Timber companies are eager to log the West’s still-smoldering forests.
Aircraft noise where it doesn’t belong
Dear HCN, We waited seven years for our permit on the Colorado River. Six months before our launch we started planning: 16 good friends schemed to enjoy the Grand Canyon for 14 days. We each went on this trip for a different reason. Some were there to experience the beauty of the Southwest, some to…
Plenty of room in Colorado
A report released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says Colorado can support at least 1,128 wolves. The agency studied seven national forests and their surrounding public and private lands, and determined that Colorado’s abundant elk and deer herds would not only sustain wolves but also discourage them from killing livestock. The report estimates…
Catron County readies for battle
Catron County, N.M., which pioneered local land-use planning against federal control of public land, has passed a resolution urging every household to own a gun. It’s a protest against gun-control laws and a tool in Catron’s war of nerves over cattle grazing. Originally, the county commission considered an ordinance requiring gun ownership. That got watered…
Utah publisher celebrates 25
Twenty-five years ago in Layton, Utah, north of Salt Lake City, in an old barn owned by his mother-in-law, historian Gibbs Smith set up shop. He replaced the roof which had blown off in a storm, agreed to share one half with the cows, then started turning out books. A quarter of a century later,…
Will Navajos take a gamble?
Navajo President Peterson Zah recently vetoed a tribal ordinance that would have laid the groundwork for legalized gambling on the tribe’s reservation. But his rejection doesn’t mean gambling is dead for the Four Corners tribe. In July, the Navajo Nation Council passed the gaming ordinance spelling out procedures for acquiring licenses, deterrents to criminal activity…
What every land trust should know
The land trust may be one of the last defenses Western communities have against the rapid development of private lands. The Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts will hold an Oct. 8-9 workshop in Estes Park, Colo., to help land people stay abreast of the latest tools of the trade. Hosted by the Estes Valley Land…
Sue the cattle
Open range, one of the West’s oldest prerogatives, needs to be retired, according to a new activist group, the Alliance for Property Rights. The alliance, based in Hailey, Idaho, is collecting horror stories from people whose property has been trampled or who have suffered car wrecks due to wandering livestock. “Clearly this is an ongoing…
Dueling studies
Will an injunction prohibiting grazing on eastern Oregon’s Wallowa-Whitman and Umatilla national forests devastate the local economy? Yes, says Oregon State University economist Fred Obermiller. No, says Pacific Rivers Council, the environmental group whose lawsuit forced the injunction to protect habitat needed by endangered salmon. The dueling studies respond to a July federal court ruling…
Return of Compound 1080?
One of the most lethal poisons ever used in the West’s war on predators may be staging a comeback. President Richard Nixon banned Compound 1080 in 1972 following its widespread misuse and the death of untold numbers of birds, animals and even humans. Now the Texas Department of Agriculture wants the EPA to allow its…
Save a river
Have you ever wanted to save a river from a dam or pollution but felt frustrated by not knowing how to begin? David M. Bolling effectively channels this passion in his book How to Save a River: A Handbook for Citizen Action. Full of case studies from successful fights to stop dams on rivers such…
Green buzzword
The Grand Canyon Trust and the National Park Service will hold a three-day symposium to explore the untested concept of ecosystem management as it applies to public and private lands in the West. “Ecosystem Management: Buzzword of the “90s,” which runs Oct. 6-8 in Flagstaff, Ariz., features National Park Service Director Roger Kennedy; Ray Rasker,…
Hawk sees opportunity, snatches it
Taking a nap on the rocky banks of the Flathead River in Montana can be dangerous, especially if a snake has the same idea. When hiker Bill Gustafson, 17, of Columbia Falls took a break to snooze in the sun July 5, he fell asleep bare-chested. A non-poisonous garter snake then slithered onto his warm…
Trendy and wrong
Dear HCN, Blaming federal fire-suppression policy on the conditions leading up to the South Canyon (not Canyon Creek) fire that killed 14 near Glenwood Springs, Colo., is very trendy but bullshit (HCN, 7/25/94). Fuels don’t accumulate in the piûon-juniper vegetative types; typical stands are open-spaced canopies with little understory to carry a fire. In addition,…
DeVoto was a treasure
Dear HCN, I read Tom Knudson’s article on Bernard DeVoto with great pleasure (HCN, 8/8/94). Among those who are familiar with his life and writings, DeVoto’s acerbic wit, lifetime commitment to the twin arts of writing and history and passionate defense of both individual liberties and the American West are still inspirational. Yet, his own…
Thumbs up on taking responsibility
Dear HCN, Thumbs up on the article “Whose Fault?” in your Aug. 22 issue. It seems that more and more we look toward someone to blame for anything that befalls us. As a skiing and river guide and a former wilderness ranger, I often see people who assume the “invisible someone” out there wouldn’t let…
Love, hunger, money
I’ve just returned from the Spokane Tribe’s casino-and-gambling mecca at the western edge of our reservation, and I may have to enter the federal Witness Relocation Program because I have seen and know too much. I couldn’t believe it. I had gone there expecting to see a few slot machines and some sweaty small-town gamblers.…
Dear friends
‘Assault on the Male’ Paonia residents got a sneak preview in the town hall of “Assault on the Male,” a BBC documentary that showed on the Discovery Channel Sept. 4. The preview and talk were courtesy of Theo Colborn, a Paonia resident and former local pharmacist who spends most of her time in Washington, D.C.,…
Wolf provokes inadvertent howlers
Never before have so many citizens had so much to say about a federal project: bringing wolves back to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho later this fall. By the time comment-taking ended this year on an environmental impact statement about the plan, 160,264 people had put their opinions on paper. Reactions were generally strident,…
Bit by bit, government’s power is being eroded by wave of takings lawsuits
Takings in its newest formulation has taken the West by surprise. It shouldn’t have. Many reservoirs sit on taken ranches. Highways and railroads run across formerly private lands. Missile silos are embedded in once-private farms. These lands were taken by government or corporations through the power of eminent domain. The only question was how much…
Lawsuits may prey on wolf plans
Bringing wolves back to the West could hit a snag as both ranchers and environmentalists say they will sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Wilderness Society, Idaho Conservation League, Sierra Club and four other environmental groups notified Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt Sept. 7 that they will sue the agency within 60 days unless…
Around Glacier Park, it’s every predator for itself
On the edge of Glacier National Park, the North Fork of the Flathead River flows through the wildest ecosystem in the continental United States. It’s the only place in the continental U.S. where mountain lions, gray wolves and grizzly bears share habitat – along with black bears, coyotes, lynx, wolverines, whitetail and mule deer, elk,…
A clash of cultures: tribal versus nuclear
BLANDING, Utah – They came together to build a Native American cultural center seven miles south of here, near a small hill known as Avikan. In Ute that means a “place where I can lie down.” The members of a small nonprofit foundation bought 640 acres encompassing a kiva and a short rock-wall structure believed…
Eco-vandalism: Alien trout play havoc in Yellowstone
The ecological balance of the continent’s largest high-elevation lake – the pristine jewel of Yellowstone National Park – is threatened by an invasion of alien trout. And it seems to be no accident – the alien trout were likely slipped into Yellowstone Lake by anglers seeking to start a stock of catchable trophy fish. “An…
Washington tribes vigorously claim their rights
TACOMA, Wash. – Is “Indian Power” becoming more than just words on a bumper sticker in the Northwest? Consider: In March, the Spokane Tribe opened a casino with more than 100 slot machines, flagrantly defying state law. In April, western Washington tribes hauled the state into federal court, demanding the right to harvest shellfish on…
Non-Indians try to hold onto private property
Note: this article is a sidebar to a news story, Washington tribes vigorously claim their rights. In the struggle for Indian sovereignty, Washington state tribes have led the charge on every major front – in the courts, in Congress and around conference tables. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that other Washington residents have led…
Eastside activists feel scarce and don’t back down
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Ambitious ecosystem management advances east. They know their turf. Often they’re all alone in their attempts to rescue public lands from overcutting, overgrazing and overappropriation of scarce water essential to native fish. In the Northwest, inland from the Cascade Mountains, environmental activists can’t…
First offering of Westside plan is ‘worst’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Ambitious ecosystem management advances east. Bucking strong opposition that includes the governor of Oregon, the Clinton administration has picked a controversial old-growth timber sale in the heart of a roadless area as its first major offering under the President’s Northwest Forest Plan. The…
The Park Service didn’t put my son in a coma
The lead story in High Country News Aug. 22 concerned a hiking trip gone tragically awry near Zion National Park in Utah. Two men died, and the survivors filed a $23 million lawsuit against the Park Service. This essay responds to the question the story raised: “Whose fault?” My 24-year-old son’s accident in Yosemite National…
Flame and blame in the Northwest
Loggers urge fire sales
Ambitious ecosystem management advances east
WALLA WALLA, Wash. – The ground rules are posted in prominent view of everybody in the room: Be courteous. No verbal or personal attacks. It might sound like seventh grade, but this meeting is for grown-ups. The leaders of the nation’s most ambitious experiment in ecosystem management are taking questions from an audience of timber…
Shame and threats impel Eastside plan
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Ambitious ecosystem management advances east. A range of pressures – political scientific, and legal – shifted inland, over the crest of the Cascade Mountains, during the past year and a half, bringing leviathan ecosystem management with them. The two regions on opposite sides…