He’s known as the Birdman of Boise, and is perhaps the most underrated conservationist in the West. In Cool North Wind: Morley Nelson’s Life with Birds of Prey, Idaho writer Stephen Stuebner tells the story of a former Soil Conservation Service employee, “a flamboyant salt-of-the-earth character, a father of four, a husband, a widower, a […]
Sarah Wright
Posted inWotr
Changing the world, one person at a time
I was fresh out of college and green — in more ways than one — when I learned that not all environmentalists are created equal. I’d applied for a job with a 10-year-old national environmental organization, based in Boston, that recruits young people to work on grassroots campaigns all over the country. Invited for an […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Sprawl is in the numbers
Westerners are all too familiar with the phenomenon of “urban sprawl,” as development creeps farther from city limits and eats up more land. A study released by the nonprofit Numbers USA offers new insight into the causes of sprawl, emphasizing the contribution of population growth to changes in land use. Weighing Sprawl Factors in Large […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Wilted West staggers into summer
Meager snow pack leaves reservoirs low, fire danger high
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
City gets in the zone for fish
OREGON Portland is one of a few urban areas where endangered fish swim in the shadows of high-rises. In an effort to prevent eroding stream banks and rising water temperatures that harm fish, the city’s planning bureau designated zones along its streams that impose building and landscape regulations on 19,000 acres of residential property. That […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Land exchange could short-change monuments
ARIZONA A land-exchange referendum slated for the November ballot could set the stage for shifting the borders of the Sonoran Desert and Ironwoods national monuments, two of President Clinton’s 11th-hour designations (HCN, 1/29/01: Monumental changes). Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Arizona Gov. Jane Hull have conferred several times in the past year about how to […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Saving tired tires
Ernest Cordova is “burning rubber” to come up with new ways to put old tires to use. His family-owned business, Cordova and Sons of Cuba, N.M., collects and recycles used tires to make bales for landscaping and building projects. Americans discard 270 million tires each year, says the Department of Environmental Quality, a huge burden […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Braking development in the Breaks
MONTANA When then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt visited Montana’s Missouri Breaks on a rafting trip down the Missouri River in 1999, he roused fears among some that if the area were declared a monument, it would be put off-limits to oil and gas leasing. Shortly thereafter, the Bureau of Land Management awarded a series of leases […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
A blueprint for better communities
Westerners who are fed up with polluted water and air, strip malls that eat up open space, and automobile-dependent lifestyles can look to a new book by the Natural Resources Defense Council for guidance on how to counter the poorly planned patterns of growth we now know as urban sprawl. In a series of 35 […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Tug-of-war over water
COLORADO The Colorado Legislature is considering a measure that could turn the tide for fish, rivers and rafters. The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver, would allow irrigators and municipalities to retain rights to water they choose to leave instream for fish and boaters. Under current law, irrigators must use or lose their […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Lawsuit is for the dogs
MONTANA A gun owners’ group is trying to shoot down a ban on prairie dog hunting, imposed by the Bureau of Land Management to preserve habitat for the endangered black-footed ferret. The Montana Shooting Sports Association is frustrated by what it sees as a violation of the right to bear arms. “What part of ‘shall […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Montana revved up about snowmobile agreement
MONTANA When hard-pressed, even the most antagonistic foes can reconcile their differences, as snowmobilers and wilderness advocates demonstrated in their recent agreement on motorized access in Montana’s Flathead National Forest. Early last year, months of legal wrangling between the Montana Wilderness Association, Montana Snowmobile Association and the Flathead National Forest ended in a ruling that […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Who’s bringing home the bacon?
Imagine discovering your salary and assets posted on the Internet. Farmers throughout the nation are finding their names listed on the Web, along with the amount of federal subsidies they’ve received since the passage of the 1996 Farm Bill. The Environmental Working Group retrieved and compiled the data under the Freedom of Information Act. “I […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
Entrepreneur shovels trouble
UTAH Archaeologists don’t dig Anasazi Digs. The family-owned business on private land near Monticello, Utah, invites customers to excavate – and keep – artifacts from an Anasazi pueblo for $2,500 a day. “It’s like owning a Van Gogh painting and cutting it into lots of pieces,” says Utah state archaeologist Kevin Jones. “The owner could […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
Buyout for bears
IDAHO Everybody knows that sheep and grizzlies just don’t get along. The predator-prey antagonism has been especially acute in Idaho’s Targhee National Forest, where five grizzlies were relocated and 34 domestic sheep killed from 1996 to 1998. One sheep herder suffered a grizzly mauling. But bear-sheep conflicts on the Targhee promise to diminish in the […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2002: Last dance for the sage grouse?
Sparring over elk imports
COLORADO Elk ranchers and lawmakers are worried sick about chronic wasting disease. The fatal brain malady has occurred at low levels in wild populations of elk and deer in northeastern Colorado for three decades, but is now spreading in herds of domestic elk that live in close contact with one another (HCN, 11/5/01: Wasting disease […]