ARIZONA Courting the green vote At first glance, it looked like a travel folder touting Arizona, so thick was the carpet of yellow flowers at the base of the San Francisco Peaks, and so perfectly red were the rock spires of Monument Valley. But the eight-page, glossy brochure was a campaign ad for a state […]
Tony Davis
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
In place of a bigger park, Tucson gets houses
TUCSON, Ariz. – Five years ago, federal officials saw a perfect spot in the Tucson Mountains foothills for a park expansion. Covered by lush stands of palo verdes, saguaros and ocotillos, the site included several washes that provided shelter for wildlife. It also contained one of the few perennial water sources in the mountains, attracting […]
Posted inAugust 3, 1998: Tribes reclaim stolen lands
Tucson acts to stall sprawl
-At least it’s not Phoenix,” mutter some Tucson residents when asked about the city’s runaway growth. But as Tucson continues to sprawl into the surrounding Sonoran desert, many think it’s beginning to look a lot like its larger neighbor. Dismay over that relentless push helps to explain why, in late May, Pima County unanimously approved […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Land swap splits conservationists
Saguaro National Park officials and Tucson environmentalists are praising a recent land exchange that adds 632 acres of prime wildlife habitat to the park’s holdings. They say the expansion helps to protect the cactus forest from urban sprawl, but others are wondering if too much was sacrificed in the process. The Tucson Mountains acreage, owned […]
Posted inMarch 30, 1998: A bare-knuckled trio goes after the Forest Service
Staffers say their agency betrayed the land
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In his 28 years of working for the U.S. Forest Service, fish biologist Jim Cooper never thought of himself as an idealist. Even when he was starting out, he says, he thought a rising human population would continually stress the national forests, yet he […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Cows get marching orders
Tucson environmentalists beat stream-loving bovines
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
A town with a desert heart
TORTOLITA, Ariz. – The nerve center of this brand-new town is not a shopping mall, health resort or golf club. It’s 21 square miles of saguaro, palo verde, cholla and ironwood trees, packed so tightly together that you can’t walk through them without getting jabbed. A 30-minute drive northwest of Tucson, this is some of […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Agencies dunk endangered songbird
ROOSEVELT LAKE, Ariz. – A tall stand of Asian salt-cedars next to a man-made reservoir is the last place anyone would expect to find colonies of one of America’s most endangered bird species. But that’s exactly where several southwestern willow flycatchers were flitting on a warm mid-June afternoon. Less than six inches tall and pale […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Judge tells feds to list and protect
In a slap at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a federal judge ordered the agency March 14 to list four species as endangered and to set aside the most important habitat for them and two others already listed. District Judge Roger Strand chided the service for having repeatedly missed congressionally imposed deadlines under the […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Owls and subdivisions clash near Tucson
TUCSON, Ariz. – Some human residents of the desert on the edge of this city grind their teeth when they hear the single-note call of a cactus ferruginous pygmy owl. The tiny owl, which lives in saguaro cacti and ironwood trees surrounding their houses, sounds a monotonous whistle that irritates people so they feel like […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Oregon’s ranchers vote for survival
From the start, it was easy to see that the meeting on a bleary January 1994 day in Albuquerque, N.M., would go nowhere. The purpose was to look for a compromise, but four New Mexico environmentalists and ranchers spent most of the time hurling barbs at each other. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Gov. Bruce […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Horses, bikes push into petroglyph park
On a windswept mesa west of Albuquerque, N.M., bicyclists and horses soon may be pounding the turf where Indians say the spirits of the dead like to travel. The National Park Service is about to approve a new management plan that calls for the development of 11 to 16 miles of trails in the 7,000-acre […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
Judge kicks out cows
After nearly five years of haggling over how many cows should be allowed on the Diamond Bar grazing allotment in New Mexico, U.S. District Judge Howard Bratton ordered Dec. 4 that all 863 cows belonging to ranchers Kit and Sherry Laney must leave national forest land. The Laneys had sued last spring when Forest Service […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Forest Service building is torched by night raiders
A Forest Service ranger station in Oregon has become the latest target in the wave of violence directed at federal installations around the West. The Oakridge Ranger Station, about an hour’s drive southeast of Eugene, burst into flames early on the morning of Oct. 30. By the time firefighters had arrived, the 25,000-square-foot building had […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Cows, ballot measure gunned down in Oregon
JOHN DAY, Ore. – Patrick Shipsey is a tall, thin doctor who loves rural living. A native of the small southern Oregon city of Klamath Falls, he moved to John Day six years ago because he says he was drawn to the surrounding countryside. Although his environmentalism at times made him a pariah in this […]
Posted inOctober 28, 1996: Has big money doomed direct democracy?
Polluted waters divide Oregon
PORTLAND, Ore. – One side has a punchy message: that cows and clean streams don’t mix. The other side warns that fencing cows off from hundreds of miles of streams will be a worse failure than the Great Wall of China. At stake is the Oregon Clean Streams Initiative, one of the toughest sets of […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 1996: Last line of defense: Civil disobedience and protest slow down 'lawless logging'
Last line of defense
Civil disobedience and protest slowdown ‘lawless logging’
Posted inSeptember 2, 1996: Last line of defense: Civil disobedience and protest slow down 'lawless logging'
When the crackdown came
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. For nearly a year, the Forest Service patiently accepted the presence of the protesters at Warner Creek. But after the Clinton administration announced that logging would be at least delayed at Warner Creek, the agency’s attitude toward the protesters changed abruptly. Law enforcement officers moved […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 1996: Last line of defense: Civil disobedience and protest slow down 'lawless logging'
Big trees in Oregon continue to topple
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Though forest activists have stopped controversial timber sales offered under the salvage rider in some places, they have taken a drubbing in others. Ninety minutes by car north of Warner Creek in the Detroit Ranger District, hundreds of big trees have tumbled like tenpins all […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Budget crisis may doom Oregon’s state parks
LINCOLN CITY, Ore. – At first glance, Road’s End Wayside Rest Area here is simply a big asphalt parking lot, complete with a bathroom and stairs winding downhill. But the stairs lead to a huge, sandy beach, making it one of more than 60 public access points on the Oregon coast. Public beach access has […]