An introduction to the issue points out that Salt Lake City’s intense and seemingly uncontrolled growth actually stems from deliberately planning – both to develop the city and to prepare for the Olympics.
Elk are the battleground
The state of Wyoming wants to give 2,000 elk a shot in the rump and has asked a federal court for permission. Each winter as many as 10,000 elk migrate down from the deep snows of Yellowstone National Park and surrounding lands (HCN, 9/15/97). They spend the winter on the National Elk Refuge just outside…
Tribes protest Ward Valley dump site
Since early February, protesters from five Native American tribes have camped out near a proposed nuclear waste storage site in Ward Valley, Calif. The Bureau of Land Management, which wants to finish studying the site, ordered the 30 or so people off the land by Feb. 19. But on Feb. 25, the BLM stopped policing…
Buffalo Commons is already flawed
Dear HCN, While the Poppers’ update on the Buffalo Commons was interesting, it failed to disclose a disturbing trend in private bison herd management (HCN, 2/2/98). That trend is the domestication of bison. The bison slaughterhouse in North Dakota mentioned in the Poppers’ article requires that bison be grain-fed 120 days prior to slaughter, and…
The Poppers tell a biased story
Dear HCN, In the opinion of Frank and Deborah Popper, their Buffalo Commons idea is accurate, but your headline tells the real story: “The bison are coming’ – not the “Commons’ (HCN, 2/2/98). If the Poppers had said 10 years ago that bison (note they still get the animals’ name wrong) should become more numerous…
Ranchettes aren’t all bad
Dear HCN, My pet peeve is the anti-ranchette bias I see in almost every issue of High Country News. Granted, some ranchettes, just as some ranches, are environmental destabilizers, but most probably serve to increase environmental awareness, just as most ranchers who work with the land amid weather and wildlife have far more respect for…
Watch out for Fido
Dear HCN, Hugh B. McKeen cried wolf in the article “Wolves go wild in the Southwest” (HCN, 2/16/98). McKeen, who is convinced that people have been killed by wolves, predicts a child will be killed by Mexican wolves within a few years. That dog don’t hunt. Compared to Fido, the family pet, wolves are saints.…
Wilderness, not horses, is the issue
Dear HCN, Lynne Bama’s story does a good job of explaining some of the controversy surrounding management of feral horses (HCN, 3/2/98). In regard to the Pryor Mountains, however, she did not capture the most important issue: how the horses and their management might impact wilderness designation for the range. The Pryors are a fabulous…
The mouse that roared “Preble”
Naturalist E.A. Preble, who bagged a nondescript mouse on the bank of an irrigation ditch near Loveland, Colo., in 1895, might be surprised at the ruckus he’s caused. The meadow jumping mouse named for him – a subspecies restricted to the foothills of Colorado’s Front Range – is now at the center of a controversy…
18-month moratorium
The Forest Service will hold 25 open houses about its proposed 18-month moratorium on building new roads in the nation’s forests. Meetings will be held in California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming, beginning March 17. For information about where and when, call Alan Polk at 202/205-1134 or check the Web at…
Glacier National Park
Are you planning to camp in Glacier National Park this summer? Better think ahead. Beginning March 15, reservations for the Fish Creek and St. Mary’s campgrounds can be made up to three months in advance by calling 800/365-CAMP. Nightly fees will be $15 at both campgrounds, whether or not campers have a reservation. Write Glacier…
The Wayward West
In Santa Fe, N.M., one-term Mayor Debbie Jaramillo lost her re-election bid March 3 to a retired state highway engineer. Larry Delgado won with 8,517 votes to the mayor’s 2,176. Jaramillo drew criticism for nepotism when she appointed her brother to the city manager’s job and he in turn appointed Jaramillo’s brother-in-law police chief (HCN,…
University of Colorado’s Wirth Chair
In Colorado, all media, from newspapers to radio stations, that have covered the issue of sustainability are eligible to apply for a media award from the University of Colorado’s Wirth Chair in Environmental and Community Development Policy. Winners get the chance to pick the recipient of a $1,500 graduate student scholarship. Grants of $1,500 are…
Cousin to mad-cow disease hits deer, elk
As anybody who has followed the Oprah Winfrey beef libel trial knows, mad-cow disease has never been found in American cattle. Deer and elk, though, are another matter. Chronic wasting disease, a cousin to the mad-cow plague that decimated British cattle herds, has been identified in deer and elk in three Western states. Infected animals…
Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Note: this front-page editor’s note introduces this issue’s feature story. If Salt Lake City were held to the same standards as cigarette manufacturers, there would be warning signs on its inbound roads: “Chaos Ahead!” and “Allow yourself an extra four hours!” Residents joke that the fastest way to get from suburban Salt Lake to the…
Does Utah know what’s coming?
Note: see end of this feature story for a list of three accompanying sidebar articles. In four years, thousands of reporters and spectators will crowd hillsides and stadiums around Salt Lake City to watch the world’s top skiers, skaters, bobsledders and other athletes muscle for medals in the world’s biggest winter sporting event. Competition will…
Colorado refused to play
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In 1972, four years before Colorado was to host the world’s biggest winter sports extravaganza, the state got cold feet. Businessmen and politicians had been working to lure the winter Olympics to Colorado since the 1950s. But when the Olympic flag arrived in Denver,…
The games should belong to the people
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. John Cushing just started his fifth term as the mayor of Bountiful, and his first term as the president of the Utah League of Cities and Towns: John Cushing: “Since Utah was awarded the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, we have heard a great deal…
Show me the science
It was the 1960s, and the signs plastered everywhere in western Colorado suggested that I “Ask a Friendly Native.” The “natives” were not the Utes – they were long gone. The signs referred to the Anglos who ran the gas stations and cafes scattered across the region’s 30,000 square miles of desert, forest and canyon.…
Can a ski town survive its moment of glory?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. PARK CITY, Utah – If it is true that the three keys to real estate are location, location, location, then this town is two-thirds of the way home. It is only a half-hour’s interstate drive east of Salt Lake City, with its airport, hotels…
Heard around the West
Drenching rain, slip-sliding houses on the edge of eroding cliffs, not a glimpse of sun for weeks – blame the rotten weather on Al Nino. Drunks and the unruly frustrated do. But Nino, a retired Navy man in the Southern California county of San Luis Obispo, says he’s getting a little tired of complaining phone…
Dear Friends
Congratulations one and all Our lead story about Utah’s coming Olympics was written by staffer Greg Hanscom, who has another reason to feel proud: Tara Thomas, whom he met while both were students at Middlebury College in Vermont, has agreed to marry him this fall. Tara, from Baltimore, Md., is working on her master’s degree…
Dressed for success
I can count on the fingers of one hand the new clothes I’ve bought in the past five years: insulated coveralls, underwear, felt liners for my snow boots, gloves. All the rest came from yard sales and the kind of thrift shops where you walk past the eight-track tapes and mismatched plastic plates on your…
Idaho stubbornly remains what America used to be
In Coeur d’Alene, Aryan Nations’ leader Richard “I hate you” Butler and his merry band of racists make plans for a “One Hundred Man March” through the city, while the mayor wrings his hands and wonders what he should do. Kootenai County commissioners declare the county an English-only territory, then wonder why its citizens object.…
Lawmakers struggle to rewrite the Endangered Species Act
For six years, the federal Endangered Species Act has been on probation, limping along on a budget renewed in Congress every year while lawmakers try to come up with a new law that pleases conservationists and conservatives alike. What’s new this year is legislation introduced by Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho. Although no environmental group fully…
Feds will re-examine rail service in the West
The U.S. Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that approved the 1996 coupling of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads, may take another look at that decision. In approving the 36,000-mile system that connects the Great Lakes, the Mississippi Valley and the Gulf Coast of Texas to West Coast ports from Seattle to San…
The Park Service takes a hard look at itself
The portrait of the National Park Service that Richard West Sellars paints in his new book is not especially flattering: Entrusted by Americans to preserve natural wonders, the agency instead prefers to develop recreation and promote tourism. Such criticism is nothing new – writer Edward Abbey loved to rail against “industrial tourism” and the “National…