Greg Woodall and his sister, Carla, are focusing on Arizona’s state school trust land in their quest to save the desert landscape around Scottsdale, Ariz., through the McDowell Sonoran Preserve.
Dave Skinner’s red herrings
Dear HCN, Ed Marston’s essay (HCN, 6/04/01: Environmentalism meets a fierce friend) regarding future strategies of the conservation movement was dead-on, and sparked a predictable response from Dave Skinner (HCN, 7/02/01: Greens are still a minority) with a list of red-herring comments that completely ignored the important facts in the fight to protect America’s heritage…
Lots to see in Carrizo
Dear HCN, Sam Kennedy, in his article on the grazing controversy in the new Carrizo Plain National Monument in California (HCN, 6/4/01: California monument welcomes cattle) starts by saying “The first thing you notice … is, well, there’s not much to see.” How wrong he is! Carrizo Plain is a premier world site for seismology,…
Fire as ‘tool’ an arrogant concept
Dear HCN, After reading Louise Wagenknecht’s essay (HCN, 5/7/01: The year it rained money) and Mark De Gregorio and Lester Wood’s responses (HCN, 6/18/01: Smokey’s secret is out), I am more than ever convinced of the danger and arrogance of the use of the word “tool” for the practice of prescribed burning. How can we…
Tribes doing most for salmon, feds least
Dear HCN, I cringed at the photograph of myself on your June 18 cover, but I guess it is churlish to blame HCN for the distance between my self-image and how I actually look. So on to substance. It was a good article on the complex intersections of salmon, dams, energy and money. I’d like…
Plenty of fallout from a Yucca Mountain delay
Dear HCN, While Jon Christensen did a great job of detailing Nevada’s battle against the permanent storage of nuclear waste (HCN, 7/2/01: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?), the story unfortunately was not broad enough to tackle the question of what if Yucca Mountain’s opening is delayed. That issue, too, encompasses the West. The fact is…
The Latest Bounce
The Bonneville Power Administration has some good news. In late June, the Washington-based federal power company announced that a pending increase in power prices would amount to 46 percent, rather than the predicted 250 percent (HCN, 6/18/01: Transforming powers). BPA officials praised Northwest utilities and industries for reducing their energy demands by an average of…
‘Mormon’ stereotyping not helpful
Dear HCN, Tim Westby’s article on Rocky Anderson highlighted well some of our mayor’s controversies, political integrity and impressive achievements (HCN, 7/2/01: A maverick mayor takes on sprawl). However, it also presented a stereotypical caricature about “Mormons” and the “Mormon” Church. Anderson’s “lapsed Mormon” status is emphasized along with the “polar opposite” of an influential…
Counties cross the yellow line
UTAH Utah wilderness recently got a reprieve. In late June, a district judge ruled that three counties had illegally graded 16 undeveloped jeep tracks and footpaths located within Bureau of Land Management-maintained wilderness study areas and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The judge concluded that Garfield, Kane and San Juan counties had for several years…
Norton snubs grizzlies
MONTANA, IDAHO Unless they make it by their own devices, grizzly bears likely won’t return to the Bitterroot Mountains anytime soon. On June 20, Interior Secretary Gale Norton set aside a Clinton-era plan to reintroduce the bears to the wilderness of central Idaho and western Montana. Under the old plan, grizzly recovery would have been…
Indigenous group seeks citizenship
ARIZONA To the Tohono O’odham, the barbed-wire fence that stretches across the Sonoran Desert, dividing southern Arizona from Mexico, was always seen more as a cattle barrier than an international boundary. For as long as they can remember, tribal members have traveled back and forth across the border to visit relatives, join in ceremonies and…
Logging cut short for salmon
OREGON Salmon in the Pacific Northwest just got a break. In late May, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service must re-examine how logging affects endangered salmon before 24 federal timber sales can proceed. That may mean loggers would provide larger buffers around riparian areas, thin units instead of…
Snowmobile ban stalled
WYOMING A Clinton administration ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks that would start in the winter of 2002 has been stalled, maybe permanently (HCN, 3/27/00: Parks rev up to ban snowmobiles). At the end of June, the Bush administration announced that it wants to re-evaluate the rule because local communities and…
Wetland degrader swims in murky waters
IDAHO John Simpson concedes that he was “a bit naive” when, in 1997, he began clearing debris and beaver dams out of what he believed was an old side channel of the Salmon River on his central Idaho ranch. Bothered by the mosquito-infested swamps created by the dams, Simpson wanted to restore water flow that…
Bush fails to defend roadless rule
The roadless rule for national forest lands is still alive – but it’s caught in a legal and bureaucratic labyrinth. On July 9, the Bush administration missed the deadline to appeal a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Edward Lodge. The Idaho judge had blocked the roadless rule with a preliminary injunction in May, citing…
Not in our backyard
Arizona activists find common ground on state lands
Dear Friends
Babies in the family Congratulations to Florence and Jamie Williams of Helena, Mont., on the birth of Benjamin Chesnut Williams on Thursday, July 12. Ben’s stats are 8 pounds and a shade over 20 inches long. Florence is a former HCN staffer and intern who freelances out of Helena. Her most recent HCN article was…
A local heroine
We ran into Paonia’s foremost scientist near our office a few evenings ago, where she was arguing with the cash machine at First National Bank. It beeped insistently at her, until she pushed the right combination of buttons and got it to disgorge her credit card and some cash. It was a rare sighting. Dr.…
Tragedy re-ignites wildfire debate
Blaze in Washington’s Methow Valley kills four
Heard around the West
Washington, D.C., satirist Mark Russell came to Cody, Wyo., for a fund raiser recently and found so much to poke fun at, he had 700 people in tears from laughing so hard, says Buzzy Hassrick in the Cody Enterprise. All of his material, Russell swore, came from reading the weekly Enterprise, an effort that took…
Out of the woods, blithe spirit
Oh my! Oh dear! Imagine … 20,000 hippies. Not doing a lick of work. Messing up meadows like animals. Befouling streams like animals. Eating, sleeping, defecating like animals. Fornicating like bunny animals, thumping bongos, tooting flutes, gang-singing old Donovan songs, dancing around without a care in their heads like Jenna Bush in a cowboy bar,…
Forestry nominee: Rey of light or death Rey?
‘Mastermind’ of salvage logging rider would oversee U.S. Forest Service
A ‘shroom boom rises from the ashes
Mushroom hunters descend on Montana’s fire-scorched national forests
This land might be your land
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. State trust land may have a single purpose, but each state has a different way of doing business. Most Western states lease trust land for logging and grazing, and many states have huge subsurface holdings that earn millions from mineral development. A few states…