Carol Buchanan raises chickens on her small farm in rural western Colorado, and the mounted heads of deer, bear and elk hang from the walls of her house. But on her desk lie copies of a petition which aims to ban all trapping, snaring and poisoning of animals in the state. “I’m not against hunting,” […]
Paul Larmer
Posted inJune 10, 1996: Outdoor Education
Lawmakers say Colorado prisons are king
With some heavy lobbying from Governor Roy Romer, the Colorado Legislature passed a bill allowing the state Corrections Department to ignore local zoning when it wants to build or expand a prison. The legislation responds to contentious expansion plans for prisons in the rural West Slope communities of Delta and Rifle. Just days before the […]
Posted inJune 10, 1996: Outdoor Education
Planning regulations bite a planning proponent
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Sagebrush rebels in the apple orchards.” Dan Evans has a problem: He wants to build a house on a five-acre, $127,250 parcel of land in western Washington’s Jefferson County, but a county zoning ordinance says a new […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Sierra Club zeroes in on logging
By a 2-to-1 margin, Sierra Club members approved a new policy calling for no commercial logging on public lands. The mail-in vote on the so-called “zero cut” policy represents a major victory for about 2,000 loosely affiliated dissidents in the club known as the John Muir Sierrans. In the months before the vote, they waged […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
A Colorado county tries a novel approach: work the system
Note: this article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about collaboration in the West. One day in the winter of 1992, officials from Montezuma County in southwestern Colorado did what many of the West’s county officials were doing: They attended a public-lands conference in Steamboat Springs. Amid the Sturm und Drang […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
A progressive commissioner takes the heat
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, A Colorado county tries a novel approach: work the system, in a special issue about collaboration. The last hurdle rancher Tom Colbert has to clear as county commissioner may be his toughest. The commissioners are working to complete a county-wide comprehensive land-use plan […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Feds to Idaho mines: Clean up
Despite pleas from Idaho’s congressional delegation and governor, the federal government has filed suit against eight mining companies for polluting the Coeur d’Alene River basin in Idaho’s panhandle. The suit seeks monetary damages for the alleged discharge of more than 70 million tons of mining waste into the basin over the last 100 years. Each […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
‘Two weeks of hell’ saves a stand of old-growth trees
Six years ago, Francis Eatherington fought to keep loggers out of a roadless area in western Oregon’s Umpqua National Forest. A seasonal employee for the Forest Service, she felt passionately about the area’s 1,000-year-old trees and the spotted owls and runs of salmon and steelhead they harbored. With the help of a lawsuit, she and […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Brand new name, same old story
A new group has entered the fray over the Pacific Northwest’s salmon, but don’t be fooled by its name. The first, invitation-only meeting of Northwesterners for More Fish brought representatives from big electric companies, banks, timber companies, ports and aluminum plants to an exclusive club in Spokane last month, reports the Portland Oregonian. There, the […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Is it fix or nix for the salvage rider?
Campaign politics and the prospect of widespread summer protests in the national forests are pushing President Clinton toward dismantling the salvage-logging rider he signed into law last summer. Though the president has admitted before that he miscalculated the effects of the “logging without laws’ bill, his actions in recent weeks have many convinced that a […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Sportsmen sue to remove prison
Two western Colorado sportsmen have notified the state of Colorado that they will bring a lawsuit against it for illegally building a prison in a state wildife area. Tom Huerkamp and Bob Morris say state prison officials built a 300-bed facility in the Escalante Wildlife Area, outside Delta, Colo., even though the land was purchased […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 1996: Can a Colorado ski county say 'Enough is enough'?
Eagle County balks at fourth mega-resort
EAGLE, Colo. – Thirteen years ago, Fred Kummer’s dream of building a mega-ski resort outside this quiet Colorado town seemed like money in the bank. The wealthy developer had won the approval of Eagle County and the Forest Service, despite the opposition of a pesky group of locals. The construction industry was poised to throw […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 1996: Can a Colorado ski county say 'Enough is enough'?
Does the Forest Service love communities as much as it loves ski areas?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Eagle County balks at fourth mega-resort. Readers of Snow Country magazine recently discovered a special advertising supplement tucked between stories of equipment and resorts: “Stewards of the Land: Skiing and the U.S. Forest Service, a public and private alliance.” The 15-page glossy infomercial, complete […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Survival of a trickster
SURVIVAL OF A TRICKSTER The coyote has never gotten much respect. For the past two centuries, ranchers, farmers and federal agents have ruthlessly gunned and poisoned the tawny predator. Yet unlike its larger cousin, the wolf, the coyote has thrived, and expanded its range into virtually every ecosystem in North America. How the legendary trickster […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
They’re stepping down
Two powerful Western Republicans announced they would not seek re-election in 1996. Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said in early December that he would step down because “Thirty years of voluntary separation from the state I love is enough.” Soon after, Alan Simpson of Wyoming said that he, too, […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Changing times force agency to swim upstream
Three lobbyists in suits strode down the marbled halls of the Senate office building one day last fall. Their mission: to convince the Northwest’s congressional delegation to fight a bill requested by the Bonneville Power Administration. The bill would exempt three runs of imperiled Snake River salmon from federal protection. The men turned into a […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
BPA: Making amends for a destructive past
Note: this article appears in the print edition as a sidebar to another news article, “Changing times force agency to swim upstream.” The Bonneville Power Administration was born out of the Depression. Talk of taming the wild Columbia River and its tributaries began in the 1920s, but Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt didn’t authorize the […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Hunger striker to head East
The so-called “logging without laws’ salvage rider signed by President Clinton last July has catalyzed many people to commit acts of civil disobedience. But one person has mounted an unusual protest in front of the federal courthouse in Eugene, Oregon. Tim Ream, 33, set up a tent on the courthouse steps Oct. 3 and has […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Congress’ war against nature creates backlash
When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, everyone expected attacks on environmental laws and programs. And they came. But now, with just days left until the end of the 104th Congress’ first year, the anti-environment flood has been slowed. With the exception of the salvage logging legislation signed by President Clinton this summer, the […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
Timber sales are throwbacks to beastly days
Though the science of forestry has advanced over the past decade, green timber sales in forests west of the Cascades in Washington and Oregon don’t show it. Take the Roman Dunn timber sale, a tract of old-growth Douglas fir managed by the Bureau of Land Management along the central coast of Oregon near Eugene. A […]