The exotic woody shrub known as tamarisk or saltcedar has infested the West’s river systems, but scientists are divided over how to fight it, or whether it is even possible to do so in a degraded landscape.
Exotic predators swallow the Southwest’s native frogs
LEWIS SPRINGS, Ariz. – Phil Rosen is knee-deep in a disaster this spring day. Just a few years ago, native leopard frogs filled algae-covered pools in this side drainage of the San Pedro River, one of the last free-flowing rivers in the Southwest, 70 miles southeast of Tucson. Now, Rosen keeps turning up bad news.…
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…
Lyons did the right thing
Dear HCN, I understand why Stephen J. Lyons moved to Washington state. I don’t understand why he didn’t do it sooner (HCN, 3/16/98). Here in Arizona we have the same problem. Many people move here (mostly from California) and discover that they hate it because of our “bad welfare system, conservative politics, low wages, poor…
Idaho can be whatever you are willing to make it
Dear HCN: Writer Stephen J. Lyons failed in his attempt to accurately quote the slogan “Idaho is what America was,” just as he also failed in his attempt to accurately portray the state of Idaho (HCN, 3/16/98). I know. I’m the guy who coined the phrase in 1978. I’ve also lived in the state for…
Someone’s dreaming
Dear HCN, I could not believe the naivete of Jeff Burgess when he questioned in his letter why Western towns need to be based on ranching, logging and mining (HCN, 4/13/98). His suggestion that we imagine a “quiet little town where most people spend their work week writing innovative software programs … while their weekends…
Snow geese have become too plentiful
Because snow geese have become too successful for their own good, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is asking for a wholesale hunt. The conversion of pastures to fields of grain has provided a bountiful harvest for the birds, causing the population to soar over the last three decades. Now, say agency biologists, snow geese…
‘Such is life’
Dear HCN, Your cover story about the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity in the March 30 issue reminded me of a vicarious confrontation I had with a cattle rancher in Arizona. First some background: I’m retired from the Forest Service and was the regional geneticist for Region 3 (Arizona and New Mexico) from 1978 to…
Seaside dinosaurs
Theropods – meat-eating dinosaurs that walked on their hind legs – once preyed on small animals near Wyoming’s prehistoric Sundance Sea. To his surprise, geologist Erik Kvale found the dinosaur tracks preserved in fossilized mud along the BLM’s Red Gulch/Alkali National Back Country Byway near Shell, Wyo. While exploring the rippled sandstones last summer, Kvale’s…
We’re consuming the West
Dear HCN, I would like to respond to Mike Moxcey’s letter, headed “Ranchettes aren’t all bad” (HCN, 3/16/98). Even with the “best” ranchette development, roads, houses, outlying buildings, power lines, sport utility vehicles and cats, dogs, children and adults can strip a land of its wildlife far quicker than can any mismanaged herd of cattle…
Survey says: Go wild!
Most supporters of wilderness are just espresso-sipping urbanites, right? Not so, according to a survey of 500 Colorado voters, released in April by a coalition of environmental groups. “We’re talking about four out of five Coloradans,” says Elise Jones of the League of Conservation Voters’ Boulder office. “These are pretty bomb-proof numbers.” The poll, conducted…
Hot and beautiful
Clean energy can emerge from deep beneath the earth’s surface, but will it interfere with the natural beauty of the volcanoes, hot springs and geysers that make it possible? That’s a question asked in Tapping the Earth’s Natural Heat, a 63-page report produced by Wendell Duffield for the U.S. Geological Survey. Compared to other sources…
Glen Canyon Institute’s expanded Web site
The free-flowing past – and future – of the Colorado River is explored at the Glen Canyon Institute’s expanded Web site, www.glencanyon.org. The Salt Lake-based nonprofit group, dedicated to the restoration of Glen Canyon, has added an online bookstore featuring water issues in the desert Southwest. Also available are “Restore Glen Canyon” bumper stickers, and…
Star Valley Historical Society
Wyoming’s Star Valley Historical Society hosts a “summer trek” June 26-28 for state Historical Society members. Walking tours near the Idaho border will lead to museums, emigration trails, geysers and historic factories for everything from guns to cheese. Registration forms appear in the May Wyoming History News and can also be obtained from the Star…
Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard and Idaho Sen. Larry Craig
Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard and Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, both Republicans, aren’t happy about the Colorado BLM’s recent reinventory of potential wilderness areas, and they’ll be in Grand Junction, Colo., June 6 to talk about it. Their public meeting will be held at the Avalon Theater from 8-11 a.m.; on the night before, the nonprofit…
Natural Resource Laws and Public Lands Protection Conference
If the law of the land confuses you, look for answers at the Natural Resource Laws and Public Lands Protection Conference in Bozeman, Mont., June 12-13. The conference, sponsored by American Wildlands and the Law Fund, will discuss laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Freedom of Information…
The Wayward West
Albuquerque, N.M., Mayor Jim Baca, always outspoken, is hopping mad. President Clinton recently signed an emergency spending bill that included chopping 8 1/2 acres out of the city’s Petroglyph National Monument. It’s “dishonest and cheating,” Baca told the Albuquerque Journal, “but that’s life in Washington.” The deleted acreage will go for a road extension to…
Summer Fishtrap Gathering and Workshops
Eastern Oregon’s 11th annual Summer Fishtrap Gathering and Workshops July 6-12 will explore the nature of work in an age of increasing automation and the ways that people write about it. Stephanie Coontz, award-winning author of The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families, will deliver a keynote; for more information write…
Ranchers fight a railroad
SOUTH DAKOTA, WYOMING Ranchers fight a railroad Ranchers living on the prairie of southwestern South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming say they’re being railroaded. The Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern railroad wants to extend its line 144 miles from South Dakota into Wyoming to the Powder River Basin’s coal mines. About 54 miles of the new line…
Five Navajos say Utah cheated their tribe
Some Utah Navajos say their tribe has been cheated out of at least $52 million in oil and gas money by the state of Utah during the past 30 years (HCN, 12/16/91). Although the state says the tribe’s claims are too old to be valid, a district court judge has rejected that argument and given…
Monumental deal over Utah’s trust lands
On May 8, after months of quiet negotiations, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt resolved a major sticking point in the debate over the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (HCN, 1/19/98). Their agreement trades the scattered blocks of state-owned school trust lands within the new monument for federal lands elsewhere in…
A summer like no other looms ahead
SWAN VALLEY, Mont. – The sweet aroma from a mock orange bush wafts through the air, but Steve Gauger is not here to look at wildflowers. He’s monitoring a wildfire. Like many firefighters, Gauger, incident commander on Montana’s recent 220-acre Goat Creek Fire, is scratching his head over this year’s early fires. On the high…
Heard around the West
Many federal bureaucrats like hiding behind a desk. Jim Furnish is admittedly gregarious. He also loves the Oregon coast and hopes eight citizens from around the United States will want to join him for an expense-paid weekend of brainstorming while taking hikes along the cliffs. Furnish makes no bones about needing help. Supervisor of the…
It only seems cruel to fool a fish
“Who hears the fishes when they cry?” That question was asked by a scold, iconoclast and master angler who worried about the pain he inflicted on his quarry. His contemporaries considered him very weird. His name was Henry Thoreau. The same concern is being voiced today by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA),…
The battle for Crozier Canyon
Arizona mirrors the paradox of the modern West – how to secure the future of tourism without butting heads with traditional, extractive industries. Discount for the moment the public lands, even Grand Canyon National Park, whose establishment may hardly be credited to Arizona. Theodore Roosevelt demanded that Grand Canyon be preserved, and he was a…
Dear Friends
Salt Lake City potluck The High Country News staff and board will converge on Salt Lake City Saturday, June 6, to hold a potluck. These HCN events are held three times a year around the region; they are long on good food and good conversation and vanishingly short on ceremony and speeches. This one will…
How California poisoned a small town
PORTOLA, Calif. – The northern pike, a voracious species, has claimed what may be its biggest victim yet: this small town. Officials of the Plumas County town of 2,200 residents say they have lost their backup water supply, half their tourism business and their reputation for a pristine mountain environment – all to the predatory…
Tackling tamarisk
In the exotic shrub an ecological menace or merely the best our degraded rivers can muster?
Turning a vista into a mess
CROZIER CANYON, Ariz. – To some, this short stretch of Route 66 is historically significant, the “Mother Road” of westward migration celebrated in song and television series. To others, the red hills rising up from the desert are sacred and not to be disturbed. Some of these hills belong to Fred Grigg. They’ve been in…
Killing tamarisk frees water
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Sometimes it takes a miracle to wake people up to an invasion. Sometimes it takes a lawsuit. For the ranchers and farmers who make a living along the Pecos River in southern New Mexico, it took both. The miracle occurred in 1991, when a…
Ruckus on a recreation river
Each summer, thousands of rafters and kayakers head for central Idaho’s Middle Fork of the Salmon River, considered by many the nation’s premier wilderness river trip. During the week-long, 100-mile journey, floaters play volleyball on the beach, fly fish for native trout, surf the rapids and cook up Dutch oven feasts – all in the…
Fighting exotics with exotics
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Is releasing exotic insects to control exotic plants, such as the tamarisk, a good idea? The answer depends on whom you talk to. Scientists who specialize in biological control say exotic plants often explode in foreign soils because they have left behind their natural…