On South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, some Oglala Lakota are defying the federal government to grow industrial hemp, hoping that it can help to revitalize both the tribe’s economy and its government.
Tug-of-war over water
COLORADO The Colorado Legislature is considering a measure that could turn the tide for fish, rivers and rafters. The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver, would allow irrigators and municipalities to retain rights to water they choose to leave instream for fish and boaters. Under current law, irrigators must use or lose their…
Allen Best flunks the snow test
Dear HCN, Allen Best (HCN, 2/18/02: How does snow melt?) suggests that we can identify “real” Westerners using the test question, “How does snow melt?” It’s an appropriate test. Unfortunately, Mr. Best flunks his own test. Quoting from the last paragraph: “For the record: It melts from the ground up. Not knowing such things does…
More on Mormons’ bad rap
Dear HCN, Barbara Schuster’s confusion about the Mormons’ bad rap is not shared by many “Gentiles” who grew up in the Beehive state. Obviously she didn’t spend her childhood in a neighborhood where most kids are forbidden to play with non-Mormons. She was never dropped off at Primary (Mormon catechism) by a public school bus.…
Bull trout get some help
After living in legal limbo for three years, bull trout will get a recovery boost. On Jan. 16, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it had settled a lawsuit with two environmental groups and agreed to designate critical habitat for the fish. “It’s another step on the long road to the recovery of…
The Marlboro Man and the Sage Grouse
Dear HCN, When one reads the article by Hal Clifford in High Country News regarding cattlemen and sage grouse (HCN, 2/4/02: Last dance for the sage grouse?), it is very obvious that the ranchers in the realm of the sage grouse are in severe denial concerning their impacts on sage grouse. I would put the…
Lawsuit is for the dogs
MONTANA A gun owners’ group is trying to shoot down a ban on prairie dog hunting, imposed by the Bureau of Land Management to preserve habitat for the endangered black-footed ferret. The Montana Shooting Sports Association is frustrated by what it sees as a violation of the right to bear arms. “What part of ‘shall…
‘It’s (Montana’s) economy, stupid!’
Dear HCN, I read with interest Ray Ring’s article on environmentalism in Montana (HCN, 12/17/01: Bad moon rising) and have followed the comments others have made. Mr. Ring and all the writers make good points, but they all miss one reason environmental concerns have lost local support. To use Clinton’s campaign motto – “It’s the…
Montanans still for environment
Dear HCN, I liked Ray Ring’s recent article, “Bad moon rising,” about environmental organizations in Montana (HCN, 12/17/01: Bad moon rising). It gave some of the history of how progressive coalitions achieved significant legislative results on issues important to Montanans. It should be noted that during those years, Montana’s Legislature passed socially responsible statutes in…
Montana revved up about snowmobile agreement
MONTANA When hard-pressed, even the most antagonistic foes can reconcile their differences, as snowmobilers and wilderness advocates demonstrated in their recent agreement on motorized access in Montana’s Flathead National Forest. Early last year, months of legal wrangling between the Montana Wilderness Association, Montana Snowmobile Association and the Flathead National Forest ended in a ruling that…
A wing and a genius grant
After 11 years of quietly helping researchers and environmental activists carry out their projects from the air, Tucson pilot Sandy Lanham was awarded a $500,000 “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation on Oct. 23. Other pilots bill $300 an hour for similar services. But Lanham’s Environmental Flying Services, with the help of charitable foundations, only…
Who’s bringing home the bacon?
Imagine discovering your salary and assets posted on the Internet. Farmers throughout the nation are finding their names listed on the Web, along with the amount of federal subsidies they’ve received since the passage of the 1996 Farm Bill. The Environmental Working Group retrieved and compiled the data under the Freedom of Information Act. “I…
BLM’s coalbed methane plan disappoints enviros
The federal government wants to allow gas companies to drill nearly 40,000 new coalbed methane wells in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin over the next 10 years. That many wells would quadruple the number currently in Wyoming and increase the nationwide tally by almost 70 percent. The plan is outlined in the draft Powder River Basin…
Bush administration wall hanging
Many environmental organizations send their supporters calendars of desert cacti in bloom, lynx lunging through powder snow or fly fishers casting into roaring mountain streams. Not Earthjustice. This year, the environmental law firm’s 2002 calendar profiles 12 Bush administration appointees in Technicolor rhetoric. Each month features a not always flattering color photograph of a different…
The Latest Bounce
President Bush officially approved the high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain on Feb. 15 (HCN, 2/4/02: Yucca Mountain debate goes nuclear). Later the same day, Nevada filed a lawsuit – its fifth – alleging that the energy department’s reliance on man-made barriers, rather than Yucca Mountain’s natural geology, to contain radioactivity violates the Nuclear…
One thin thread of hope
Dear HCN, Your review of the new Power and Barrett book left me feeling that Mr. Power had left behind some previously articulated wisdom (HCN, 12/17/01: Economics with a heart, but no soul). My memory of an earlier Power book – The Economic Pursuit of Quality – and Ms. Debra Ellers’ letter in the same…
Who is a Westerner?
Dear HCN, I take exception to HCN’s definition of who is and who is not a Westerner. I was born and raised in Arizona and, except for a short exile in the South, I’ve lived in what I thought was the West all my life. I love the West and have devoted a substantial part…
EPA wants to supersize Idaho Superfund site
State and federal officials squabble over how to clean up the Silver Valley
Development threatens historic town
Does Washington’s growth law do its job?
Heard around the West
What does the well-dressed park ranger wear to work at Yellowstone National Park? A gas mask, of course, if the work station is at the park’s western gate. Especially on dead-calm winter days, a pall of pollution awaits staffers as they deal with up to 1,200 snowmobilers idling their gaseous engines. The Clinton administration tried…
Colorado oil shale gets a second look
Shell Oil hopes pilot project will go commercial
In the grip of Ungulate Fever
Deep crimson splotches, like large drips from a painter’s brush, pock the snow and lichen-encrusted rocks. A few steps farther, they mingle with patches of gray-brown fur, some of which cling to the stiff gray branches of sagebrush. Then more blood, more fur, more blood, on down the hill. And finally, the body. Or what’s…
Seed in the ground
Some Oglala Lakota hope hemp can yield a stable government and a healthy economy
Dear Friends
An Olympic-sized hangover HCN associate publisher Greg Hanscom, who hails from Park City, Utah, went home during the middle of February, to experience the greatest sports show on earth. He and other family members helped officiate the Winter Olympics’ cross-country ski events, but those duties left plenty of time to revel in Olympic mania and…
‘His courtroom was a classroom’
“The end of an era” is how Mark Rutzick, attorney for the timber industry, describes the passing of Judge William L. Dwyer, who died Feb. 12 at 72 from complications associated with cancer and Parkinson’s disease. Although the sentiment is perhaps wishful thinking on the part of Rutzick, who lost virtually every case he brought…
Marijuana’s boring sibling
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Hemp and marijuana are fraternal twins: While they look similar, the plants are actually quite different. Agricultural hemp has only miniscule amounts of the psychoactive ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) that exists in marijuana; those trace levels are not enough to induce a chemical high. Cultivated…
Klamath Basin II: The saga continues
National Academy of Sciences study produces more controversy in Oregon
You can call mine Mortgage Manor
Lupine Lodge. Del Mar at the Sea. Massive Mountain Manor. Harbor House at the Pines. I have changed the names to protect the ostentatious; to protect those who not only must own four luxury homes in four different places, but also pick and register names for them. I didn’t think I was capable of being…
Westerners share a different reality
Time magazine recently gave Westerners a good laugh. Time’s “Your Technology” columnist, Anita Hamilton, wrote about her road test of a new satellite radio network. You’ve probably heard of satellite radio – it’s the latest breakthrough, promising to beam signals from orbit to your car radio whether you’re in Stinking Desert, Ariz., or Sodden Pass,…
Is a coal mine pumping the Hopi dry?
Thirty-six years later, tribe rethinks a money-making agreement
Ghost of the Selkirks fading fast
Funding woes and predation have last U.S. caribou herd on the ropes