Controversy surrounds a tribe’s request to gather eagles in a national monument
Tim Sullivan
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
The latest bounce
In a strange election, Western political contests had their share of unusual moments … More than two weeks after the election, Washington finished counting votes in its tight U.S. Senate race (HCN, 10/23/00: Stalking Slade). Although Democratic challenger Maria Cantwell beat incumbent Republican Slade Gorton by 1,953 votes, the race is far from over: The […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Ranchers take law into their own hands
UTAH What began as the Bureau of Land Management’s attempt to salvage rangeland from a dry summer has become a miniature Sagebrush Rebellion. This summer, the BLM repeatedly ordered ranchers Quinn Griffin and Mary Bulloch to remove their cattle from remote grazing allotments in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Finally, the agency did the deed itself, […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Are the stars out tonight?
UTAH In this time of booming Western tourism, the star-filled night sky has become a valuable natural resource. That’s why Moab, Utah, is trying to regulate commercial light pollution. City planner Janet Lowe says people come to Moab, a town enviably placed between Arches and Canyonlands national parks, to experience the area’s natural beauty. Now, […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Don’t go away mad, just go away
IDAHO For years, Jon Marvel of the Idaho Watershed Project has demanded that the Bureau of Land Management remove livestock from nearly all the state’s public lands (HCN, 8/2/99: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man). His relationship with agency staffers has sometimes been tense, but in early October, things got worse. State director Martha Hahn […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Toxic bird feed
Environmental toxins can move through the food chain with surprising speed, James Larison, an Oregon State University biologist, found after studying white-tailed ptarmigans in a 10,000-acre area in central Colorado. Forty-six percent of the birds had accumulated toxic levels of the trace metal cadmium in their kidneys. The sequence, Larison found, begins with willows, an […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Ferrets are back in town
Black-footed ferrets once roamed the prairies of South Dakota. But the destruction of prairie dog towns vastly reduced the ferret’s habitat and pushed it onto the endangered species list. Now, the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe is restoring ferrets to the reservation, where the predators fill an important niche in the fast-disappearing shortgrass prairie ecosystem. So […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
Anchors away?
NATION Hoping to end a 10-year stalemate over whether permanent climbing anchors should be allowed in wilderness areas, the Forest Service assembled a committee of rock climbers, wilderness advocates, government officials and recreation-industry representatives to advise it on a rule (HCN, 8/17/98: Forest Service pulls anchor ban out of thin air). Thus far, the committee […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
Hear that whistle blowin’
A modern-day railroad baron stakes a claim in an ambivalent town
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Sprawl will be televised
ARIZONA, COLORADO It seemed obvious. The media love controversy, and in Arizona and Colorado, growth-control initiatives on the Nov. 7 ballot have been extremely controversial (HCN, 10/23/00: Arizona’s 202 takes aim at sprawl). So of course the public-minded, public-broadcast stations would want to air Subdivide and Conquer, a film about sprawl. Yet the film has […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Greens are still seeing red
WYOMING After 100 years of failed attempts to protect southwest Wyoming’s Red Desert, environmentalists say it’s do or die. Oil and gas companies plan to sink 10,000 to 15,000 wells by 2010, and a coalition of conservation groups, ranchers and outfitters doesn’t think the Bureau of Land Management’s plan will protect the area. Mac Blewer […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Efficient energy is efficient business
It is rare that business sense and environmental quality interest intersect to make a resource-use decision so obvious. But the recent rise in Northwest power prices has turned energy conservation into good business, says Lyn Oha Carey of Washington State University’s Cooperative Extension Energy Program. The program’s Energy Ideas Clearinghouse Web site offers many ways […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Bypass bickering
Fred Dexter of Nevada’s Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club agrees that heavy traffic between Phoenix and Las Vegas mandates another bridge over the Colorado River near Hoover Dam. But Dexter is crusading against the plan the Federal Highway Administration has chosen: a four-lane bridge at Sugarloaf Mountain, just downstream from the dam and within […]
Posted inOctober 23, 2000: Stalking Slade
Council guns down ban on predator hunts
ARIZONA In 1998, an Arizona contest called “Predator Hunt Extreme” offered $10,000 to the person who killed the most coyotes, bobcats, foxes and mountain lions. Public outcry against the event and multiple petitions from both hunters and wildlife advocates convinced the state Game and Fish Commission to propose a ban on such killing contests. But […]
Posted inOctober 23, 2000: Stalking Slade
Mapping a vision
Although local environmental groups often know their immediate surroundings in detail, there’s a bigger picture available. The State of the Southern Rockies Ecosystem, a report released by the Nederland, Colo.-based Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project, inventories much of three states – Colorado, northern New Mexico and southern Wyoming – that compose an ecoregion, an area with […]
Posted inOctober 23, 2000: Stalking Slade
Pilot finds a soft spot for a hard land
Under the Sun: A Sonoran Desert Odyssey, by Adriel Heisey. Treasure Chest Books, P.O. Box 5250, Tucson, AZ 85703 (520/623-9558). Hardcover: $40. 114 pages. Flying his ultralight airplane high above the Sonoran Desert, Adriel Heisey found an appreciation for an alien landscape. A former commercial pilot, Heisey moved to Tucson on a whim, and at […]
Posted inOctober 9, 2000: The hunters and the hunted
Western Shoshone to cash in?
NEVADA Before Anglo settlers arrived in present-day Nevada, the Western Shoshone Indians occupied half of the state’s current land area. Now, most of the tribe’s members live on tiny reservations, many of them in poverty, even though a congressionally approved land-claims settlement of $121 million has been waiting for final Shoshone approval for 21 years. […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
A highway hits a speed bump
Only one highway moves commuters south to Salt Lake City, squeezing cars between the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake. The Utah Department of Transportation wants to change that with its proposed $370 million Legacy Highway, a controversial 125-mile freeway that just hit a speed bump. On Sept. 5, the Environmental Protection Agency announced […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Yellowstone’s bison get a time limit
Yellowstone National Park’s long-awaited plan for managing its wandering bison herds hasn’t made everyone happy. The park’s final environmental impact statement, released in early September, tries to satisfy both bison advocates and the Montana Department of Livestock, which kills bison it fears could spread brucellosis to cattle. The park’s preferred alternative would allow a bigger […]