Oregon’s Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge seems to be recovering now that cattle have been banned from it – but despite the lush grasses, the antelope are still in decline.
Our national movie stars
National parks have always played starring roles in Hollywood productions. Sandstone pillars and deep gorges also appear on television and in magazines, selling cars, beer and almost everything in between. But most parks, some of which host an average of 50 productions per year, don’t see a dime from production companies. A 40-year-old rule prohibits…
A ranch rescued
The Nature Conservancy of Utah is spending $4.6 million to save a working ranch from developers. The Dugout Ranch near Canyonlands National Park is now safely in conservancy hands since owner Heidi Redd and conservancy officials closed a deal Oct. 15. “I couldn’t be happier,” said a relieved Redd. “The Nature Conservancy has bent over…
Let the exploiters pay
Dear HCN, In your article, “The land is still public, but it’s no longer FREE,” you quote Randal O’Toole, a forest economist, as saying, “… the government has been managing land for ranchers and loggers, and collecting fees from them (HCN, 10/13/97). The result … is that the agencies have leaned toward the interests of…
Quit whining
Dear HCN, Your story about setting user fees on public lands presented the irony of duplicitous standards. For years the environmental movement has been harping at industries to pay for their use of the land; now, when recreationists are asked to pay for their own abuse of the land (any use is abuse, by definition),…
Let locals in free
Dear HCN, I’ve just finished reading the articles about usage fees for hiking, camping, climbing, etc., and I must admit, it’s one of those peculiar times when I feel strongly both ways. My initial emotion is resentment. I despise unnecessary regulation – signs, signs, everywhere a sign, or a fee or a form. But I…
What’s really behind user fees
Dear HCN, The current “recreation funding crisis’ has less to do with trail fees than with management direction. Congress and top federal agency managers are rapidly shifting their focus from one commercial forest “product” to another: from timber production to industrial recreation. The “Demonstration Recreation Fee Program” is but a small part of a larger…
Freedom is what’s at stake
Dear HCN, I’m afraid we are missing the boat when it comes to the issue of user fees on our parks and public lands. Many who support the idea would have us believe it’s primarily an economic issue. While that is true in part, it is also an issue which raises profound moral questions. Our…
Charge bovines, too
Dear HCN, I’d like to comment on your article about user fees for mountain bikers, campers and hikers in the Sand Flats/Slickrock Trail area of Moab. It has been a few years since I’ve been there, but what I clearly remember is the grazing damage was far worse and much more pervasive than any recreational…
The Wayward West
Three Wisconsin Chippewa tribes wanted to start a casino. Nearby tribes didn’t want the competition. They had given money to the Democratic Party. After the regional office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs endorsed the casino, higher-ups in Washington rejected it. Conflict of interest? Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt says no. His old friend and former…
Quincy bill deserves to pass
Dear HCN, I’m writing to compliment High Country News on its coverage of the Quincy Library Group (QLG) and bill (HCN, 9/29/97). It was as calm, complete, unbiased, and delightfully wry an overview of the situation as I have seen to date. My response is enhanced by my being a rural county supervisor in the…
If Congress says yes, so what?
Dear HCN, In your story on the Quincy Library Group (HCN, 9/29/97), I read the comments of Kent Connaughton, shaking my head in agreement, until I got to his statement, “When you work through the Congress, you get the validation of the American people. It says that these are a valid set of priorities that…
With friends like these …
Dear HCN, As I am accustomed to seeing my name on bathroom walls and bulletin boards in certain public buildings, the implication (from developer Milo McCowan) that I support the dozing of Utah’s Rockville Bench merely adds another zit to an already blemished reputation (HCN, 9/29/97). It is not OK, however, to drop the name…
Tribes create a wilderness park
Buying back part of their original homeland, 11 tribes in California have established the first Native American-owned park, located 200 miles north of San Francisco along the California coast. The 3,900-acre InterTribal Sinkyone (pronounced sinky-own) Wilderness Park will be managed differently than Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, however, because the tribes, including descendants of the…
Freak wind storm flattens 6 million trees
For hundreds of years, the spruce forest in the mountains north of Steamboat Springs, Colo., close to Wyoming, endured everything Mother Nature could throw at it: deep winter snows, severe drought, lightning strikes and gusty winds. But on the night of Oct. 24, the forest got hit by something new: 120-mile-per-hour winds blowing from the…
Looking for the missing lynx
EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. – Already the nation’s largest ski area, Vail may soon be even bigger. In September, the U.S. Forest Service approved a 4,000-acre expansion that has been in the works for a decade. If the decision holds and Eagle County approves the expansion, the resort will clear over 800 acres of new runs,…
Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
LAKEVIEW, Ore. – David Dobkin crouches in an expanse of low sagebrush and admires clumps of grasses and forbs. It is morning on this sweep of high desert that stretches east from the rising fault-block mountain that gives Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge its name. Umbrella-shaped canopies of mountain mahogany grow from the mountain’s outcrops…
Selling science to the agencies: an ecologist’s story
Note: this article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. David Dobkin’s epiphany occurred in New Jersey in 1989, as he drove down a road in the Pine Barrens. At each turn he encountered another trash heap of wrecked automobiles and abandoned refrigerators. The Rutgers University zoology professor knew he was in the wrong…
Do coyotes need “control’ on the refuge?
Note: this article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Mike Nunn and Dan Alonso stop their rig on a punishing track in the southeastern corner of the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge. They have sighted two female pronghorn, just dark dots on the landscape to untrained observers. The does head toward a distant…
Dear Friends
Into the desert HCN staffers Rita Murphy, Jason Lenderman, Sara Phillips and Peter Chilson and about 175 other anti-nuclear protesters walked onto the Department of Energy’s Nevada Test Site Nov. 9. Without fuss, security guards escorted everyone right into a barbwire detention pen because it is unlawful to enter the test site without permission. Staffers…
Patience runs out in San Luis
After more than four years of work, the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant Commission voted Oct. 27 to end negotiations with Zachary Taylor, owner of the Taylor Ranch near San Luis, Colo. The commission agreed to remain in existence in case Taylor ever makes a reasonable sales offer, but “the state is fed up,” said…
Greens differ over plan to expand national park
Anyone who has wandered the convoluted canyons of Arches National Park knows this landscape doesn’t lend itself to ruler-straight boundaries. But find the park on a map and you’ll see a stair-stepped outline that cuts across canyons and over mesas. Walt Dabney, the outspoken superintendent of both Arches and Canyonlands national parks, has been trying…
Heard around the West
Armed men in camouflage drove their muddy vehicles out of Western towns in droves this month, with or without deer and elk in tow. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department staffer Mike Thompson says his state used to put hunters on the spot by asking drivers at a check station near Missoula to queue up,…
Logging slated for many roadless areas
The success of environmentalists in protecting what’s left of the old-growth forests in the Northwest and Southwest means that logging corporations are often forced to look elsewhere. So they have looked at Colorado and southern Wyoming, where, according to a coalition of more than 15 environmental groups, the U.S. Forest Service plans in 1998 to…
A rancher sees red over a timber sale
Of all the timber sales currently being proposed in Colorado and southern Wyoming, the Sheep Flats timber sale on Grand Mesa has been called the worst – so bad ranchers and environmentalists have united against it. Sharon Jordan, who has been ranching with her husband in Collbran for 25 years, is rallying support among her…
Montana congressman sweetens a buyout
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Mysterious are the labyrinthine hallways of the Capitol; who knows what spirits lurk therein? Down those twisted tunnels and curved corridors are things that go bump in the night. Some of those bumps can vibrate all the way to Montana. One dark, murky night – indeed, it may have been Halloween night…
Saying goodbye to the bear
Last winter, under pressure from the elements, bison left Yellowstone National Park in search of a bite to eat, and were killed. As a professional grizzly bear watcher, I had heard the story many times before. The problem is quite simple. U.S. Army General Phil Sheridan recognized it at the beginning of the park’s creation,…
How an eco-logger views his work
Not many loggers have a degree in creative writing. Fewer serve on the board of a state wilderness association or argue philosophy with timber giants like Plum Creek in northwest Montana. Bob Love does. He’s been called the “eco-logger” by some, the “Una-Logger” by others, and these days he runs a one-man selective logging business.…