As illegal immigration from Mexico increases, more people risk their lives crossing the desert into Arizona, while government agencies, anti-immigration vigilantes and human rights activists argue over how to handle the influx.
Illegal immigrants take jobs from Americans
I am a native-born New Mexico Hispanic. I often write letters to newspapers on a subject which those without an Hispanic last name dare not write: the urgent need for immigration reform. This nation’s immigration policy, begun in 1965, is a disaster. It hurts minorities, the poor, the environment – as we see dramatically here…
Be honest, environmentalists
Dear HCN, It is with much amusement that I read the letters about my defeats, moral decay and capitulation to the forces of the dark side. Is the environmental movement so rigid and dogmatic that it would assault character in order to quash dissent? (HCN, 9/11/00: Wilderness is the key). To start with, who said…
The latest bounce
Republican members of the House and Senate agreed to approve President Clinton’s $1.6 billion plan for fire recovery and forest restoration (HCN, 9/25/00: Fires bring on a flood of federal funds), but there’s a caveat. An amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill, sponsored by New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, attaches $240 million for salvage…
Stop that fawning
Dear HCN, We were surprised to read HCN’s fawning interview with Floyd Dominy (HCN, 8/28/00: Floyd Dominy: An encounter with the West’s undaunted dam-builder), a man who is obviously proud of his role in destroying significant portions of the Colorado River watershed. Floyd is the (washed-up) Darth Vader of Western rivers, and rather than unmask…
Collaborators must stand on equal ground
Dear HCN, Ed Marston’s “Squishy-soft processes – hard results’ leaves the false impression that the Hells Canyon Preservation Council is opposed to collaboration (HCN, 8/28/00: Squishy-soft processes – hard results). His misrepresentation is an affront to the collaborative processes the group has founded, including discussions on resource issues with local eastern Oregon ranchers, hunters, tribes…
Another legacy of drought
WYOMING Yet another effect of this summer’s drought has reared its ugly head in Wyoming: An unusually high number of cattle in the Cowboy State contracted deadly sulfate-induced polio in the summer months. Merl Raisbeck of the University of Wyoming Veterinary Lab says that in an ordinary year he sees one or two polio cases…
Collaboration makes democracy work
Dear HCN, Thank you for the great commentary on collaboration and the criticism it receives (HCN, 8/28/00: Squishy-soft processes – hard results). As someone who has participated in several of these processes on behalf of ranchers and farmers, I’ve been told that collaborators are those that helped the Nazis in World War II France and…
The Black Hills won’t log everything
SOUTH DAKOTA The Black Hills National Forest, which straddles the Wyoming-South Dakota border, has always been a friend of the timber industry. Since the first commercial timber contract in the country was secured there in 1898, the industry has logged 97 percent of the 2 million-acre ponderosa pine forest and carved 8,000 miles of road.…
Will Western skies be clear enough?
COLORADO PLATEAU A coalition of 12 Western states and 10 Indian tribes has a plan to clean the air over the Colorado Plateau. But critics think the Western Regional Air Partnership’s plan is too soft. The agreement, now before the Environmental Protection Agency, would bring Western states into compliance with the Clean Air Act, which…
Homeless tribe wants its land back
OREGON It may be a long shot, but the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw want 95,000 acres of national forest, an area larger than Portland, as compensation for land stolen over 150 years ago. In 1855, the western Oregon tribes made a deal with the federal government: In exchange for 1.6…
Western Shoshone to cash in?
NEVADA Before Anglo settlers arrived in present-day Nevada, the Western Shoshone Indians occupied half of the state’s current land area. Now, most of the tribe’s members live on tiny reservations, many of them in poverty, even though a congressionally approved land-claims settlement of $121 million has been waiting for final Shoshone approval for 21 years.…
On the Trail
In the close presidential race, even New Mexico’s five electoral votes are worth a fight. George W. Bush has visited three times, Al Gore has stopped by twice, and Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman both showed up in Albuquerque in mid-September. “For the first time in recent memory, New Mexico appears to be playing an…
Migrants leave trail of trash
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Visitors to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument along the Arizona/Mexican border experience one of the most untrammeled pieces of Sonoran Desert in the American Southwest. Nourished by two rainy seasons a year, it teems with hundreds of plant species, including towering saguaro, ocotillos and…
The hunters and the hunted
The Arizona-Mexico borderturns into the 21st century frontier
Dear Friends
We celebrate 30 years As firefighting slurry bombers droned overhead, a boisterous, book-loving crowd of 125 showed up for the newspaper’s 30th anniversary bash, Sept. 16, at the National Center for Atmospheric Research on a mesa above Boulder, Colo. In addition to bringing an incredible spread of food (including pumpkin pie that was out of…
Heard around the West
Bicycles have been around for more than a century, but they’ve been getting a new look in the last five years, thanks to battery-powered motors that spin their back wheels. With that assist, hills can turn into no-pedal pieces of cake. In Grants Pass, Ore., the owner of a company called Solar Man says, “When…
Killing salmon to save the species
Critics say hatchery reform takes the wrong tack
Wilder Grand Canyon proves too contentious
Lawsuit replaces talk about the fate of 94 percent of the park
New Mexico’s secret sport
Cockfighting in the land ofenchantment
Border lures the young
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. “I’ve been crossing the border more than 20 times. But never was it hard like it is right now.” The bearded man in the black T-shirt has the kind of intelligent face that convinces me that someday he will be a real estate mogul,…
A sympathetic landowner
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. “I’m not sure why people are mad at ’em,” says Jerry Bohmfalk. “I think they’re mad at ’em because they’re poor.” Jerry Bohmfalk looks like the Marlboro Man but talks like the well-traveled corporate consultant that he became after earning his Ph.D. in integrated…
Sanctuary movement revives
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Cochise County is nothing if not a place of extremes. The county’s small towns are bastions of the black-helicopter set, but the old copper-mining burg of Bisbee was taken over by artists, hippies and long-haired drug runners in the 1970s. Today, even Bisbee is…