NEW MEXICO When federal land managers spread herbicide on rangelands 15 miles from Malaga, N.M., in mid-July, they had no idea what a mess they were making. A week later, a flash flood washed Spike 20P pellets into the Black River, contaminating a diversion ditch. “Supposedly, in moderate rain, the pellets would dissolve into the […]
Joshua Zaffos
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Reports drill Bush energy plan
As the Bush administration pushes its national energy plan, The Wilderness Society has published a report that says the plan’s initiatives are inadequate. The publication, Energy and Western Wildlands, says drilling for oil in U.S. Forest Service-regulated roadless areas will satisfy our national petroleum needs for less than a month, while natural gas reserves on […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
A slap of Western reality
“Piety, kitsch, self-importance, sentimentalism – these deadly literary sins seem to thrive on good clean country air,” writes William Finnegan in his foreword to William Gruber’s book, On All Sides Nowhere. Finnegan hails Gruber for avoiding these sins in his memoir of life in northern Idaho. In 1972, Gruber and his wife moved from Philadelphia […]
Posted inWotr
My trysts with Miss November
November out West: The spectacle of changing leaves has passed, the hills collecting snow are not yet blanketed in white, and daylight savings brings night time all too soon. It may sound innocent, but the season feels like a cruel and careless mistress to me. I first ventured West in November, four years ago; I […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Navajos can’t Dine at local diner
ARIZONA Nineteen of the 21 employees at RD’s Drive-In in Page, Ariz., are Navajo Indians – but none of them can speak their native Dine language at work. In early October, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a lawsuit against the locally owned burger joint for its English-only policy. Four former Navajo employees, […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Corps stands behind status quo
Endangered shorebirds and fish will just have to wait for habitat-enhancing spring floods and summer ebbs on the Missouri River. Because of prolonged drought, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided in early October to postpone changes in how the river and its many dams are managed. The changes were recommended by the U.S. Fish […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Golden trout swimming in troubled waters
CALIFORNIA Though it appears on the state flag, the California grizzly bear was annihilated from the state decades ago. Now, the state fish, the California golden trout, could disappear. The historical range of the trout is limited to two drainages in the southern Sierra Nevada: the South Fork of the Kern River and Golden Trout […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Washington citizens fight to save aging Hanford reactor
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Feds find shortcuts in nuclear cleanup.” The cleanup at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington has most citizens bidding a fond farewell to the nuclear era. But the planned closure of the Fast Flux Test Facility, a […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Peer pressure
Violence against National Park Service law enforcement employees – including shootings and assaults – increased 940 percent in 2001. And just this past August, Mexican fugitives killed a park ranger in Organ Pipe National Monument in Arizona. These alarming statistics are included in a report released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a private nonprofit […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Research, Lake Mead style
It’s a research laboratory, it’s an environmental education center, it’s É another houseboat on Lake Mead in Nevada. “Forever Earth” was dedicated at the lake in early October. The floating laboratory is a specially designed, 70-foot luxury houseboat, furnished with water and air quality monitoring equipment and a myriad of other scientific instruments. A research […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Have you ever seen the cranes?
The Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge straddles the Rio Grande south of Socorro, N.M., and serves as the wintering grounds for thousands of sandhill cranes and snow geese. Witness this rare spectacle at the 15th annual Festival of the Cranes, a six-day event organized by the Friends of the Bosque del Apache that coincides […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
BLM gets a land-swap lemon
COLORADO/UTAH In early September, Bill Rodgers, a Buick salesman in Knoxville, Tenn., landed a great deal. Rep. John Duncan, R-Tenn., introduced a bill to Congress ordering a land exchange that would give Rodgers 3,888 acres of Bureau of Land Management land, mostly in Utah on the Colorado border. In exchange, Rodgers would give 2,048 acres […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
A flood of admirers
The Clark Fork River in Montana suffers from more than a century of extraction, but there’s no shortage of praise for the resilience and enduring beauty of the river and its tributaries. Just as the river runs over boulders, drops through cascades, and meanders through its floodplain, the collection of works in The River We […]