It isn’t easy being Indian, and it’s even harder being Navajo. A special investigator into the mismanagement of Indian money from oil and gas royalties found that companies paid Anglo landowners 20 times what they paid Navajos when building pipelines across the reservation (HCN, 5/12/03: Missing Interior money: Piles or pennies?). Bureau of Indian Affairs […]
Laura Paskus
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Burning one for the road
Ecoterrorists strike in Southern California, and an SUV owners’ group lashes out at environmentalists
Posted inAugust 18, 2003: Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play
Follow-up
There’s cause to celebrate in New Mexico: The Salt River Project has decided to pull the plug on its plans for a coal strip-mine near the Zuni Reservation (HCN, 10/08/01: Salt Woman confronts a coal mine). Tribes and environmental groups have fought the mine for more than 10 years, and earlier this year, Gov. Bill […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2003: Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play
Energy bill will likely boost drilling in the Rockies
Western senators parry over the nation’s future energy supply
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
The Latest Bounce
A federal judge has kicked President Clinton’s Roadless Rule to the curb: In mid-July, U.S. District Judge Clarence A. Brimmer ruled that the U.S. Forest Service violated the Wilderness Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by declaring 58.5 million acres off-limits to road building, mining and logging (HCN, 7/30/01: Bush fails to defend roadless […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Red Earth: desert poems resurrected
I’ve seen her pass with eyes upon the road — An old bent woman in a bronze black shawl, With skin as dried and wrinkled as a mummy’s, As brown as a cigar-box, and her voice Like the low vibrant strings of a guitar. And I have fancied from the girls about What she was […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Truce remains elusive in Rio Grande water fight
New Mexico’s biggest river dries up as battle rages in courts and Congress
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Follow-up
In the game of tug-of-war on the Klamath River, farmers just lost a little bit of ground (HCN, 6/23/03: ‘Sound science’ goes sour). In order to keep water in Upper Klamath Lake for two species of endangered suckers, and in the Klamath River for threatened coho salmon, the Bureau of Reclamation has told farmers to […]
Posted inJune 23, 2003: 'Sound science' goes sour
Have no doubts, go higher
To have lived in the highlands has rendered the lowlands incomplete. My intellect rebels at such thoughts, but in my heart I feel it to be true. I am inflated by the mountain. Tendrils of perfection reach out from my past, usurping the present. Randy LaChapelle When In Doubt, Go Higher I opened When In […]
Posted inJune 23, 2003: 'Sound science' goes sour
Follow-up
Colorado wants to follow Utah’s lead on wilderness rollbacks. In a May 15 letter, Greg Walcher, head of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, told Interior Secretary Gale Norton that his state would like to settle counties’ claims to roads across federal lands (HCN, 5/12/03: Backcountry road deal runs over wilderness). Walcher made it clear […]
Posted inJune 23, 2003: 'Sound science' goes sour
Sound science goes sour
As federal scientists come under the gun from bureaucrats and politicians, some are becoming fed up, and one high-profile biologist has spoken out.
Posted inJune 23, 2003: 'Sound science' goes sour
Who needs critical habitat?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Sound science goes sour.” At the end of May, the Interior Department announced that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was running out of money. Officials blamed the budget shortfall on the agency’s need to comply with court orders brought on by environmentalists’ lawsuits. […]
Posted inJune 23, 2003: 'Sound science' goes sour
Are minnow scientists still under the gun?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Sound science goes sour.” The silvery minnow, a two-inch-long fish that’s caused a big splash in the Rio Grande in recent years, used to swim the entire length of the 1,850-mile-long river. Now, its habitat is limited to a 157-mile stretch of river in […]
Posted inJune 23, 2003: 'Sound science' goes sour
‘Jeopardy’ opinions go the way of the dodo
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Sound science goes sour.” In the 1990s, a small greenish-gray bird with a yellow belly became the mascot for conservationists who were trying to keep cattle out of Southwestern rivers and streams (HCN, 9/15/97: Feds take on a sneaky species). When the U.S. Fish […]
Posted inJune 23, 2003: 'Sound science' goes sour
Off-roaders smash science
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Sound science goes sour.” Three years ago, a federal court settled a disagreement between the Bureau of Land Management, conservationists and off-road vehicle groups over the fate of a short-lived perennial plant in the pea family (HCN, 12/18/00: Feds fight chaos in a desert […]
Posted inJune 23, 2003: 'Sound science' goes sour
State gets its way on a national refuge
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Sound science goes sour.” Endangered species management isn’t the only hot-point issue for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Political pressure is also affecting how the agency manages 540 national wildlife refuges across the country. In 1998, the state of Wyoming sued the Fish […]
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
The Latest Bounce
The nation will now be safe — from endangered species such as red-legged frogs, southwestern willow flycatchers and manatees. Congress has exempted the military from the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (HCN, 3/31/03: While the nation goes to war, the Pentagon lobs bombs at environmental laws). Although miffed that environmental rollbacks […]
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
Running home
It’s been four years since I touched human bone, since I had silt and clay stuck beneath my fingernails and inside the cracked skin of my knuckles — silt and clay that had cradled bones for hundreds of years. I used to work as a contract archaeologist, scanning the landscape for petroglyphs and fire rings, […]
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
The Latest Bounce
The Defense Department needs to do a better job cleaning up its “formerly used defense sites,” according to a report to Congress from the General Accounting Office (HCN, 3/31/03: While the nation goes to war, the Pentagon lobs bombs at environmental laws). The study, requested by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., points out a variety of […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
The Latest Bounce
Work on “the last great federal dam” is under way: The Bureau of Reclamation has begun building the pumping plant for the Animas-La Plata Project outside of Durango, Colo. (HCN, 8/27/01: A-LP gets federal A-OK). The station will pump Animas River water 510 feet uphill and two miles west to a reservoir site in Ridges […]