Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, D, is determined to solve difficult problems – such as the recovery of his state’s wild coastal coho salmon – at the state level, through consensus.
Northwest Mining Association’s 104th Annual Meeting
Alaska Sen. Frank Murkowski, R, will be a speaker at the Northwest Mining Association’s 104th Annual Meeting, Nov. 29-Dec. 4, in Spokane, Wash. The “Exploring New Opportunities’ conference offers educational sessions. Call the Northwest Mining Association at 509/624-1158 or e-mail nwma@nwma.org. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Northwest…
The Wayward West
The Forest Service won’t give Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young information about connections between agency staffers and environmental groups. In July, Young asked Southwest Regional Forester Eleanor Towns for a list of employees who are members of groups like the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity and Forest Guardians (HCN, 9/14/98). In a Sept. 21 letter,…
Hunters: Say goodbye to your “macabre sport’
Dear HCN, Once again I am treated to the inane and meretricious propaganda of an “ethical, wildlife-loving hunter” in Ken Wright’s review of David Petersen’s book Elkheart (HCN, 9/28/98). Mr. Petersen expounds the same logically absurd argument that tries to justify recreational hunting not as the macabre sport it is, but as a need for…
Shoveler wears different hat in Montana
Dear HCN, In reading your Sept. 14 article, “A county in Nevada assaults a river,” I was struck by the similarities occurring here in Montana. The U.S. Forest Service is removing culverts, obliterating roads and dumping tons of sediment into bull trout streams. But in contrast to the Nevada situation, this seems to be “good…
Reflections on blaming the environmentalists
Dear HCN, Dressed as Grammaw Maudie Miller in 1843, whose brother Nathan is a mountain man, I do a living history story about trailblazers of the Oregon Trail. I tell about mountain men who opened up their 2,000-mile horse and pack-mule caravan routes to wagons by 1840, making possible the great migrations that opened and…
On The Trail
Washington state voters are sure to elect a woman to the U.S. Senate Nov. 3. The question is, which woman – Democratic incumbent Patty Murray or Republican Linda Smith. Only nine seats in the U.S. Senate are now held by women. Smith jumped into the Senate race after serving two terms in the U.S. House…
Climbing bolts are a symptom
Dear HCN, One climbing bolt the size of my finger, left on a rock face, is not the problem. One load of lead pellets, shot over a marsh, is not the problem. The problem is the cumulative debris of climbing bolts (and lead shot), and of over-use which permanently and cumulatively scars the landscape (HCN,…
A tie that binds: county income and timber
Peg Reagan wasn’t a typical Western county commissioner. For starters, she’s an environmentalist. “I was in the minority on any land-use issue,” she says of her four-year term on the Curry County Commission in southwestern Oregon. After leaving office in 1995, she decided it was time for the minority to get organized. She founded the…
Livestock industry likes lawsuits, too
Dear HCN, Tom Sheridan says “paralysis’ brought about by lawsuits to enforce the Endangered Species Act will result in the fragmentation and subdivision of every grassland valley in the state of Arizona (HCN, 6/8/98). It seems much more likely to me, but I could be wrong, that if enforcement of the Endangered Species Act results…
Mines must clean up their mess
In the forested highlands of central Arizona, copper mining has been a mainstay of the local economy for nearly a century. But the area’s paychecks come with a hidden price: The groundwater and soil are now contaminated with acidic metals, and a plume of toxics threatens the Phoenix water supply. Last year, the state of…
Yikes!
Dear HCN, Let me see if I have this right: Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young is concerned that some public employees may be “leaking” information about public lands (HCN, 9/14/98) to members of the public? Yikes! Wally Elton Springfield, Vermont This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Yikes!.
Next: Grand Teton International?
Passengers who fly into the tiny Jackson Hole, Wyo., airport may not realize it, but they’re landing inside a national park. Airline representatives have argued for years that the Jackson runway should be lengthened for easier access. But Grand Teton National Park officials and environmentalists have steadfastly opposed the idea, saying an expansion would further…
No scourge here
Dear HCN, It appears that there is some misunderstanding between Evan Cantor and myself concerning the status of Euphorbia myrsinites (donkeytail spurge). Cantor originally (-It rhymes with scourge’) claimed that the plant was a “fast-moving, aggressive invader” that was taking over “prairie and foothill meadows’ and that the plant will “soon be everywhere” (HCN, 6/22/98).…
Varmints
Some think of prairie dogs as oversized, furry rats – agricultural pests that compete with cows for forage. Others see them as essential parts of prairie ecosystems. Varmints, a soon-to-be-released documentary from High Plains Films, explores the heated controversy that has mobilized the Sierra Club in defense of the critters, and has spawned the Varmint…
Guidebook with attitude
After traipsing around Washington state’s wildlands for the past 50 years, Ira Spring and Harvey Manning have put together an eccentric and entertaining guidebook, 100 Classic Hikes in Washington, covering the North Cascades, Olympics, Mount Rainier and South Cascades, Alpine Lakes and Glacier Peak. Unlike other guidebooks, in which environmentalism goes unmentioned, 100 Classic Hikes…
Look who’s sprawling now
When Marc Heilson saw the Sierra Club’s rankings of the cities most afflicted by suburban sprawl, the Salt Lake City member called the national office and demanded, “How could you do this to us?” reports the Salt Lake Tribune. He was upset because The Dark Side of the American Dream: The Costs and Consequences of…
A new look at old pictures
Historical photographs of ranch life tend to be so full of men that an observer might think no women ever lived on the range. But in 1898, Mabel Souther did more than just live on the Big Red Ranch in northeastern Wyoming – she took pictures that documented the working life there. Perhaps her cowpoke…
Trading away the West
Historical photographs of ranch life tend to be so full of men that an observer might think no women ever lived on the range. But in 1898, Mabel Souther did more than just live on the Big Red Ranch in northeastern Wyoming – she took pictures that documented the working life there. Perhaps her cowpoke…
Mine fires up potters
For thousands of years Picuris Pueblo potters have darkened red pottery with hematite and sparkled it with mica. Now, a mine threatens this tradition. Tenfold expansion of a privately owned mica mine near Peûasco, N.M. – not far from the proposed copper mine recently dropped by Summo (HCN, 6/23/98) – would use up the last…
Yellowstone’s wandering bison
The interagency team developing a plan for managing Yellowstone’s wandering bison (HCN, 9/28/98) is extending the deadline for public comments on its draft environmental impact statement to Nov. 2. For a copy of the draft EIS, or to comment on the plan, write Bison Management Plan EIS Team, National Park Service, Sarah Bransom, DSC-RP, P.O.…
Roadless, for now
Colorado environmentalists stopped two roadless-area timber sales last month. A federal judge agreed with a Colorado Environmental Coalition lawsuit when he told the Forest Service that the agency didn’t properly account for the protection of two sensitive species, the northern goshawk and the boreal owl, in preparing the Trout Mountain timber sale on the Rio…
Rock Talk
Rock Talk isn’t about music, it’s the Colorado Geological Survey’s new quarterly newsletter. Geared toward the general reader, each free, 12-page issue covers a facet of the rocky world. October’s issue concentrates on avalanches, with a brief history of Colorado’s Avalanche Information Center, practical advice about avalanche hazards in the backcountry, and county-by-county avalanche death…
Are birds to blame for vanishing salmon?
ASTORIA, Ore. – In late May, when young salmon and steelhead ride the spring freshet down to the mouth of the Columbia River, Rice Island is a scene of wildlife bedlam. The island, a stretch of windswept sand 21 miles from the river mouth, hosts the world’s largest nesting colony of Caspian terns – as…
Citizens tame growth – their way
LIVINGSTON, Mont. – Paradise is a place with a population of one, says Charles Rahn. A rancher whose family has owned a 3,300-acre operation southeast of town for 50 years, Rahn says, “It’s only paradise for the first person who shows up.” So last year, Rahn led a successful petition drive to form a 66,000-acre…
Building a $100 million paradise in Montana’s Paradise Valley
EMIGRANT, Mont. – In the early 1900s, when Yellowstone Park Superintendent Horace Albright looked upon Paradise Valley, his neighbor to the north, he proclaimed: “If that area were in any other state, it would have been a national park.” Framed by mountains and split down the middle by the Yellowstone River, Paradise Valley has always…
Heard around the West
Bats R Us is the name of Heidi Harris’ free service, just outside Salt Lake City, Utah. Got scores of bats flying around your high school, sending teenagers and teachers shrieking out the doors? She’ll remove – not kill – them, just as she has extricated hundreds of bats from apartment houses and businesses in…
The Oregon way
Governor John Kitzhaber casts for consensus in the Northwest’s troubled waters
‘Mr. Dominy, are you a hero or a villain?’
Floyd E. Dominy doesn’t seem to hear the question from a college student right away. “Floyd Elgin Dominy, larger than life,” as Marc Reisner called him in Cadillac Desert. Maybe the former commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is listening instead to the hum of the nearby turbines. Maybe the shine of his eyes…
He fought Oregon’s developers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In the summer of 1944, on leave after flying some 30 missions over Germany and occupied Europe, Air Force bombardier Ted Hallock sat down in a New York City café with writer Brendan Gill and talked at some length about his first quarter-century. Gill…
A water baron takes on the establishment
One-word descriptions of rancher Gary Boyce are easy to find in the high, wide and impoverished San Luis Valley of south-central Colorado. “Greedy” comes up often, as does “opportunist,” along with terms unprintable even by Starr Report standards. But “flamboyant” also fits. Boyce is generous with expensive cigars and wears knee-high hand-tooled stove-pipe cowboy boots…
A tale of two – or three – Oregons
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Oregon thrives on a stereotype. Many outsiders imagine the state to be full of flannel-shirted outdoor enthusiasts, slogging through damp evergreen forests with a cup of coffee in one hand and a fishing rod in another. Images of ancient Douglas-firs and healthy, progressive citizens…
Oregon statistics
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Annual per capita income in urban areas: $24,697 … in rural areas: $19,381 Percentage of Oregon adults with a high school degree: 91 Number of one-teacher schools in Oregon: 8 Estimated daily number of visitors to the 43,000-square-foot Powell’s Books in Portland: 6,000 Unemployment…
Are the West’s governors turning over a new (green)leaf?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. This summer, the governors of 17 Western states quietly changed their tune. Led by Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon, D, and Gov. Michael Leavitt of Utah, R, the mostly anti-federal-government members of the Western Governors’ Association unanimously agreed to a “shared environmental doctrine,” giving…
Dear Friends
Bright eyes When photographer Paul Bousquet of Boulder, Colo., told us he’d be spending time in our valley taking pictures of organic vegetable farms for an upcoming book, we decided to snag him for a lunchtime seminar. Gathered in our production room, we picked his brain about taking better photos of new interns and other…