Environmental activists and students will gather on the Whitman College campus in Walla Walla, Wash., for the Symposium on Nonviolence and Civil Disobedience Earth Day weekend, April 19-21. Hosted by the Columbia River Bioregion Campaign and the college, the symposium is based on the teachings and lives of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Johann Galtung, […]
Staff
High Country Snooze
HCS publisher heaves fowl Joey Winterbottom, an intern who arrived last week, successfully administered the Heimlich maneuver to HCS publisher Ed Motown during a brown-bag staff meeting yesterday. Motown had noticed the meeting had gone two minutes over the designated hour and was trying to sigh conclusively to indicate it was over – a technique […]
Just a little advice
JUST A LITTLE ADVICE A county commissioner in Colorado thinks he can help newcomers adjust to the rural parts of Larimer County. John Clarke has written a seven-page primer, The Code of the West, which includes some useful tips. About utilities: even cellular phones won’t work in all areas; Mother Nature: expansive soils can buckle […]
Arid art
Arid Art An Englishman from Cornwall in the west of England, Tony Foster is fascinated by the American West’s wilderness of eroded rocks and deserts, including Death Valley in California and the slickrock onion domes of Utah’s canyonlands. An exhibit of his latest work, Arid Lands, Watercolor Diaries of Journeys across Deserts, can be seen […]
Environmental heroes
Not surprisingly, “environmental zeroes’ eclipsed “environmental heroes’ in the first session of the 104th Congress, according to the scorecard released last month by the League of Conservation Voters. The group’s 26th annual report rates lawmakers on key environmental votes, such as legislation to close national parks and to sell public lands. Contact the League of […]
Small Farming in Oregon
The Oregon State University Extension Service will host a conference for owners of small farms March 29-30 at Linfield College in McMinnville. Small Farming in Oregon will offer more than 40 workshops on subjects ranging from water rights to mushroom and ginseng production. Registration is $25 for one day and $40 for both days. Contact […]
The Native Home of Hope: Community, Ecology and the West
Missoula Mayor Daniel Kemmis, author Terry Tempest Williams and other Westerners will speak at the Wallace Stegner Center Symposium, called The Native Home of Hope: Community, Ecology and the West. The symposium, scheduled for April 12-13 at the University Park Hotel in Salt Lake City, will explore themes of cooperation and ecosystem management in the […]
Desert rendezvous
DESERT RENDEZVOUS Restoring riparian zones and passing a ballot initiative are two topics participants will talk about at the 18th annual High Desert Conference April 25-28. Sponsors of A Desert Wildlands Revival: Water, Wildlife and Wilderness in The High Desert include the Oregon Natural Desert Association, Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club and Committee for […]
Small town design
SMALL TOWN DESIGN Conservation and development can go head-to-head in rural America. A new publication describes a two-year project in which landscape architects worked with rural communities to combine the two. The National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service sponsored the arrangement, which placed a landscape architect […]
Dams be damned
DAMS BE DAMNED Activist Yvan Rochon wants to see two dams, built early in the century on Washington’s Elwha River, demolished (HCN, 9/18/95). “They went up as progress and we want to take them down in the name of progress,” says the 35-year-old medical researcher. Rochon and his group, the Elwha Dams Removal Fund, are […]
Costly Yellowstone invasion
COSTLY YELLOWSTONE INVASION There’s little hope of ridding Yellowstone Lake of its invading lake trout, says a report by the National Park Service. The illegally introduced lake trout, discovered by anglers in 1994, could diminish the native cutthroat trout population by 70 percent or more within 100 years. And by disrupting the food chain, the […]
Environmental Action “96: Winning in November
L earn grassroots lobbying and election organizing at Environmental Action “96: Winning in November. The free Feb. 24-25 conference features a keynote address by Jim Baca, former director of the BLM, and an environmental forum with Colorado’s U.S. Senate candidates. Sponsors include CoPIRG, League of Conservation Voters Education Fund and Campus Greenvote. Contact the University […]
The Snake River, Balancing the Vision
Idaho Rivers United and dozens of private and government agencies are co-sponsoring the fourth bi-annual river symposium: “The Snake River: Balancing the Vision.” Former Gov. Cecil Andrus opens the program, scheduled for Feb. 29-March 2 at the Weston Plaza Hotel in Twin Falls, Idaho. Contact Idaho Rivers United, P.O. Box 633, Boise, ID (800/574-7481). This […]
Seventh North American Interdisciplinary Wilderness Conference
Western literature, politics and ecology will merge at the Seventh North American Interdisciplinary Wilderness Conference. The event is sponsored by the Center for Environmental Arts and Humanities at the University of Nevada, Reno, and will take place at the Nugget in Reno. The Feb. 29-March 2 workshop features T.H. Watkins, editor of Wilderness magazine, and […]
13th National Trails Symposium
Trails ranging from urban bikeways to wilderness hiking paths will be discussed at the 13th National Trails Symposium, March 9-12, in Washington, D.C. American Trails, public-lands agencies and the Federal Highway Administration are sponsoring the workshop, which also features special on-the-trail field trips in the D.C. area. Contact American Trails, Box 200787, Denver, CO 80220 […]
Bees need our backing
Bees need our backing Scientists concerned about the decline of pollinators have found something that everyone can care about: food. “If we lost all honey bees in the U.S. without any wild pollinators taking over their chores, the resulting price increases for food in the U.S. would amount to $6 to $8 billion a year,” […]
Threatened and Endangered Species are our Mine Canaries
A flock of eagle lovers will gather Feb. 16-18 at the Klamath Basin Bald Eagle Conference in Klamath Falls, Ore., site of the largest concentration of bald eagles in the lower 48 states. Threatened and Endangered Species are our Mine Canaries includes a photography contest, footrace, field trips and workshops. Contact the Oregon Department of […]
Great Salt Lake Issues Symposium
A group called the Friends of Great Salt Lake has organized the Great Salt Lake Issues Symposium, an educational forum on the future of the lake’s ecosystem. Speakers from such groups as the National Audubon Society and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will discuss the lake from historical, political and biological perspectives. Registration for […]
Miners seek jackpot
MINERS SEEK JACKPOT Despite the depressed market for uranium, Green Mountain Mining Venture hopes to hit a jackpot in south central Wyoming. The companies spearheading the operation, U.S. Energy and Kennecott Energy, have asked the Bureau of Land Management for permission to construct, operate and reclaim the Jackpot uranium mine on public land. The mine […]
American Ground Zero
AMERICAN GROUND ZERO “My profession, which is in my soul, is to document things,” says photographer Carole Gallagher. For seven years, she worked on American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War, a book that documents the aftermath of nuclear testing in Utah and the West’s “culture of cancer” through photography and oral history. In an […]
