Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. OREGON BUTTES, Wyo. – “This is what the pioneers saw. This is what Wyoming was,” says Mac Blewer, a 30-year-old who works for the Wyoming Outdoor Council, an environmental group headquartered in nearby Lander. From the top of a sheer-sided cliff, Blewer is looking […]
Lynne Bama
Posted inJune 7, 1999: Mining the past
Court nixes land exchange
In a surprise May 19 ruling, a federal appeals court sent a land exchange in western Washington back to the drawing board. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the controversial Huckleberry Land Exchange needed more study and told company loggers to stop cutting the traded land. The exchange gave Weyerhaeuser Co. 4,300 acres […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
Land swap reporter comments
Dear HCN, Readers of Andy Wiessner’s letter about land exchanges (HCN, 5/10/99) might have been better able to evaluate his criticisms of Janine Blaeloch and the Western Land Exchange Project had he acknowledged that he was a consultant to Plum Creek Timber Co. on the Interstate 90 exchange. Yes, the I-90 exchange will result in […]
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
Wheeling and dealing
Note: a sidebar article, “A muckraker throws a well-aimed wrench,” accompanies this feature story. WESTON HILLS, Wyo. – Larry Gerard’s blue work shirt whips in the wind as we stand among ponderosa pines on this ridge. To the west, the Bighorn Mountains glitter with spring snow. Just below, rancher Joe Collins is planting wheat. The […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
The birth, life, and coming death of a Wyoming dam
WAPITI, Wyo. – After the thunderstorm had passed, the sheer face of the mountain reappeared, looking strange in the evening light. I got out the field glasses and saw streams of muddy water, some of them nearly a hundred feet high, cascading down the ranks of cliffs north of us. Soon we heard a roaring […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Note: two sidebar articles, titled “A difference of opinion over numbers” and “For some, horse meat ain’t all bad,” accompany this feature story. BRITTON SPRINGS, Wyo. – From the top of the ridge we can hear the helicopter droning behind pastel desert hills, and see the distant slopes of the Pryor Mountains just across the […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
A difference of opinion over numbers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. People have been bickering about how many wild horses live in Nevada ever since 1992, when horse lover Michael Blake, author of Dances With Wolves, conducted a census there. His observers found only 8,324 — less than one quarter of the BLM figure. Agency […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
For some, horse meat ain’t all bad
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Although most Americans would never think of chowing down on a horse, their distaste is not shared by the French, the Belgians, or many other continental Europeans. Not to mention the Japanese. The reasons for such varying tastes were analyzed by Marvin Harris in […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Wyoming’s heroes celebrate a birthday
LANDER, Wyo. – The Wyoming Outdoor Council, another creation of High Country News founder Tom Bell, held its 30th birthday party here last week. Back in the 1960s, Bell, a fourth-generation Wyoming native raised on a ranch and trained in wildlife conservation, became incensed at the abuses he saw on the land, especially the illegal […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Jackson Hole tries “unnatural’ elk management
-Three, four, five. There are a lot of them!” says the driver of the minivan with Georgia plates parked beside the highway. Behind us, a screen of spruces hides the famous peaks of Grand Teton National Park. In front of us, on a sagebrush plain golden with June flowers, are the rich brown coats and […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Macho rams ‘take a walk on the wild side’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In the social system of wild sheep, the ram with the largest horns rules. Not only does he breed most of the ewes, but he is followed around by an admiring throng of lesser males. It is not surprising, then, that bighorn rams are […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Not Mary’s little lamb
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. We who drink in rhymes about Mary’s little lamb and Bo Peep’s docile flock with our mothers’ milk have a hard time seeing wild sheep objectively. Our perceptions of this animal are inevitably colored by the stupid, meek, defenseless creature domestication made of it. […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Desert sheep aren’t exactly thriving
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The discovery 300 years ago of a pile of over 100,000 horns at a native village in what is now Arizona suggests that the four subspecies of wild sheep collectively known as desert bighorns were once as numerous as their alpine relatives. Desert sheep, […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Bringing back the bighorn
The West’s native sheep scramble for a foothold
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
A park boss goes to bat for the land
MAMMOTH, Wyo. – In late October, during the short lull between the traffic jams of summer and the snowmobile crowds of winter, the world’s oldest national park breathes a short sigh of relief. Only a few visitors climb the steaming mound of hot springs that looms above park headquarters here, and a herd of elk […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Noranda stirs up a swarm of opposition
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, A park boss goes to bat for the land. While Crown Butte Mining Inc. already owns patented land within the Gallatin National Forest, it needs additional land for its mill and waste rock. That need has set into motion the National Environmental Policy Act, […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Yellowstone’s wintertime blues
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, A park boss goes to bat for the land. Summer visitors aren’t the only ones on the increase in Yellowstone: the number of tourists arriving to see Yellowstone’s ice-crusted trees, virginal snowfields and clouds of hot-spring steam are skyrocketing as well. Four winters ago, […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
HCN’s founder fights his last fight, yet again
“This is my last big fight,” says Tom Bell. The founder of High Country News, spare and energetic at 71, hasn’t lost the fiery voice that boomed out of the little town of Lander, Wyo., in the early 1970s. During four years of running HCN, Bell took on not just ranchers for shooting eagles and […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
Is Altamont historic, too?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, HCN’s founder fights his last fight, yet again. “We’re part of history, too,” says Cathy Purves, Altamont environmental consultant in Lander. Making it clear that she’s not speaking for the company, she continues, “I think it’s presumptuous of us to say that history stops […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
A grim Wyoming hearing for BLM and greens
WORLAND, Wyo. – Colored balloons decorating the Elks Club here April 3 did little to lighten the hostile atmosphere of a public hearing on the BLM’s new plan for managing a million acres in northwest Wyoming. The area is called Grass Creek, and it takes in roughly a third of the Bighorn Basin, ranging from […]