Managers in Yellowstone National Park just released a plan that could leave the park’s 2.2 million acres of backcountry a little more organized. The draft backcountry management plan suggests classifying the park into three management zones. Most people would visit the threshold zone, which surrounds roads and developed areas in the park. It would have […]
Staff
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Cows crowded out
Bob Niccoli, a life-long rancher in Crested Butte, Colo., says the decision to sell his ranch and leave town just got easier. Niccoli protested a proposed development near his ranch in early January. He asked Gunnison County planners to require developer Dan Gallagher to build his 12 houses 100 feet back from a riverside cliff […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Fast food at fault
That humble staple of the fast-food industry – the french fry – is more dangerous than it looks. A recent study by the non-profit Columbia Basin Institute found that fry-makers in the Columbia River Basin waste cheap water and poison residential wells. The 100-page report, Value Added and Subtracted, says fry-makers use only half of […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Will timber plan fly?
The Clinton administration’s final plan for Northwest forests was delayed for release until March 31, but a Feb. 23 summary reveals it hasn’t much changed since last July when it was first proposed. The plan calls for annual federal timber sales of 1.05 billion board feet across the range of the northern spotted owl. That’s […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
For green writers
Environmental issues are particularly difficult for journalists from small newspapers and broadcast stations who do not have the benefit of large libraries, colleges or conferences. “Charting the Environmental Journalism Frontier,” an April 14-16 workshop at the University of Colorado at Boulder, will help such journalists develop a better understanding of environmental issues in the West. […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Reclaiming high places
Alpine forget-me-not, a miniature, bright blue flower, grows above timberline through constant winds, glaring sun and only two months of summer. Now, in addition, it faces the added stresses of mines, ski areas and increased radiation through a thinning ozone layer. At the 11th annual High Altitude Revegetation Workshop, scientists and managers will discuss how […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Missile chaos
In a 4-inch-thick draft environmental impact statement, the U.S. Army recently concluded that its missile test flights to the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico could have significant land-use impacts. Launched from either Green River, Utah, or Fort Wingate, N.M., the missiles would fly over Canyonlands National Park, Dead Horse Point State Park […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
E-Mail for the rural West
The West’s great distances, geography and weather often isolate its communities. That can make for a high quality of life but difficult communications. The Helena, Mont.-based computer non-profit WestNet hopes to overcome those barriers by providing a computer-based bulletin board service. With a computer and a modem, anyone – from ranchers and loggers, to Native […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Green scientists get-together
A March 12-13 conference at the University of Oregon looks at how scientists can participate in environmental politics and policy-making. “The 1994 Public Interest Science Conference” includes panels on science in the courtroom, scientists and the Endangered Species Act, and the use or misuse of science by politicians. More than two dozen panelists will speak […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
From driveways to watersheds
When oil became scarce in the 1970s, New Mexico’s solar industry quickly boomed and then busted. State tax subsidies had helped sell complicated new systems that sometimes didn’t work, and by the mid-80s many people ditched their solar designs. In an effort to rebuild its solar industry, the New Mexico Natural Resources Department has published […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Baca is back
Jim Baca, who was recently shot out of a cannon in Washington, D.C., hopes to soft-land in the governor’s mansion in Santa Fe, NM. Baca was fired by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as head of the Bureau of Land Management (HCN, 2/21/94) in a dispute over management style. He has announced that he will run […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Back to the sun
When oil became scarce in the 1970s, New Mexico’s solar industry quickly boomed and then busted. State tax subsidies had helped sell complicated new systems that sometimes didn’t work, and by the mid-80s many people ditched their solar designs. In an effort to rebuild its solar industry, the New Mexico Natural Resources Department has published […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Andy Kerr on the warpath
Andy Kerr, conservation director for the Oregon Natural Resources Council, filed a criminal trespass complaint against a Spokane, Wash., television reporter for being on his recently purchased property in Wallowa County, Ore. without permission. Tom Grant of KREM-TV was discovered on the front porch Feb. 6 by the house’s caretaker after he had videotaped the […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Symposium won’t be dry
-Rivers at the Crossroads: Law, Science, Politics, and People” will bring together conservationists, agriculturalists and politicos to talk about water-use conflicts in Idaho and other Western states. Symposium organizer Marty Bridges says the meeting will give people the opportunity to voice their concerns about water-use policy directly to the heads of the Idaho Department of […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
No home on the range
The Great Buffalo Herd Monument is extinct – at least on public land. The brainchild of a New York artist, the Mt. Rushmore-type monument would have placed 1,000 copper, moving, moaning bison on a high sage- and pine-covered plateau called the Beaver Rim south of Lander, Wyo. But when the agency which manages the land, […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Workers need protection
The health and safety of workers cleaning up the nation’s nuclear weapons complex have been badly neglected, according to a study by the Office of Technology Assessment, a research arm of the U.S. Congress. Because of the historic autonomy and secrecy of its atomic mission, the Department of Energy is the only federal agency exempt […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Saving spotted cows
More than 1,000 miners, loggers and ranchers rallied in Boise Jan. 18 to save “endangered people.” Partly organized by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, supporters of the rally said environmental controls were socialistic and may snuff out traditional extraction-based industries. “When you deny the cutting of a tree, you’ve denied somebody a job,” Craig told the […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Wet and wild symposium
With memories of drought still fresh in the West, the Montana Environmental Education Association is sponsoring “Water, Wet & Wild: Flowing into the 21st Century” from March 25-27 in Billings, Mont. Designed for elementary and high school teachers, the meeting offers workshops on water pollution and water rights and exhibits by film makers and publishers. […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
STOP-M in Oregon
Since 1989, miners have staked over 40,000 claims to mine microscopic gold dust in eastern Oregon. The prospectors foresee massive open-pit cyanide mines to retrieve the gold, but so far no such mines exist in the state. Newmont Grassy Mountain Corp. ow wants to develop a claim 25 miles south of Vale, a small town […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Roxborough friends fight for park
Local residents who enjoy the relative wildness and beauty of Roxborough State Park near Denver, Colo., are fighting a developer’s plans to build 850 houses along the park’s entire eastern boundary. The development, known as Southdowns at Roxborough, could begin as soon as this March and would destroy wildlife habitat for deer, elk and golden […]