The notorious self-censorship the hunting press showed when “Outdoor Life” pulled biologist Tom Beck’s article critical of bear baiting leads to speculations by an outdoor writer on why hunters are so thin-skinned about criticism.
Some hook and bullet magazines hit the mark
The key to understanding outdoor magazines – which I both read and write for – is that they exist to sell advertising. This is neither an indictment nor something unique: Virtually all periodicals except nonprofits depend on ad sales for their survival. The advantage of a large circulation comes not from income, but as bait…
Wanted alive
Bewildered by declining numbers of boreal toads, the Colorado Division of Wildlife is hoping the “help wanteds’ will yield some clues. The agency is displaying colorful posters at trailheads and outdoor equipment stores, describing the small toads and asking for the public’s help in finding them. Since the boreal toad is uniquely adapted to the…
Caretakers wanted
Taking care of other people’s property for a living is taking off, says Gary Dunn, publisher of Washington state’s eight-page newsletter, The Caretaker Gazette. The bimonthly newsletter, first printed in 1983, lists some 90 caretaking opportunities in the United States and nine foreign counties. Interest is equal on either side of the equation, Dunn says:…
Is there oil under Utah’s new monument?
Conoco announced recently that it wants to drill one or two exploratory wells in the heart of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the newly established 1.7 million-acre wilderness preserve in southeastern Utah (HCN, 9/30/96). The oil company hopes to begin testing wells on two 10-year leases before they expire in November, but the company is…
Tarnished trophies
Safari hunters are bringing home exotic and endangered loot through a loophole in the Endangered Species Act, says a report by the Washington, D.C., group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Worse yet, PEER says, agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are greasing the process rather than policing it. By law, no permit can…
Who shot the wolf?
A large gray wolf set free into the greater Yellowstone ecosystem was shot in January and dumped in the Madison River, 15 miles south of Three Forks, Mont. Authorities picked at the ice for an hour to free the wolf carcass, says U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent Commodore Mann. An X-ray of the animal indicates…
It was too many Republicans
Dear HCN, Columnist Ellen Miller posits that U.S. Senate candidate Tom Strickland lost the support of western Colorado because he supported Clinton’s recent declaration of a new national monument for Utah and consequently lost the race to Wayne Allard (HCN, 11/25/96). Her reasoning is wrong. Strickland lost simply because there were 105,000 more registered Republicans…
Green groups stick to their guns
-It’s a tough sell,” admits Randy Payne, a board member of Olympic Park Associates, one of several environmental organizations that support killing non-native mountain goats in Washington’s Olympic National Park. “We’re not excited to go out and shoot the goats, either.” But the high-altitude animals, first introduced to the park in the 1920s, are now…
They’re off the team
Dear HCN, Someone’s getting some wires crossed about the Teaming With Wildlife proposal. One letter writer (HCN, 1/20/97) interpreted your article to find opposition only from the far left and the wacky right, while claiming off-highway vehicle producers supported it. As far as we know, none of the off-highway vehicle manufacturers has taken a position…
Tepee blockade spurs talks
In early January, a small group of Navajos blocked Mobil Oil Corp. offices near Aneth, Utah, with a 20-foot tepee, demanding a halt to oil and gas drilling on their desolate corner of the reservation. The tribe’s Aneth Chapter accused Mobil of contaminating local springs, ruining prime grazing lands and not hiring enough Native Americans.…
Let’s stop blaming
Dear HCN, I read with interest Sam Hitt’s “Green Hate” opinion (HCN, 2/3/97) regarding New Mexico forests. Until he, the environmental special interests who invoke his name, the timber interests and the poor families burning nine cords of wood per year stop pointing fingers at each other, we’re doomed to this seemingly unsolvable war. As…
Idaho activists win one
A federal judge in Idaho recently overturned the 1995 convictions of 12 wilderness activists on the charge of violating a road closure in the Cove-Mallard area (HCN, 9/2/96). District Judge Edward Lodge ruled that when the Forest Service closed roads to the Jack Creek sale, it infringed on the First Amendment right to petition the…
Condos, in any case
Dear HCN, The report by Steve Stuebner on subdivisions in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Idaho (HCN, 12/9/96) included one remark that requires some commentary. Stuebner said reducing cattle grazing along streams to protect salmon habitat may result in the subdivision of private ranchland, and condos are worse than cows – aren’t they? I…
Is Hanford back in the bomb business?
With the Cold War over and plutonium production halted at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, the federal facility seemed destined only for intensive and expensive cleanup (HCN, 1/22/96). No longer. Outgoing Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary has announced that Hanford’s research nuclear reactor, named the Fast Flux Test Facility, will remain on standby for…
We should be making public lands whole
Dear HCN, I’m fed up with members of Congress who claim that the government doesn’t have the money to do right by our national lands. Steve Stuebner’s story on the threatened subdivision inside Idaho’s Sawtooth National Recreation Area is a prime example of how our elected leaders are letting us down (HCN, 12/9/96). Each year…
Outdoor writer aims to change his culture
The Insightful Sportsman: Thoughts on Fish, Wildlife and What Ails the Earth, by Ted Williams. Camden, Maine: Down East Books, 1996. 299 pages, $14.95 trade paper. “The hard thing about writing real conservation pieces is not finding material, but finding editors who dare to publish it consistently,” says Ted (Edward French) Williams in his preface…
Pictures and politics`
From the stale world of coffee-table books, Stone Canyons of the Colorado Plateau offers a jolt of caffeine. The quality of the reproductions is top-notch and the text is worth reading, though this is hardly surprising given photographer Jack Dykinga and writer Charles Bowden, both of Tucson. Their subject is the slickrock country of southern…
Let ranches equal water
Dear HCN, I want to offer what I hope people will perceive to be a constructive alternative to the controversial Animas-La Plata dam project. The solution is simple: Purchase ranches in southwest Colorado and give them to the two Ute tribes and their members (HCN, 11/11/96). Most ranches come with significant, high-priority water rights. The…
No more cheap thrills
How much should we pay to play in the great outdoors? More than we do now, say government auditors. A report by the federal General Accounting Office finds that the Forest Service loses millions of dollars each year by not charging enough to private and commercial recreationists. Investigators say the outdated permit fees charged to…
Big sky or big sprawl?
Montana, the state that rejected speed limits, is heading toward a lot more traffic. According to a recent report, the number of miles traveled by car in Montana grew twice as fast as population from 1970 to 1990 and is projected to double again by 2015. With 1.7 cars per licensed driver, Montana residents already…
Severed at the hip
Western lore often portrays rural communities adjacent to public lands as joined at the hip with the federal government. Many people assume that if federal land managers reduce logging or curtail mining on public land, the tax base of the neighboring communities will plummet. Not true, says a new report by the Wilderness Society. After…
Dear friends
Heaven-o … Kissy lives! Stories here and elsewhere about a south Texas county that decided its employees should answer the phone with a spritely “HEAVEN-O” were tough on those who picked up the phone. It rang a lot. We were among those who called Kleberg County to see how the anti-HELLo greeting was going, and…
Wilderness has a new foe: snowmobiles
SEELEY LAKE, Mont.- The February drizzle has done little to dampen the spirits of the crowd here for the Snowmoblivious festival. Snowmobile aficionados from as far away as Washington and Colorado bounce along the shoulders of the main street and buzz through the woods on groomed trails. “We’re out with the whole family,” says one…
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…
Nuclear dump could waste the Colorado, foes say
WARD VALLEY, Calif. – Through the chill of winter and 120-degree heat in the summer, activists have camped for the past 16 months among the lizards, cacti and creosote of the Mojave Desert. Their mission: To stop California from building a low-level nuclear dump in this long, desolate valley. At times, this protest on a…
‘Good’ rancher goes berserk with an assault rifle
MEETEETSE, Wyo. – A rancher known here as a good steward of his land has been charged with illegally firing on a herd of elk with an assault rifle Jan. 16, leaving at least 10 animals either dead or crippled. Game wardens say they cannot recall another slaying of so many big game animals all…
An unabashed green’s snapshot of Northwest forest activism
Tree Huggers: Victory, Defeat, and Renewal in the Northwest Ancient Forest Campaign Kathie Durbin. Seattle, Washington: The Mountaineers Books, 1996. 303 pages, illus.; foreword by Charles Wilkinson. $24.95 hardcover. In 1993, Northwest environmentalists were fractured over President Clinton’s Northwest forest plan. While the plan seemed to save millions of acres of old-growth forests, Clinton wanted…
Hunters close ranks, and minds
In a few states it is still legal to attract bears with bait for the purpose of shooting them. I call it “garbaging for bears,” and, as an avid hunter, find it repulsive – basically assassination. But this is not an article about garbaging for bears. It is an article about the slow, painful maturation…
Heard around the West
Virtual relationships? They’re all the rage. But over at the San Francisco regional office of the Forest Service, leaders of the forester team fret. In a nutshell, nobody talks shop face to face; the preferred method of communication is computer e-mail. So the team leaders sent a message – by e-mail, of course: On the…
Tough love for hunters
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Before coming to Outdoor Life, Stephen Byers worked for Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal. Since his highly publicized resignation from Outdoor Life last summer, he’s been writing a novel and shopping “ever so selectively” for another top editorial slot. Byers talks about his days…
Lawns and pools close in on desert lab
Tumamoc Hill, Ariz. – When the Carnegie Institution established its desert laboratory on this stony, black basalt hill 94 years ago, some 12,000 residents lived in the small town of Tucson two miles to the east. Today Tucson has grown to almost half a million people, and Sunbelt sprawl threatens the future of one of…
Venison is not an option
Mule deer don’t just wander through the Boulder, Colo., neighborhood where I live. They drop fawns in our backyards. They browse on almost everything. In Table Mesa, surrounded by open space, it’s a love-it-or-leave-it situation. Don’t like Odocoileus hemionus eating your garden? The solution is simple: move. Venison is not an option. When I moved…
‘Un-logging’ the national forests? It might just happen
Should conservation groups be able to buy federal timber just so they can leave it standing? Three environmental organizations recently posed that question in a formal petition to the Secretary of Agriculture, whose department oversees the Forest Service. Currently, the Forest Service designates only logging outfits as “responsible bidders’ on tree sales. But with their…
The WLFA: ‘Who are these guys?’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When Tony Jewett first heard that the late Mollie Beattie, at the time U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director, was trying to ban hunting in the nation’s wildlife refuges, he became alarmed and outraged. The news came in a 1993 “alert” from the Wildlife…
The NRA’s powder may be getting damp
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. If the Wildlife Legislative Fund of America uses sportsmen to advance a pro-development agenda at the expense of habitat, the National Rifle Association uses them to advance a pro-gun position. But hunters are apparently wising up, at least to the NRA, and that may…
What happens when two tree-huggers meet a tentful of hunters
Last November, I joined Nez Perce tribal biologist Timm Kaminski on one of his difficult “hunter education” trips into the southern Bitterroots on the Idaho-Montana border. His job: to walk into tents of heavily armed hunters and tell them about the possibility of wolves showing up in the woods. He has to ask hunters questions…