wild stocks, spread diseases through accumulated wastes […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
What’s underneath the Staircase?
With a pen stroke last year, President Clinton put to rest a decades-old conflict between extraction and conservation. He established the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and the threat of coal and oil development on southern Utah’s remote Kaiparowits Plateau blew away. So most people thought. But on June 6, Conoco Inc., the largest subsidiary of […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
What’s his are mines
Some people think controversial developer Tom Chapman may have made a costly mistake. The Colorado native recently acquired two patented mining claims within the Spanish Peaks wilderness study area in southwestern Colorado, but his critics say the price he paid for 30 acres was high and the potential for mining or other development low. “This […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
A cheatgrass antidote – maybe
The federal Bureau of Land Management wants to send the message that cheaters never win, and that goes for cheatgrass, too. The agency’s weapon of choice is Oust, a controversial DuPont herbicide. Last fall, BLM range specialists with the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area in Idaho found that in early tests, Oust […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Wolf pups proliferate
As scores of bison and deer perished last winter in and around Yellowstone, one species was there to take it all in. Literally. Yellowstone’s wolf packs found feast where others fell to famine. Eight of Yellowstone’s nine wolf packs produced 11 litters last spring. This could double the park’s total wolf population of 47. Although […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Petroglyphs and pavement collide
A proposed road through Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque continues to be paved with controversy. The latest round features a standoff between Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Pueblo Indian leaders. Domenici, who met recently with the Pueblos for the first time since proposing the bill in April, says the road would reduce traffic congestion around […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
Darkness un-Vailed
Night skiing on Vail Mountain is in the dark – for now. After four years of research, Vail Associates unveiled plans last month to light up Vail Mountain for evening skiers and snowboarders. But local residents – unimpressed by a high-tech Hungarian lighting system – forced the company to reconsider the proposal that had already […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
Did agency get in bed with loggers?
Last month, when environmentalists began digging through federal documents about logging in Idaho’s Payette National Forest, they thought they’d found evidence of a Forest Service-timber industry conspiracy. Members of the Neighbors of Cuddy Mountain and the Idaho Sporting Congress discovered records of a 300-year-old grove of fir and pine trees that the Forest Service denied […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Rumble in the watershed
The goal was to form a group to manage Idaho’s South Fork of the Snake River watershed. But when environmentalists and locals met on the issue last month, things turned sour fast. Hostilities began after a citizens’ group, led by Republican state legislators JoAn Wood and Cameron Wheeler, packed the meeting in Ririe and voted […]
Posted inMay 26, 1997: The sacred and profane collide in the West
Just don’t do it
Just don’t do it Oregon’s logging codes might aim to protect fish, wildlife and water quality, but they can’t always protect people. A Coos Bay company recently defied a request from the state Forestry Department that loggers voluntarily stop clear-cutting slide-prone slopes above highways and homes. The state’s request came in response to last winter’s […]
Posted inMay 26, 1997: The sacred and profane collide in the West
Pressure builds for Yucca Mountain
Pressure builds for Yucca Mountain If the U.S. Senate has its way, more than 30,000 tons of some of the worst stuff on earth will be temporarily stored at Yucca Mountain, Nev. In April the Senate voted 65-34 to amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, thereby designating southwestern Nevada as the temporary resting […]