On the night of April 14, rancher Tom Kelly says someone sneaked onto his ranch near Deming, in southern New Mexico, emptied a water storage tank, removed bolts from the legs of a windmill and shot 13 cows and seven calves dead with a high-velocity rifle. Kelly says his opposition to Interior Secretary Babbitt’s rangeland […]
Paul Larmer
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Idaho injunction lifted
A federal judge recently dissolved an injunction that threatened to halt many activities on six Idaho national forests in order to protect endangered salmon. The injunction had prompted angry protests in the forest-dependent community of Salmon, Idaho, earlier this year (HCN, 2/20/95). But U.S. District Judge David Ezra said a biological opinion released March 1 […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Congress helps ranchers, too
Congress isn’t just looking out for the timber industry. In an uncontested voice vote, the Senate approved an amendment to its budget recision bill requiring the Forest Service to reissue grazing permits to ranchers “notwithstanding any other law …” Such legal “sufficiency” language would prevent citizens from challenging permits, even where land has been degraded […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Back to grazing reform … maybe
With little fanfare, the Bureau of Land Management released “final” livestock grazing regulations Feb. 17. The new regulations look much like those forwarded in a draft last spring, with the glaring exception of grazing fees, which Department of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt dropped from his Rangeland Reform package shortly before Christmas (HCN, 1/23/95). Environmentalists say […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Salvage logging squeaks by Senate
By a razor-thin margin, the Senate agreed March 30 to suspend environmental laws in order to expedite salvage logging in national forests. An attempt by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to replace the amendment of her fellow Washington senator, Slade Gorton, R, with a milder one failed 46-48. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., cast the lone Democratic […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
How Western senators voted on the Murray amendment
Note: this is a sidebar to the news article “Salvage logging squeaks by Senate“ FOR suspending environmental laws to expedite salvage logging (against Murray): Republicans Bennett (Utah) Hatch (Utah) Brown (Colo.) Campbell (Colo.) Craig (Idaho) Burns (Mont.) Thomas (Wyo) Kyl (Ariz.) Simpson (Wyo) Gorton (Wash.) Hatfield (Ore.) Packwood (Ore.) Domenici (N.M.) McCain (Ariz.), and Kempthorne […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Utah escapes missiles
Utah escapes missiles The U.S. Army has decided not to proceed with a plan to launch ballistic missiles from Green River, Utah, and shoot them down over the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The decision, announced March 21, “is great news for southern Utah,” says Scott Groene, an attorney with the Southern Utah […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
The wolf wasn’t guilty
The wolf wasn’t guilty The wolf shot in late January in central Idaho did not kill the calf it was feeding on, says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In a letter to Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R, acting regional director Thomas Dwyer said veterinary pathologists who examined the calf concluded that the animal died […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Congress pushes unfettered salvage logging
A measure that forces the Forest Service to nearly double the timber harvest on national forests over the next two years is buzzing through Congress. The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the controversial amendment to the appropriations recision bill 275-150. Now it heads to the Senate where environmentalists hope to extricate the so-called Taylor-Dicks […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Bill would fight fire with chain saws
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, How the West’s asbestos fires were turned into tinderboxes. Like a hotshot smokejumper, Congress has leaped into the debate over forest health and fire. All too predictably, say critics, it is wielding a chain saw. Proclaiming that he wants to “break the cycle of […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Salmon plan attacked
The federal government is shopping around its latest plan for saving endangered Snake River salmon, and environmentalists aren’t buying it. Like its predecessors, the 1995 draft biological opinion for the operation of the federal hydropower dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers relies heavily on flushing juvenile salmon downstream with water from upstream reservoirs in […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
Idaho salmon suit angers locals
Setting off a firestorm of local protest in Idaho, a federal judge ruled Jan. 9 that the Forest Service should temporarily halt mining, grazing, logging and road-building activities on six national forests. U.S. District Judge David Ezra said that the agency had to stop all ongoing activities until it consulted with federal biologists about effects […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Forest Service may finally evaluate grazing
As the Clinton administration backpedals in the nation’s capitol from grazing reforms, an environmental lawsuit is moving ahead in Montana. A federal judge will soon decide whether the Forest Service must do analyses for 150 allotments where ranchers run livestock on the Beaverhead National Forest. Last March, the National Wildlife Federation and its Montana affiliate […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Northwest council says salmon should float
Despite tremendous pressure to delay a decision, the Northwest Power Planning Council approved a plan Dec. 14 to save Columbia River salmon. It relies on drawing down reservoirs – rather than on barges – to speed migrating salmon to sea. “After 14 years of studying the problem, the council finally concluded that fish float,” says […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Coming soon: A leaner, more ecological agency
A leaner, more environmentally conscious Forest Service is about to be born, says Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas. In an 11-page memo sent to agency employees Dec. 6, Thomas unveiled a plan for “reinventing” the agency over the next two years. Regional offices would shrink from nine to seven and the agency’s 32,000-person workforce […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Election ’94 postmortem
Conservationists’ pre-election nightmares became real Nov. 8. A landslide gave Republicans a majority of the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years, and turned already conservative state legislatures in the West further to the right. “It’s not just the reversal, it’s the size of the reversal,” says Bruce […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Environmentalists mostly skunked by Congress
California Democrat Dianne Feinstein paced the chamber of the U.S. Senate, Saturday morning, Oct. 8, just minutes before the adjournment of the 103rd Congress. The number 59 glowed on the electronic scoreboard. Feinstein and a huddle of grim-faced Democrats knew they needed one more vote to end a month-long Republican filibuster frenzy that had prevented […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Salmon win again (in court)
Although endangered Snake River salmon appear to be losing their battle with extinction, they continue to win in court. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Sept. 9 that the Northwest Power Planning Council’s plan for restoring Snake River salmon gives too much to industrial interests and too little to tribal and state biologists, reports […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
As elections near, green hopes wilt
Two years ago environmentalists were flying high following the election of President Bill Clinton, Al Gore and a cadre of Democrats in Congress. Surely this was the time to reform grazing and mining on public lands, designate millions of acres of new wilderness, toughen laws protecting water and wildlife. But the brief window of opportunity […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
False alarm
Two years ago, the Department of Interior reported that nonprofit conservation organizations such as The Nature Conservancy were making “substantial” money buying land and selling it to federal agencies. Various conservatives and wise-use groups seized on the report, saying it proved that environmentalists exploit the federal government as ruthlessly as any corporation using the public […]