Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Jill Workman is a Portland-based volunteer for the Sierra Club. She believes that livestock grazing should continue on Steens Mountain. “I see lawsuits as a last resort. I’d rather try to work with people. I personally don’t think you can rule those people out. […]
Stephen Stuebner
Posted inNovember 22, 1999: Go tell it on the mountain
‘The more protection … the better’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bill Marlett is the executive director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association. He has filed a number of appeals and a lawsuit against the BLM, all asserting his group’s opposition to grazing on Steens Mountain. “I told (Babbitt) point-blank that we want a date-certain […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Note: this feature story includes four sidebar articles: Jon Marvel, rancher Brad Little, Land and Water Fund lawyer Laird Lucas, and Air Force pilot and environmentalist Herb Meyr give their perspectives in their own words. SILVER CITY, Idaho – Imagine a silver-haired 52-year-old fellow walking into a saloon in this remote mountain town in the […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
‘Jon Marvel is the wing nut’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Based in Emmett, Idaho, Brad Little is a third-generation sheep and cattle rancher. He has been active in range-reform efforts for more than a decade; this year, he joined the board of directors of High Country News. Recently, he talked about his neighbor Jon […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
‘We’re trying to turn up the heat’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Laird Lucas graduated from Yale Law School in 1986, worked for a federal judge, and then went into “high-pressure” litigation at a large San Francisco law firm. He has been with the nonprofit Land and Water Fund in Boise, Idaho, for the last six […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
‘I think we can work with ranchers’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. A fisherman and a hunter, Herb Meyr is a retired Air Force pilot in Mountain Home, Idaho, who spends a lot of his time working as a volunteer with groups such as the Idaho Wildlife Council, the Idaho chapter of Foundation for North American […]
Posted inJune 7, 1999: Mining the past
Fly-in wilderness
During the height of the summer boating season in central Idaho’s Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the sky buzzes with airplanes bound for one of 31 wilderness airstrips. At the Indian Creek airstrip, as many as 50 planes will land in a day. The Montana-based Wilderness Watch says that volume of traffic doesn’t belong […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
Web hosts faux greens
The practice of “green-scamming’ – stealing an environmental group’s name to further an opposing cause – may be acquiring a whole new meaning on the Internet. Members of the Pulp and Paper Workers Resource Council at the Potlatch Inc. mill in Lewiston, Idaho, got so mad at the Idaho Conservation League for opposing timber sales […]
Posted inApril 12, 1999: Is trapping doomed?
The new voice at BLM
Dallas lawyer Thomas A. Fry III talks and acts like a guy who’s in charge, but in reality, he’s “acting” director of the Bureau of Land Management. The 54-year-old Fry is the second acting director of the BLM in five years. Mike Dombeck supervised the BLM for three years as acting director before becoming chief […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Plant pays hefty fine for polluting the air
POCATELLO, Idaho – At the foot of the bare-faced Portneuf Mountains, plumes of white smoke issue from a cluster of smokestacks at FMC Corp.” s phosphorous plant, often obscuring the view of motorists passing by on Interstate 84. And charcoal-colored slag flanks the factory’s sides. The 1,400-acre Pocatello plant, first opened in 1949, is North […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
When government gets in growth’s way
BOISE, Idaho – Each morning, Gary Richardson looks out the front window of his foothills home and scans the skyline. Above the steel cranes towering over new high-rise office buildings, Richardson sees a yellow-brown haze hanging over the city. Below, a steady stream of cars creeps toward downtown. “I can see Los Angeles coming to […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Timber mills close in the Northwest
BOISE, Idaho – When an angry mob of Boise Cascade Corp. sawmill workers gathered in front of the Idaho Conservation League office in late July, staffer John McCarthy thought twice about going outside. At a similar rally earlier this year, a timber worker grabbed McCarthy by the neck and said, “If I was younger, I’d […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
Military wants to grow its Western empire
Imagine a giant spider – a creepy crawler 10 times bigger than King Kong – that could spin a web across the West’s great open spaces, linking every military training range in eight states. That’s how some citizens and environmentalists view a bevy of proposals by the U.S. Department of Defense to enhance combat readiness […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Private rights vs. public lands
Thousands of inholdings create conflicts inside federal lands
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
A cleanup project can’t get going
In 1969, when the last container of radioactive waste from the Rocky Flats bomb factory in Colorado was buried at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, no one really knew what was stored underground in the one-acre landfill. Federal officials knew generally what filled the unlined pit, created by excavating 20 feet down to a solid […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
How the New West will vote is anyone’s guess
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. They moved to Boise to kayak the Payette River’s world-class rapids. They came to Salt Lake City for Wasatch powder snow, the lightest on earth. They came to Seattle for Starbucks Coffee, Mount Rainier and the cutting-edge music scene. Since the early 1990s, thousands of […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Victory in Idaho: Canyon lovers defeat the military
The Air Force’s decision Oct. 6 to back off on building a new bombing range in the Owyhee canyonlands is a victory – and therefore shocking. Who would have thought that a coalition of local and national environmentalists, hunting groups and a few members of Congress could stop the military and Idaho’s forceful Gov. Cecil […]
Posted inAugust 22, 1994: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly
EPA hands off Superfund tailings to Idaho
BOISE, Idaho – In a deal hailed as a first nationwide, the Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to let Idaho environmental authorities take the lead in cleaning up old mine tailings in Triumph, near Sun Valley. The question is, will the state be any more successful than the EPA in devising a cleanup plan for […]
Posted inSeptember 6, 1993: On their own: Eagles make a comeback
On their own: Eagles make a comeback
Bald eagles are making a comeback after near extinction due to the pesticide DDT. To read this article, download this HCN issue in PDF format. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline On their own: Eagles make a comeback.
Posted inSeptember 6, 1993: On their own: Eagles make a comeback
Bald eaglets in Arizona have guardian angels
State biologists and bureaus are finding new ways to protect young eagles. To read this article, download this HCN issue in PDF format. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Bald eaglets in Arizona have guardian angels.