Less than three years after the Clinton administration devised a plan to protect most of the remaining ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest, the big trees have started to fall again. Taking advantage of an obscure provision in a salvage logging bill recently signed by the president, loggers have begun cutting healthy old-growth forests west […]
Paul Larmer
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Is another senator backpedaling?
New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, R, reluctantly conceded last month that his bill on public-land grazing needed at least clarification. Hunters and other recreational users of the public lands apparently made their opposition clear: They cannot live with legislation that puts ranchers above everyone else (HCN, 8/21/95). Now another Western Republican, Sen. Craig Thomas of […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Sheep vs. sheep in Hells Canyon
To protect bighorn sheep, the Forest Service has decided to kick the domestic variety out of Hells Canyon National Recreation Area – again. The agency decided in 1994 to shut down three grazing allotments that straddle the Oregon-Idaho border. It feared that bighorn sheep reintroduced into the area were succumbing to a deadly bacteria, Pasteurella, […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 1995: The West's fisheries spin out of control
Company slips through president’s noose
When President Bill Clinton ordered a two-year moratorium on mining claims on 19,000 acres of federally owned land surrounding Yellowstone National Park, environmentalists cheered. The order did not prevent Crown Butte Mine Inc. of Canada from pursuing its plans to dig for gold and other metals on its already leased claim just northeast of the […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
BLM land: outstanding opportunities for crowding
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook. A year ago, Bureau of Land Management rangers in southern Utah stumbled upon a remote, never-looted Anasazi ruin. To protect the site, they decided not to publicize its existence, but agency staffers’ jaws dropped recently when […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
A Western senator hears from his constituents
Six months ago, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s two-year effort to rewrite grazing regulations for public lands seemed in full retreat. Enthusiasm for the watered-down Rangeland Reform package had ebbed to an all-time low among environmentalists. And Western Republicans, emboldened by the 1994 elections, easily wrested from Babbitt a six-month delay on its implementation so that […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Can BLM save the grass, and itself?
Backed into a corner by legislation that threatens its existence, the Bureau of Land Management has started punching back. The agency began an aggressive Department of Interior campaign in late June, when acting BLM director Mike Dombeck delivered hard-hitting testimony against the Livestock Grazing Act before Senate and House subcommittees. Dombeck, who has already made […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Endangered law backed in court, ripped in Congress
The Endangered Species Act continues to thrive in courtrooms. But lawmakers on Capitol Hill have targeted it for extinction. In a highly anticipated ruling June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected arguments by the timber industry that the 1973 law mostly exempted private lands. By a 6-3 count, the justices overturned a lower court ruling […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Memo incontinence strikes again
Leaked memos seem to be a recurring problem for Republican Sen. Slade Gorton. The Washington lawmaker received unwanted publicity in February when environmentalists obtained a memo revealing that industry groups had written his Endangered Species Act reform bill (HCN, 5/1/95). Now comes a second memo, dated June 1 and directed to the managers of three […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Lettie Hellman
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. Lettie Hellman is a native of Colorado’s Western Slope. Since the mid-1980s she has promoted prisons for Delta County. Her husband, Bill, also a proponent of prisons, runs an auto dealership in the town of Delta, population 4,000. “I’m not crazy […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Colorado’s prison slayer
One man’s quest to unshackle a rural economy
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Poor, rural places are magnets for prisons
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. New prisons aren’t getting built at the scene of the crime. A 1991 federal survey found that 390 prisons were located in rural and small-town settings, housing 44 percent of all state and federal prisoners. More than 200 of those prisons […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Crime is big business, on both sides of thelaw
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. You may have heard the joke: By the year 2000, everyone in the United States will either be in prison or working for one. But prisons and the jobs and spinoff businesses they create are no joke. Prison-construction budgets nationwide topped […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
How Colorado’s hunters lost 90 acres to 300 prisoners
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. Tom Huerkamp’s vision of the Delta Correctional Facility as a center for scientific research matches the state of Colorado’s goal when it began using the site in 1964. “The state’s noble experiment,” as a local newspaper called it at the time, […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
A small mountain town shows prisons can be good neighbors
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. When a new $223 million maximum security federal prison was recently completed in Caûon City, Colo., people began to call the central Colorado community the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.” But prisons are nothing new for Fremont County: it first hosted a […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Man, weather conspire against salmon
The giant spring runoff that was supposed to safely whisk baby Snake River salmon over dams to the Pacific Ocean has been cut down to size. Mother Nature accomplished part of the feat. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did the rest. A series of wet winter storms had buoyed the hopes of salmon advocates […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Grazing reform ‘reformed’
After waging a defensive battle for more than two years, public-lands ranchers and their allies in Congress have gone on the offensive. The Livestock Grazing Act of 1995, introduced May 25 by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., would kill Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s two-year effort to reform grazing practices on 270 million acres of land overseen […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Grazing settlement favors ranchers
After intensive negotiations, environmentalists, ranchers and the Forest Service settled a lawsuit over cattle grazing on Montana’s Beaverhead National Forest. But compared to an earlier agreement, ranchers gained the upper hand. The dispute began when the National Wildlife Federation sued the Forest Service for failing to assess grazing impacts on the forest, streams and wildlife […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Soft-path approach to saving species
Note: this article is one of several in this issue about the Endangered Species Act. “Hank Fischer: least popular man in Montana,” shouts a 1978 headline in High Country News. The Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife earned that label by fighting the federal Animal Damage Control and its use of compound 1080 to […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Five states squirm as bull trout declines
Note: this article is one of several in this issue about the Endangered Species Act. What’s spotted, lives in pristine habitat on national forests and could put some loggers out of work if protected under the Endangered Species Act? No, it’s not that feathered denizen of the ancient forests, the northern spotted owl. It’s a […]