The country’s next nuclear power plant may be built in Idaho. The Department of Energy’s “Nuclear Power 2010” initiative aims to get a new plant built somewhere in the U.S. by the end of the decade. One of three DOE sites under consideration is the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL), which a year […]
Rebecca Clarren
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Snowy plover predators become prey
OREGON Many creatures that forage along the sand dunes of the Oregon Coast consider the snowy plover’s cream-colored eggs a savory delicacy, and all those stolen eggs add up. Since 1993, the shy shorebird has been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Despite federal and state wildlife agencies’ recovery efforts, such as fencing […]
Posted inMarch 18, 2002: How I lost my town
The Latest Bounce
Eric Schaeffer, a top Environmental Protection Agency official, has resigned over the Bush administration’s failure to enforce new rules aimed at cleaning up power-plant pollution. “We are fighting a White House that seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce,” he wrote in his resignation letter. His action has prompted Senate hearings […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Bush administration wall hanging
Many environmental organizations send their supporters calendars of desert cacti in bloom, lynx lunging through powder snow or fly fishers casting into roaring mountain streams. Not Earthjustice. This year, the environmental law firm’s 2002 calendar profiles 12 Bush administration appointees in Technicolor rhetoric. Each month features a not always flattering color photograph of a different […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Seed in the ground
Some Oglala Lakota hope hemp can yield a stable government and a healthy economy
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Klamath Basin II: The saga continues
National Academy of Sciences study produces more controversy in Oregon
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Marijuana’s boring sibling
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Hemp and marijuana are fraternal twins: While they look similar, the plants are actually quite different. Agricultural hemp has only miniscule amounts of the psychoactive ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) that exists in marijuana; those trace levels are not enough to induce a chemical high. Cultivated […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2002: Last dance for the sage grouse?
No game plan for the public lands
Has the Bush administration forgotten about the West?
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Greens bail on ‘bilers
WYOMING Last summer, a group of snowmobilers, wildlife advocates, cross-country skiers and business owners embarked on an ambitious adventure: to work out a collaborative plan for managing winter use in the Medicine Bow National Forest’s Snowy Range. By early September, two environmentalists had defected. Eric Bonds of Biodiversity Associates and the other green, University of […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Rocky Mountain Front saved again – but…
MONTANA In 1997, Forest Service Supervisor Gloria Flora banned oil and gas exploration in Lewis and Clark National Forest for up to 15 years. She cited overwhelming citizen opposition to drilling on the Rocky Mountain Front, and said that exploration would harm the public’s psychological and spiritual connection with the land (HCN, 10/13/97: Forest Service […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Ruling ripples through salmon country
Fisheries Service must rethink hatchery policy
Posted inOctober 8, 2001: Whoa! Canada!
Indians are cowboys
In old Western movies, the roles are rigid: characters on horseback are either cowboys or Indians. But these stereotypes, like most, are limiting and untrue. In reality, many Indians are cowboys, as the book, Riders of the West, demonstrates. Photographer Linda MacCannell and writer Peter Iverson set the record straight by following the Indian rodeo […]
Posted inOctober 8, 2001: Whoa! Canada!
Terrorist attacks echo in the West
Tourism sags, energy policy debate simmers
Posted inSeptember 24, 2001: River of dreams
The Latest Bounce
The terrorist attacks on Washington, D.C., and New York City may impact the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, next February (HCN, 3/16/98: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games). Officials are considering whether to cancel the games for safety reasons; if the games do proceed, security is likely to […]
Posted inSeptember 24, 2001: River of dreams
Klamath water is finally for the birds
OREGON, CALIFORNIA Amid all the fighting this summer over water in the Klamath Basin of Oregon and California, many forgot about a significant water user that couldn’t protest in the streets or file a lawsuit – the threatened bald eagle. Although a biological opinion issued in April by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service mandated […]
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
Congress may agree on fees
NATION The debate over whether people should pay to play on public lands is heating up once again. The Recreation Fee Demonstration Program, created by Congress in 1996, requires people to pay a user fee to visit certain forests, parks or deserts (HCN, 2/14/00: Land of the fee). Although it is due to expire by […]
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
Will farmers harvest a legal take?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Farmers in the Klamath Basin are not the first group of irrigators to lose their water to endangered fish. In the early 1990s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service ordered California to shut down pumps that divert water […]
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
Digging for liquid gold
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. – Farmer Doug McCabe didn’t wait for the Bureau of Reclamation to announce that it wasn’t delivering any water this year. With only junior water rights, he suspected that drought would force the agency to cut his water off early in […]
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
LOWER KLAMATH NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Calif. – Wildlife biologist Tim Griffiths leans out his truck window, squints at the bright, scorching sun, and shakes his head with wonder. Yellow-headed blackbirds perch on slender cattails, bald eagles swoop through the sky, and white pelicans dunk their tugboat-size beaks in the shallow water. “This place is pure […]
Posted inJuly 30, 2001: Not in our back yard
The Latest Bounce
The Bonneville Power Administration has some good news. In late June, the Washington-based federal power company announced that a pending increase in power prices would amount to 46 percent, rather than the predicted 250 percent (HCN, 6/18/01: Transforming powers). BPA officials praised Northwest utilities and industries for reducing their energy demands by an average of […]