The Bush administration opens up wild lands to oil and gas drilling, pulling the rug out from under two decades of citizen wilderness activism.
Also in this issue: Judge Emmet Sullivan reinstates a Clinton-era ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.
Ranchers hijacking public lands
HCN’s Owyhee Initiative coverage (HCN, 12/8/03: Riding the middle path) shows that this paper is firmly mired in the livestock-industry myths of the Old West, and is unwilling to see beyond the boots, buckles and he-men, to understand that we must change how we treat our public wild lands and waters, if native ecosystems are…
Interior supports collaboration
In “Riding the middle path,” (HCN, 12/8/03: Riding the middle path) High Country News explores the efforts of Owyhee County citizens to achieve consensus on how to manage thousands of acres of public lands. The article rightly points out that this effort is an arduous one, as folks with widely varying interests, dreams, and backgrounds…
Owyhee initiative ignores majority interest
The HCN article on the Owyhee Initiative was superficial, misleading and omitted several key points (HCN, 12/8/03: Riding the middle path). None of the ostensibly green groups at the table is fighting for what is best for this ecosystem: real wilderness on a big enough scale for native wildlife to flourish. The Idaho Conservation League,…
Owyhee Initiative brings hope
As a graduate of the College of Idaho (Albertson College) I was excited and encouraged to read your recent article on the Owyhee Initiative (HCN, 12/8/03: Riding the middle path). The College of Idaho is only an hour from the wild landscape of the Owyhee Canyonlands. I spent many a weekend escaping into the rugged…
HCN still mired in cowboy myth
High Country News has done a disservice to the West by publishing the article, “Riding the middle path” (HCN, 12/8/03: Riding the middle path). The article and its fawning photographs fail to fully describe the condition of the Owyhee landscape or the costs to the public of maintaining ranching there. It sadly reinforces HCN’s reputation…
HCN is a sop to the cowboys
I just read “Riding the middle path” (HCN, 12/8/03: Riding the middle path). As a writer and photographer, I am acutely aware of how word and photo choice influences perception. And once again HCN proves that it is incapable of writing about the livestock industry without being a sop to the industry. When I read…
Voices rising from the desert
I say the writers of the Southwest, we are like horses that have gone out on the llano and eaten locoweed, and madness is what is unique to us. –Rudolfo Anaya It’s one thing to read the printed words of your favorite author; it’s quite another to actually hear his or her voice. Almost 10…
Calendar
Colorado Preservation, Inc., is holding its annual conference, Saving Places 2004: The Business of Preservation, Feb. 5-7 in Denver. The event will include workshops, educational sessions and a trade show. www.coloradopreservation.org/SP04program.pdf 303-893-4260 The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will be in Seattle, Feb. 12-16. Seminars include those sponsored by…
Warm-water native fish are left out in the cold
Little is being done to pull the Southwest’s native fish back from the brink of extinction, according to an independent team of biologists. The study of a dozen warm-water fish in Arizona’s Gila River Basin found that half the species no longer exist in wild populations, while five species occupy less than one-fifth of their…
Follow-up
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is not all wet, after all: After outraged public comment from environmentalists and sportsmen alike, the Bush administration has backed off plans to remove “isolated” wetlands — those that are dry for more than six months out of the year — from protection under the Clean Water Act. Proposed changes…
Two decades of hard work, plowed under
Wilderness activists look on as the Bush administration gives oil and gas drillers first crack at the West’s last wild lands
Lost in the wilderness of power politics
It’s easy enough to get lost in one of the West’s wilderness areas. Just hike off the trail for a half hour, close your eyes and spin around a few times, and you may have no idea where you parked your car. A similar disorientation afflicts anyone trying to navigate the complex thicket of wilderness…
Dear Friends
MANY THANKS Happy New Year from snowy Paonia, and a huge thanks to all of you who sent cards and treats to the office over the holidays. They certainly lifted our spirits, and, in at least one case, reminded us what this enterprise is all about. Tracy, who gave no last name and identified herself…
Yellowstone snowmobilers suffer whiplash
Judge says Interior Department is to blame for last-minute reinstatement of snowmobile ban
Have another pig-brain/beef-blood/chicken-spine hamburger
I ate my final diner burger the other day. It’s not that I don’t like burgers (my last one was juicy pure delight) or that I want to become a vegetarian (the tofu diet isn’t for me), but thanks to some recent discoveries, I no longer believe that my last burger, was, in fact, a…
A moment of truth for user fees
Critics say fees take the ‘public’ out of the public lands
Heard Around the West
TEXAS In the Dubious Achievement category, let’s send the 2003 Biology Award to Texas A&M’s vet school, which just cloned a white-tailed deer with a rack measuring 230 points on the Boone and Crockett scale. The lead researcher told the Houston Chronicle that the trophy buck is a “conservation tool.” The bottle-fed deer, dubbed Dewey,…
Can skiers and snowmobilers coexist?
With conflict on the rise, “quiet” recreationists want segregation in the backcountry
Getting under the desert’s skin: Biologist Jayne Belnap
The scenery of southeastern Utah is hard to miss. Steep redrock canyons plunge into long and lazy riverbends; wind-sculpted stone arches glow pinkly at sunset. But when biologist Jayne Belnap hikes through this famous landscape, it’s not the show-stopping rocks that draw her attention. It’s the algae. “This is not a rocky landscape, this is…
Energy bill would pry open public lands
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Two decades of hard work, plowed under.” The energy bill, which is currently stalled in Congress but likely to be resurrected early this year, would put major emphasis on public-lands energy development: It creates the Office of Federal Energy Project Coordination within the White…
In New Mexico, a homegrown wilderness bill makes headway
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Two decades of hard work, plowed under.” In the face of the Interior Department’s top-down decision to stop looking for new wilderness areas on federal land, some communities are working to protect wilderness from the bottom up. Sidestepping White House-appointed bureaucrats, wilderness advocates are…
Proposed wilderness on the auction block
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Two decades of hard work, plowed under.” The following areas, which are proposed by citizens for wilderness protection, will be up for grabs during the BLM’s January/February 2004 lease sale. WIA = wilderness inventory area CWP = citizens’ wilderness proposal New Mexico (Jan. 21)…