Inhabiting a parcel of land in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley demands a specific responsibility, according to the writer, who attempts ecological restoration on his piece of ground, to help bring back the West’s rich biological diversity.
The Latest Bounce
Mounting criticism of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ creative cost-benefit analysis has prompted the agency to put 150 projects, such as harbor deepening and beach restoration, on hold. The soundness of the Corps’ criteria for evaluating projects has been questioned by the General Accounting Office and in a recent series in The Oregonian (see…
It takes one to know one
Dear HCN, Regarding the article about habitat protection taking a hit under the Bush administration (HCN, 4/15/02: Habitat protection takes a critical hit), may I say about the Sierra Club’s Bill Arthur quote: It takes one to know one. It was the Clinton administration that waited for environmentalists to file lawsuits and then settled the…
Charter forests not an answer
Dear HCN, Finding ways to make the Forest Service more accountable is an admirable task. Excluding the public from Forest Service decisions will make things worse. The Charter Forest idea will exclude the public from decision-making processes. Charter forest projects will likely cost the taxpayers more and provide environmentally harmful results. The vast majority of…
Condors and bullets
Dear HCN, Four things that I wish you had covered in your story on lead in condors (HCN, 2/18/02: Condor program laden with lead): 1) The problem is with deer gut piles left by legal hunting, probably not with wounded and lost game. Gut piles from legally taken game number in the hundreds during the…
Bush takes a swing at community forestry
When George W. Bush campaigned for president, he stumped in the Northwest as a friend of forgotten rural residents. Now, proposed cuts in Bush’s fiscal year 2003 budget may pull the rug out from under some of those people. Over the last several years, Pacific Northwest timber communities and workers have retooled to perform more…
New hope for abandoned mines
Touch polluted water and it’s yours forever – or at least the liability is. All across the West, well-meaning citizens have shied away from cleaning up abandoned hardrock mines and their polluted streams for fear they could be held responsible under the Clean Water Act. Now, U.S. Reps. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Bob Schaffer, R-Colo.,…
Four ways to oppose snowmobiles
Dear HCN, Your excellent story on snowmobiles and West Yellowstone (HCN, 4/1/02: Move over!) demonstrates one among several points: After a new, destructive practice has gained a foothold in the local economy, it can be virtually impossible to control, much less dislodge. People who valued tranquility, clean water, kayaking, wildlife and traditional island values decided…
Does desert cross cross the line?
CALIFORNIA A white cross cemented atop a rock outcropping in Mojave National Preserve has become the center of a fight over religious freedom on public land. The six-foot cross, made of metal pipes, was erected in 1934 by the Veterans of Foreign Wars and has served as a local gathering point for Easter sunrise services.…
West Yellowstone a cosmic comedy
Dear HCN, You can imagine how “silly” I felt when I read Glen Loomis’ comments about the snowmobile curfew (“it would be one more of the freedoms in our country whittled away”) (HCN, 4/1/02: Move over!). I felt “silly” as I realized that I must have been too preoccupied with my head being up my…
Property rights reined in
Urban planning and environmental protection got a shot in the arm on April 23, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that property owners at Lake Tahoe are not entitled to government compensation for a moratorium that prevented them from building on their land (HCN, 2/18/02). Following a series of Supreme Court decisions that bolstered…
Infuriating selfishness
Dear HCN, In your last two issues you featured articles on the snowmobiles in West Yellowstone (HCN, 4/1/02: Move over!) and the dairy farms in Idaho’s Magic Valley (HCN, 4/15/02: Raising a stink). There is a common and infuriating thread: The producers of pollution, be it noise or bad odors, noxious fumes or foul wastes,…
Spilling salt into rivers
COLORADO The Southern Ute tribe has turned a spotlight on a plan to dump water from coalbed-methane wells into a southern Colorado river. Tribal leaders recently scolded state officials for failing to consult with them before issuing a permit that will allow two coalbed-methane wells to spill water into the Florida River. Usually, the poor…
Kudos for Quillen
Dear HCN, I do not want to tell you that Ed Quillen’s article about Mel Coleman (HCN, 4/1/02: The ‘Niche West’ reconnects us to the land) was worth the price of this year’s subscription, but it’s some of the best work he or you has done. You can remind me of that next time I…
Dredging up debate
OREGON Keeping the Port of Portland competitive means dredging the Columbia River so bigger ships can float through, at least according to Port officials and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who want to deepen the river from 40 to 43 feet. They say the extra depth would save the Port from sinking into obscurity,…
‘Commercial message’ prompts questions
Dear HCN, As any HCN reader knows, there’s a whole lot to environmentally responsible red-meat ranching: including, but not limited to, conscientious stocking and grazing rotation, scrupulous protection of riparian areas, big-hearted attitudes about the presence of large canid predators as vital, rightful, native members of the ecosystems into which exotic, domestic, grazing animals are…
Bison under the gun – again
MONTANA It was a hard winter for the bison of Yellowstone National Park. Increased herd size and harsh weather prompted many animals to head beyond the park for better feeding grounds in Montana. There, federal and state officials have so far killed 170 bison in an attempt to prevent the spread of brucellosis to cattle…
USFWS creating enemies through empire building
Dear HCN, Re: your recent article, “Habitat protection takes a critical hit” (HCN, 4/15/02: Habitat protection takes a critical hit). What has happened here is that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service performed a very poor and cursory economic analysis in establishing critical habitat for the southern willow flycatcher in New Mexico, and they got…
Heard around the West
There’s yet another use for duct tape, one more innovative than the last one you might have thought of – such as wrapping up like a bullet for Halloween. Duct tape came in handy at a Montana airport after a botched takeoff knocked “stewardesses on their butts” and busted the lens on a navigational light,…
Where free trade is more than an acronym
It’s early when Ana Maria and I arrive at the onion fields, so early that we have to use the lights of a growling tractor to guide us along the rows. I stumble through the mud behind Ana, listening to the sounds of slamming doors and shouted saludos drift through the cold, damp air. When…
The Old West went that-a-way
The East Coast editor wants me to tell her something new. Something nobody knows about the West. Something special. Something secret. I rack my brain. And my ethics. What we have left out here that’s special needs to stay special. Our secrets need to be kept. Here’s the piece I sent her. She turned it…
Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
BITTERROOT VALLEY, Mont. – Remember that scene from Dances with Wolves, when Kevin Costner’s character spins through billowing, thigh-deep yellow grassland, his fingers lightly grazing the seedheads? I’ve spent a good stretch of this radiant summer morning working across a prairie in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley doing the same thing, but without that inspiring light touch.…
New monuments: Planning by numbers
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, just before and after George W. Bush was inaugurated, when some of his Western supporters spoke openly about nullifying those 11 new national monuments created by the presidential predecessor they hated. Enter reality, both legal and political. It turns out that the…
Dear Friends
The loooooong view One of the joys of working at High Country News is getting caught up in the excitement of ideas. Our interns often tell us that their four-month stint here feels as much like an intensive graduate course in Western issues as it does an introduction to journalism. No one gets more excited…
Energy boom’s forward guard stalls out in Utah … for now
Despite setback, drive to explore the West continues
Land board says, ‘Look before you lease’
Activists say they have discovered development’s Achilles’ heel
Landmark timber deal stops Seattle sprawl
Some question logging as a tool to stop development
The Natural West
Dan Flores, the A.B. Hammond Professor of History at the University of Montana, in Missoula, lives on a 25-acre ranchette some miles outside that small city, in the foothills of the Sapphire Mountains. To walk from those foothills to the nearby Forest Service wilderness areas, which he does often with Wily, a canine hybrid that…
History’s Lesson: Build another Noah’s Ark
Michael Soule, a pioneer in the field of conservation biology, is a cofounder and current board member of The Wildlands Project, a group dedicated to maintaining and enhancing biological diversity in North America. HCN editor Paul Larmer interviewed Soule recently to explore North America’s ecological history and what it can teach us about conservation in…