GLENWOOD, N.M. – In 1962, Hugh B. McKeen’s rancher parents brought him back to their native Catron County after 15 years in crowded, hectic Southern California. Catron County was then, and still is, everything that urban America is not. Lying four to five hours by car from Albuquerque and Phoenix, it has no local newspapers, […]
Tony Davis
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Playing politics or helping the range?
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. Back in 1978, ranchers around the West felt the first tremors of grazing reform. Under legal pressure from environmentalists, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management found much of its rangeland in bad […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Did the Forest Service burn New Mexico enviros?
Did the Forest Service burn New Mexico enviros? On the day President Clinton signed what’s become known as the “logging without laws’ rider last July, a nearly 10,000 foot-high peak in southwest New Mexico burst into flames. Now federal plans for salvage logging of this area – Eagle Peak near Reserve, N.M. – have led […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
The Diamond Bar saga goes on – and on
For five years, 15 livestock watering tanks planned for the Diamond Bar grazing allotment in New Mexico symbolized a fight over cows in America’s oldest wilderness (HCN, 5/2/94). Now it appears that the stock tanks may never be built. In a precedent-setting decision in February, Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas’ office ruled that congressional […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 1996: Can a Colorado ski county say 'Enough is enough'?
Politics imperil Mexican wolf comeback
As public hearings on ranching issues go, the Socorro, N.M., session on the endangered Mexican wolf last fall was a rare breed. Hundreds of green-capped environmentalists easily outnumbered ranchers, who more often fill the crowd with a sea of black and white cowboy hats. Environmentalists came dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
Catron County wins in court, loses on the ground
Catron County wins in court, loses on the ground They’ve influenced dozens of other counties, been hawked for sale at national conferences and plastered on the front pages of newspapers around the country. Now, Catron County, N.M.” s controversial land-use ordinances have survived a constitutional challenge. On Jan. 16, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit […]
Posted inNovember 27, 1995: Saving the ranch
Traffic flow 1, trees 0
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – When the bulldozer smacked a 40-foot-tall cottonwood tree, the tree first wavered and wobbled. Then, a loud crack rang out, and the tree toppled, its bright green leaves crushed as they glistened in the sunlight. This scene was repeated more than a dozen times in mid-October, as the Albuquerque city government started […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
Hikers find bomb in wilderness
The July discovery of a pipe bomb by three backpackers in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness was thought to be a freak incident. Then Forest Service officials started comparing notes: It was the fourth time someone had found a bomb or explosive in the wilderness in the past 13 months. That realization jarred Forest Service employees […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Back at the Diamond Bar…
-USFS Tags Diamond Bar as Green Showplace,” headlined the pro-ranching Hatch, N.M., Courier, after the Forest Service evaluated the 227-square-mile Diamond Bar grazing allotment near Silver City (HCN, 5/1/95). The agency cut ranchers Kit and Sherry Laney’s permitted cattle numbers from 1,188 to 300, but the ranchers will be able to up that to 600-800 […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Wolf revival spreads to Southwest
A bronze likeness of the Mexican wolf stands in front of the University of New Mexico’s gymnasium in Albuquerque – the lobo is the mascot for the school’s sports teams. About the only other place to see the endangered predator today is in the zoo. But now, after a decade of environmentalist-rancher-government wrangling over Mexican […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
The Southwest’s last real river: Will it flow on?
SAN PEDRO RIVER RIPARIAN NATIONAL CONSERVATION AREA, Ariz. – For 40 miles after flowing across the Mexican border into Arizona, the San Pedro River looks like a strip of rain forest marooned in the desert. Announced by its bright green cottonwood and willow trees, the river winds northward from headwaters in the Sierra Madre through […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Flip-flop on storing nuclear waste shakes up tribe
MESCALERO, N.M. – On a wind-whipped spring afternoon, tears streamed down the face of anti-nuclear activist Rufina Laws as she stood in the tribal parking lot. Leda Bob, a former tribal secretary, had just hurled a bagful of campaign literature at Laws and cursed her. The scene symbolized the nastiness that overtook this southern New […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Politics and threats keep cows on public land
Facing political pressure and rumblings of violence, the Forest Service retreated in late April from a plan to cut cows from 650 down to 100 on the 227-square-mile Diamond Bar grazing allotment in New Mexico’s Gila and Aldo Leopold wildernesses. Instead, it reduced Kit and Sherry Laney’s herd to 450 through Feb. 28, 1996. Forage […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
The heat is on
Forest Service officials are under intense political pressure to reverse a decision ordering most of a rancher’s cows from the 227-square-mile Diamond Bar allotment on the Gila and Aldo Leopold Wilderness areas near Silver City, N.M. (HCN, 5/2/94). The agency told ranchers Kit and Sherry Laney to move 90 percent of their 660-cow herd off […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Forest Service scrambles to obey law it long ignored
It’s a case of a bureaucratic train wreck creating a congressional train wreck. After refusing for decades to apply the National Environmental Policy Act, the U.S. Forest Service is now applying the law so fiercely that it’s put a host of other programs on the back burner. The Forest Service is delaying timber sales, archaeological […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Mescaleros now vote yes
Reversing themselves, members of New Mexico’s Mescalero Apache Tribe voted “yes’ for storage of high-level nuclear waste on the reservation. The March 9 vote was 593-372 for accepting highly radioactive waste, compared to a 490-362 vote in late January against it (HCN, 2/20/95). The project would store up to 40,000 tons of lead-encased spent fuel […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Apaches send a signal to nuclear industry
Four years ago, Mescalero Apache Rufina Laws says, she dreamed of iridescent water streaming out of a mountain onto a meadow. It was radioactive, killing all it touched. That nightmare propelled Laws to wage a one-woman fight against a plan for a nuclear-waste storage site on the New Mexico reservation. Just about everyone, from public […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
Ranchers backed
Ranchers are struggling land stewards in the eyes of New Mexicans, a new poll has found. A University of New Mexico telephone poll found that only 33 percent of the respondents thought cows damage the environment, although 49 percent said environmental preservation should be the top priority of public-land management. Eighty percent contended that maintaining […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Babbitt cedes grazing reform to Congress
Every time Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt stood at a podium in the West during the last two years to talk about grazing reform, it seemed he faced a sea of cowboy hats. Now, with his Rangeland Reform “94 program failing in a Republican Congress, the West’s 28,000 public-lands ranchers are riding taller in the political […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
TUCSON, Ariz. – Plumber Neale Allen likes to tell the story about driving down a strip where builders were bulldozing cacti for homes and shopping centers, and getting tough questions from his 7-year-old daughter Sarah. “She asked me why they had to scrape everything and kill plants and animals,” recalls Allen, who is 42. “It’s […]