Back in the ’70s, Montana led the way in progressive environmental legislation, but now with its economy faltering, those laws are being eviscerated, and environmentalists need to find a new strategy.
The Latest Bounce
A resolution to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling has been derailed in the Senate (HCN, 11/5/01: The Arctic: A slave to luck). Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, attempted to force the issue through by hitching an amendment to a railroad retirement bill, but failure to build the needed 60 votes of support…
GAO drops a bomb on Yucca Mountain
NEVADA With Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham expected to make a recommendation to President Bush sometime this winter about the Yucca Mountain project, a General Accounting Office audit has raised serious questions about the energy department’s investigation into the proposed nuclear waste dump site. The report, which was leaked to the press on Nov. 30, notes…
Water is more precious than gas
Dear HCN, Thanks for the recent article on coalbed methane (CBM) in the Powder River Basin (HCN, 11/5/01: Wyoming’s powder keg). While some of our issues here in the Raton Basin are slightly different – fewer ranchers, more rural residential development, no celebrity poster child – we appreciate any visibility that CBM development gets. The…
Quincy collaboration heads to court
CALIFORNIA The Quincy Library Group has given up on collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service. Nearly nine years after developing a controversial management plan for 2.4 million acres of national forest land in Northeastern California, the coalition of environmentalists and civic and timber industry leaders has suspended its monthly meetings with agency officials. It now…
Good riddance to the sheep
Dear HCN, I was heartened about the future of our public lands as I read the article on “Global market squeezes sheep ranchers” (HCN, 11/19/01: Global market squeezes sheep ranchers). As a long-term resident of Boise who frequently hikes and mountain bikes on public lands, I have experienced first-hand the effects of Brad Little’s and…
A price tag for protest
OREGON Sitting in trees to save them may become a costly pastime, if the Oregon Department of Forestry has its way. Since August, protesters have prevented logging in the Tillamook State Forest by occupying platforms in the boughs of giant trees, and the department is considering an unusual method to deal with them: charging protesters…
Sheep ranch sympathy misplaced
Dear HCN, Steven Stuebner’s recent article “Global market squeezes sheep ranchers” (HCN, 11/19/01: Global market squeezes sheep ranchers) has to rank as one of HCN‘s worst articles of the year, or silliest. What might have been an informative report on the situation of the sheep industry, if only Stuebner would do a little research, turns…
Pesky pike persist
CALIFORNIA They’re back. More than 5,000 spiny-tongued predatory pike are once again haunting the waters of northeastern California’s Lake Davis. Planted illegally in 1994, the voracious exotic fish resurfaced just 18 months after the California Department of Fish and Game spent $2 million poisoning the reservoir to get rid of them (HCN, 5/25/98: How California…
Time to embrace drip irrigation
Dear HCN, In the West, water is a pervasive issue, and it is a common theme among HCN articles. “Bringing back the bosque,” and “Will Salt Sink an Agricultural Empire?” (HCN, 11/19/01: Bringing back the bosque) touch this subject. These articles leave one believing that the battle between agriculture and ecological water could never be…
Ridgetop home may be toppled
UTAH It was Bruce Daley’s dream to retire to Park City, Utah, and build his home on the most spectacular hilltop he could find. But his dream has turned into a nightmare. In the mid-1990s, the Tucson, Ariz., resident and former auto-body shop owner began the planning process for his ridgetop home in Park City.…
Rodeo’s virtues
Ardeth Baxter’s letter commenting on the review of the book Riders of the West requires my response (HCN, 11/19/01: Romanticizing rodeo abuse). Animal-human relationships are the core ingredients in the settlement of the West. That relationship continues in the form of arena events – rodeo, team penning, cutting dressage, etc., and ranch work – gathering,…
Griz numbers a mixed bag
WYOMING Federal biologists say the threatened Yellowstone grizzly bear population is healthy and increasing. This year, biologists counted 42 females with cubs in the grizzly bear recovery area, which encompasses Yellowstone National Park and surrounding areas for a total of 9,202 square miles, according to biologist Mark Haroldson. Last year, they counted only 35 bears…
Sharing credit for restoration
Dear HCN, The Pueblo of Santa Ana sincerely appreciates the extensive coverage in the Nov. 19 issue to highlight our efforts to restore the Rio Grande bosque and river channel within our reservation lands. While we understand that the purpose of the article was to highlight Pueblo efforts, we feel it is important to acknowledge…
Show me the water
CALIFORNIA The California state assembly says developers must prove they have water rights before they receive final approval for their subdivisions. State legislators have debated a water-rights mandate for nearly a decade; it took the state’s electricity crisis (HCN, 1/29/01: Power on the loose), which raised the specter of natural resource shortages, to push Senate…
No go on state land reform
ARIZONA A coalition of developers, educators, ranchers and environmentalists has agreed to postpone an effort to preserve about 10 percent of Arizona’s 9.2 million acres of state trust land. Citing internal disagreement, the coalition has abandoned its attempt to put a preservation initiative on the 2002 ballot (HCN, 7/30/01: Not in our backyard). Since managers…
Tribe’s pines fetch clean air credits
Last spring, Montana’s Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes were happy to improve wildlife habitat and water quality on their Flathead Indian Reservation by replanting 250 acres of burned land with ponderosa pines. But for the London-based company that is funding the restoration, satisfaction comes from how much carbon dioxide the growing trees will suck out…
National grasslands up for review
The grasslands of the Northern Plains – primarily under U.S. Forest Service jurisdiction – are home to abundant wildlife, from deer and elk to endangered swift foxes, mountain plovers and ferruginous hawks. But they are also the site of promising oil and gas deposits. With the release of the final environmental impact statement for the…
Audible biodiversity
The first few tracks of The Diversity of Animal Sounds take me from the enthusiastic song of a male satin bowerbird in Australia to the deep-toned, primordial growls of the American alligator to the unabashed mating grunts of a jaguar. I am amused, and then deliciously frightened, and finally, slightly embarrassed – I keep the…
The Buffalo War: a maelstrom of Western issues
If there were one emblem of Western history, it might be the American buffalo. In Matthew Testa’s new documentary, The Buffalo War, that emblem becomes the focal point for an impassioned controversy. “The buffalo provide a mirror,” says Testa. “They reflect how we see ourselves and our place in wilderness. And that reflection is incredibly…
Gold may bury tribe’s path to its past
Bush administration revives mine project in Southern California
‘We don’t rest … on economics’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bob Decker has put in 14 years working for several Montana wilderness groups. Now he’s executive director of the Montana Wilderness Association, which, he says, works the grass roots, with 10 staffers in offices spread around the state. Eighty-five percent of the group’s 4,300…
‘We better start moving ahead’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Wayne Hirst is an accountant in Libby, the small town in northwest Montana where asbestos mining has sickened hundreds and led to the town’s consideration as a Superfund site (HCN, 3/13/00: Libby’s dark secret). Libby is more than half busted, with the logging industry…
Protecting Arizona’s underground wonderland
State agency may condemn private land near Kartchner Caverns
Ranchers’ group adopts practical strategy
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. One Montana environmental group grew from different roots than most of the movement. The Northern Plains Resource Council was founded by cattle ranchers who opposed coal strip-mining 30 years ago – and today, ranchers and farmers make up about half the 3,000 members. Moreover,…
Economics with a heart, but no soul
In 1996, Thomas Michael Power wrote Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies, an economic study of the Interior West, in which everything that happened was for the good. If the West were not the best of all worlds, it was as good as life would get on the coasts. We had half the money, but twice…
A crowded Washington wilderness gets ugly
The Forest Service tries to manage the masses
Heard around the West
Can drinking milk be considered cool? Former Idaho Dairy Princess Colleen Underwood thought so, if she could just copy some tricks from Coca-Cola and Pepsi. So during her reign as cow-milk royalty two years ago, Underwood leased a vending machine, put photos of the Dixie Chicks guzzling milk on the front, then filled it with…
Cybermapping the West – a new view
Cybermapping is a template of the inside of things, a grand tapestry of our cumulative desires. It’s our shadowmap.
Bad moon rising
How Montana’s once-mighty progressive coalition has waned
Dear Friends
Winter break It’s time for our traditional winter break, when we give staffers time to shovel their driveways and readers time to catch up on back issues of HCN.Our next issue should reach your mailboxes around Jan. 21. Covering the bases Writing and editing a cover story can take months, but even with all that…
Tommie Bell: Supporter and sustainer
A woman with a vital connection to High Country News died on Nov. 19. Though her name did not often appear in the paper, Muriel “Tommie” Wilcox Bell helped sustain the publication during its formative years. The story began when Tommie bought her husband, Tom, a subscription to a Wyoming-based tabloid called Camping News Weekly.…