Early in May, I watched one of my most cherished forests burn. The flames and smoke were great to see. Fire is often seen as death and destruction for a forest, but here was a forest living with fire as an ecological process. Exactly 10 years ago, this old-growth ponderosa pine forest of the Deadwood […]
John Mccarthy
Posted inWotr
The message of trees marked in blue
In late December, just after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated protection for all of the roadless national forests we have left in the West, I walked up Deadwood Ridge in southern Idaho to see what we’d saved. The trail climbs through a ponderosa pine forest that continues to evade logging. Back in 1996, […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
How the West was destroyed
The Lochsa Story: Land Ethics in the Bitterroot Mountains Bud Moore. Mountain Press Publishing Co., Box 2399, Missoula, MT 59806, 1996. $20, paper. Illustrated. Many boys grow up dreaming of becoming a mountain man, to hunt, fish and trap in a wild country. Bud Moore lived the dream. As a boy in the 1920s, he […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
View 4 of the grizzly bear controversy
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Bringing back grizzlies splits environmentalists, in a special issue about collaboration in the West. John McCarthy is conservation director of the Idaho Conservation League. He lives in Boise. The local citizen management committee is the main stumbling block. Everyone except Defenders and NWF […]
Posted inJuly 30, 1990: Revolution at Utah's grassroots
Hells Canyon: Should it be a park?
Members of a revived council want to run the Forest Service out and bring in the National Park Service to administer a Hells Canyon National Park and Preserve. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/22.15/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inMay 28, 1984: Utah Governor declares war on a Canyonlands nuclear dump
The Forest Service’s backcountry workers demand higher pay, better treatment
Backcountry workers have long been dissatisfied by the fact that they are on the ground, doing the actual work and dealing with the public, while their status and job security within the Forest Service is low to non-existent. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/16.10/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E
Posted inApril 16, 1982: The Big Secret: Highly toxic pesticides in the Rockies
Soil erosion: Slip-sliding away
Nationwide, almost four billion tons of topsoil are lost every year to water erosion. About half that loss is on cropland. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/14.8/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E