The Oregon Supreme Court has given state agriculture interests reason to celebrate. Last month the court upheld the state’s right to enforce strict rules against nonagricultural uses of farmland. That means a lot to farmers in western Oregon’s Willamette Valley, home to 70 percent of the state’s population as well as to its richest soil. […]
Peter Chilson
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Floods hammer Southwest
A moving wall of water following a severe thunderstorm Aug. 10 forced residents and tourists in a Havasupai Indian village outside Grand Canyon National Park to evacuate. Two days later, thunderstorms southeast of Page, Ariz., near Glen Canyon Dam, pushed a flash flood down a slot canyon, where it drowned 11 hikers. “It was chocolate […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Comment on the Idaho Statesman’s editorial series
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to an essay, “An Idaho daily breaches the Northwest’s silence over tearing down dams.” The Idaho Statesman’s July editorial series on saving salmon signals that this long-unresolved issue in Pacific Northwest politics has become critical. The Statesman’s support for a radical […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
A small victory for logging protesters
Opponents of Oregon’s timber industry are hoping a small court victory will energize their cause. On Aug. 5, five activists fended off federal trespassing charges stemming from protests at the Warner Creek fire sale in the Willamette National Forest (HCN, 9/2/96). For almost a year, hundreds of protesters blockaded a Forest Service road into the […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Prairie dogs beat the bullet
In Colorado, prairie dogs and other small mammals are safe from large-scale massacre in the name of sport. The Colorado Wildlife Commission voted unanimously July 10 to restrict contest shoots of small game, including coyotes and prairie dogs. Environmental and animal rights groups have expressed outrage over contests like the Top Dog World Championship Prairie […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
A cheatgrass antidote – maybe
The federal Bureau of Land Management wants to send the message that cheaters never win, and that goes for cheatgrass, too. The agency’s weapon of choice is Oust, a controversial DuPont herbicide. Last fall, BLM range specialists with the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area in Idaho found that in early tests, Oust […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
In Oregon, tension over coho and trees
When federal biologists listed coho salmon under the Endangered Species Act in early June, logging protesters staking out the China Left timber sale in Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest hoped their work was done. They were disappointed. The day of the listing, which protects threatened coho in streams along the Oregon-California border, forest supervisor Mike Lunn […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
Did ranchers fire a university president?
When New Mexico State University’s president, J. Michael Orenduff, was fired last month, the university’s Board of Regents said it was because he had pushed the school’s athletic program $1 million in the red. Now it appears his removal may have been punishment for offending the state’s traditional ranching interests. The story is rooted in […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
County caught in cottonwood quagmire
A simple idea: Eliminate the trees, stabilize the levees, save a town. But things are seldom what they seem. Ask officials of Benewah County, Idaho. In February, they cut down hundreds of cottonwoods to stabilize levees on the St. Joe River in the town of St. Maries. They wanted to prevent a repeat of last […]
Posted inJune 10, 1996: Outdoor Education
Sagebrush rebels in the apple orchards
In Washington state, one county’s efforts to get state growth-management laws off its back have run aground in court, drawn the wrath of the governor and earned the scorn of environmental groups. But two of three Chelan County commissioners in central Washington like it that way. They’re betting on brinkmanship to draw attention to their […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Can cattle save the pygmy rabbit?
The idea is heresy to some and it sounds odd coming from a wildlife biologist, but Fred Dobler is insistent: Cattle grazing might save the pygmy rabbit. The shy, nocturnal cousin of the cottontail is an endangered species in Washington and exists on isolated chunks of sagebrush-shrub steppe in just one county. “Grazing might be […]