The 3 million-acre swath of Bureau of Land Management land between the Grand Canyon and the Utah border, unromantically known as the Arizona Strip, is getting more visitors than usual these days. In late November, Bruce Babbitt toured the area and suggested that nearly 400,000 acres of the wide-open desert lands are worthy of stronger […]
Michelle Nijhuis
Michelle Nijhuis is a contributing editor of HCN and the author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction. Follow @nijhuism.
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Not a creature was stirring…
The endangered Preble’s meadow jumping mouse has Colorado Front Range developers running scared (HCN, 3/16/98), but proposed temporary protections from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may calm their fears. The small, secretive mouse lives near foothill mountain streams, and biologists believe that urban sprawl near Denver is contributing to its decline. The agency’s proposal […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
The Wayward West
There’s grim news for the Yellowstone cutthroat trout: Whirling disease, the fatal parasite that wiped out several trout populations in Colorado and Montana in 1994 (HCN, 9/18/95), has resurfaced in the prize fisheries of Yellowstone National Park. The extent of the disease in the park is not yet known, but the Salt Lake Tribune reports […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
A river rat remembers
As we round a bend and come over a small rise, I feel like I’ve been hit in the middle of my everything. I grab for Frank’s arm and say, “Wait a minute, Bigfeets, I don’t think I can take much more of this. It’s too beautiful!” Suddenly, I’m crying. He nods, takes my hand, […]
Posted inDecember 7, 1998: Vail and the road to a recreational empire
Scientists get a free ride
-We’re not very receptive to charges that the park is “wimping out,” “””says Rocky Mountain National Park spokesman Doug Caldwell. But critics say the park did just that – by permitting a crew of soil scientists to take a helicopter ride in a wilderness study area. Last summer, the park in northeastern Colorado sent a […]
Posted inDecember 7, 1998: Vail and the road to a recreational empire
Women pioneers
-We must elect more women – yes. But we must transform those structures to which we elect women to accomplish our goals, because present institutions will not do … In my heart I believe that women will change the nature of power rather than power change the nature of women.” * Bella Abzug, quoted in […]
Posted inNovember 9, 1998: Grizzly war
Endangered Mexico
Living in Mexico City – a place that has already suffered a kind of ecological collapse – has convinced me that the most crucial environmental struggle in the coming decades will be providing water, food and clean air, and ensuring basic human health in a world where resources are more and more limited. The most […]
Posted inNovember 9, 1998: Grizzly war
Wise words from a veteran activist
National Audubon Society activist and HCN subscriber Hazel Wolf stole the show at the Great Old Broads for Wilderness conference in Escalante, Utah, last month. Just a few months past her 100th birthday, Wolf traveled from Seattle to give a campfire talk about the great women in her life. “When I was 5, I asked […]
Posted inOctober 26, 1998: The Oregon way
A tie that binds: county income and timber
Peg Reagan wasn’t a typical Western county commissioner. For starters, she’s an environmentalist. “I was in the minority on any land-use issue,” she says of her four-year term on the Curry County Commission in southwestern Oregon. After leaving office in 1995, she decided it was time for the minority to get organized. She founded the […]
Posted inOctober 26, 1998: The Oregon way
Mines must clean up their mess
In the forested highlands of central Arizona, copper mining has been a mainstay of the local economy for nearly a century. But the area’s paychecks come with a hidden price: The groundwater and soil are now contaminated with acidic metals, and a plume of toxics threatens the Phoenix water supply. Last year, the state of […]
Posted inOctober 26, 1998: The Oregon way
A tale of two – or three – Oregons
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Oregon thrives on a stereotype. Many outsiders imagine the state to be full of flannel-shirted outdoor enthusiasts, slogging through damp evergreen forests with a cup of coffee in one hand and a fishing rod in another. Images of ancient Douglas-firs and healthy, progressive citizens […]
Posted inOctober 26, 1998: The Oregon way
Are the West’s governors turning over a new (green)leaf?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. This summer, the governors of 17 Western states quietly changed their tune. Led by Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon, D, and Gov. Michael Leavitt of Utah, R, the mostly anti-federal-government members of the Western Governors’ Association unanimously agreed to a “shared environmental doctrine,” giving […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
A river becomes a raw nerve
Along the Rio Costilla, communities have been fighting over water for more than a century. The latest round may be the most heated.
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
No consensus on consensus
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Collaboration, consensus and community-based conservation are buzzwords invoked by federal agencies, environmental groups, and even Western governors as part of a new strategy for conservation, a happy-face solution to the gridlock over managing natural resources management. But so far there’s no consensus on consensus. […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
A tangled web of watersheds
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Rio Costilla represents only a tiny part of the overall Rio Grande system, which crosses state and international boundaries, trickles through dams, and loses volume through countless diversions during its 2,000-mile long journey. The Costilla Creek Compact distinguishes the Rio Costilla, but the […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Hunt sparks whale of a controversy
This fall, members of the Makah tribe of northwestern Washington state plan to do something they haven’t done for decades: kill a whale. The ceremonial whale hunt, set to begin in October, will mark the restoration of rights promised in an 1865 treaty between the Makahs and the United States. The International Whaling Commission allows […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Mining: There’s a reform-blocking rider
It’s not easy fighting mines. Under the 1872 General Mining Law, mining is the “highest and best use” of federal public lands, and every anti-mine effort is an uphill battle. But buried in the Bureau of Land Management code of regulations is a glimmer of good news for activists: a directive to the secretary of […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
Headwaters deal gets tougher
A deal intended to protect the world’s largest stand of privately owned old-growth redwoods, the Northern California grove known as the Headwaters Forest, got a makeover in the California Legislature. On Aug. 31, the state Senate voted to require stricter environmental standards on Pacific Lumber’s surrounding private land. The Headwaters Forest has been at the […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
A county in Nevada assaults a river
County commissioners of Elko County, Nev., in the sparsely populated northeastern corner of the state, aren’t known for their goodwill toward the federal government. So when they decided to do a little road repair on Forest Service land this summer, they didn’t waste any time on paperwork. They wanted to reopen the flood-damaged South Canyon […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
There goes the neighborhood
-We’re basically Middle America, except we’re off the grid,” says Diane Mitsch-Bush, a longtime resident of Steamboat Springs, Colo. Her neighborhood, only a few miles from the center of town, has powered itself with solar and propane energy since the early 1980s. But Mitsch-Bush and other residents say their low-key and environmentally conscious lifestyle is […]