Lyle McNeal revived the Churro sheep, a dying breed, and helped the Navajos who once depended on them, but now the professor is locked in a bitter battle over the sheep and other issues with Utah State University, which once supported the project.
Arizona gets a new monument
ST. GEORGE, Utah – President Clinton stood on the chilly, wind-whipped South Rim of the Grand Canyon in mid-January and announced the creation of the million-acre Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument in northwest Arizona. The next day, southwest Utah’s daily newspaper duly reported the announcement, but it shared front-page space with another story – one that…
The Wayward West
Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt says he’s one step closer to protecting 1.1 million acres of West Desert wilderness (HCN, 7/5/99). To garner support for a federal wilderness bill, Leavitt has agreed to trade to the Bureau of Land Management 118,000 acres of school-trust land within the proposed wilderness for 128,000 acres of federal land near…
Judge rules on Indian money mess
A federal judge says he’ll personally oversee the Interior Department’s effort to untangle a mess of mismanaged Indian trust money. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth’s decision settled the first half of a class-action lawsuit, led by banker Elouise Cobell of the Blackfeet tribe. She and others charged the federal government with losing track of billions…
Incinerator unsafe, says former Tooele manager
A former manager for the Army’s chemical weapons incinerator in rural Tooele County says he was told he would lose his job if he talked about the plant’s environmental problems. During a January press conference, Gary E. Harris made public a list of over 100 questionable activities by the Army and its contractor, EG&G, at…
Off-road riders told to stay on the road
Off-road vehicles, from 4×4’s to motorcycles, are under the gun. For years ORV users have been free to ride across public lands in the West unless signs designated an area closed. But concerns about erosion, damage to wildlife habitat and renegade road building could turn this policy on its head. In November, the Forest Service…
Cooling the waters
If the EPA has its way, Potlatch Corp. pulp mill in Lewiston, Idaho, will cool its wastewater and reduce toxic compounds flowing into the Snake River (HCN, 12/06/99). A lawsuit filed by several Idaho environmental groups prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to release a draft of a more stringent water pollution permit. It says Potlatch…
Six Billion Downstream
Some 3,000 people are expected to attend the 18th annual Public Interest Environmental Law conference of the University of Oregon’s Environmental Law Society March 2-5. “Six Billion Downstream” focuses on the interrelationship of all human actions; keynote speakers include David Brower, founder and president of Earth Island Institute, and Charles Wilkinson, author of Fire on…
Wallace Stegner Lecture Series
In Mountain View, Calif., the Wallace Stegner Lecture Series is hosted by Peninsula Open Space Trust, a group responsible for protecting nearly 40,000 acres on the San Francisco Peninsula. Writer Terry Tempest Williams speaks March 30 and inventor/futurist Stewart Brand speaks May 18. Contact Mary Shields at 650/854-7696. This article appeared in the print edition…
Land Use Conference
Over 80 speakers on everything from economic trends in the West to gambling communities will appear at the ninth annual Land Use Conference March 9-10, hosted by the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute at the University of Denver College of Law. Call 303/871-6239 for more information. This article appeared in the print edition of the…
Montana burns game farm elk
On a cold and windy morning last Dec. 7, livestock officials began killing the elk on the Kesler Game Farm near Philipsburg, Mont. The herd had been under quarantine for chronic wasting disease for over a year when an elk that had just died on the ranch was found to be infected. Local game wardens…
Yellowstone wolves are here to stay
Almost 300 wolves that are part of a transplant program in Yellowstone National Park and Idaho can remain in their new homes, thanks to a new ruling. On Jan. 13, a three-judge panel from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver reversed a two-year-old decision by Federal Judge William Downes that a federal…
Mountain of mine waste may move after all
MOAB, Utah – A decade-long battle over a 10.5 million-ton uranium mill tailings site near the Colorado River (HCN, 4/13/98) may finally be coming to an end. Here, on Jan. 14, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced his support for a plan to transfer control of the abandoned Atlas Corp. mill site to…
Political war continues over bison herd
All is quiet on the western front of Yellowstone National Park. As 50 bison graze within a few miles of the park border near West Yellowstone. So far this winter the animals have had no reason to cross the park line; mild weather has made foraging easy. Outside that boundary, in what has become an…
Protesters raised the right questions
WASHINGTON, D.C. – So here I was last year, in this Washington, the one with the big domed building, and all the way across the country in the other Washington, the one with the big domed mountain, there was real political action – smashing Starbucks. Well, explained one of the peaceful protesters via my hotel…
Heard around the West
Cows as we know them seem to be on the way out in the West. The Arizona Republic reports that in the “once stolid cattle country” of southeastern Arizona, a hydroponic tomato greenhouse near Willcox, Ariz., employs more than 500 people, while ranchers now raise “all kinds of weirdness from ostriches to rabbits and chinchillas.”…
A pilot’s-eye view of the West
Most people remember Charles Lindbergh for his flight across the Atlantic. They are less likely to recall that he also wrote The Spirit of St. Louis, winner of the Pulitizer Prize for autobiography in 1954. Most people know Antoine de Saint-Exupéry for his children’s classic, The Little Prince. They are less likely to remember that…
Searching for pasture
Note: this feature article is accompanied by this issue’s Uncommon Westerner profile: “Not your average beauty queen.” At the college of agriculture at Utah State University, a controversy has erupted over a flock of sheep. It doesn’t look like much at first; it concerns the politics of academic funding and the logistics of breeding livestock.…
Not your average beauty queen
Note: This article appeared as a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Rachel Benally, recent runner-up in the Southwest Regional Miss Navajo Pageant, Internet surfer, and unflinching slaughterer of her grandmother’s goats, lies in a reclining chair in her Aunt Sharon’s living room. She is recovering from last night’s TV-watching marathon. Wrapped in a comforter,…
Dear Friends
It’s not easy It’s not easy to move a pile of radioactive rock that sprawls across the equivalent of 118 football fields in the floodplain of the Colorado River (HCN, 5/26/97). Not easy, but possible, as Bill Hedden of Castle Valley, Utah, has just shown (see page 4). Hedden, who is Utah Conservation Director for…