Wyoming’s Green Mountain Common Allotment is one of the West’s last big, wide-open landscapes – but these days, ranchers, environmentalists, history buffs and the BLM are arguing over whether it’s time to start putting up fences.
Also in this issue: Nearly a decade after Imperial Valley irrigators fought off a water grab by Texans Ed and Lee Bass, the Imperial Valley Irrigation District buys the old Bass property, Western Farms, and the water rights that come with it.
Oil and gas drilling could oust elk — and Boy Scouts
NEW MEXICO The Valle Vidal in northern New Mexico, known for its trout streams and trophy elk herd, could soon be known for oil and gas drilling, too. In 1982, Pennzoil Corporation donated the 100,000-acre valley to the Carson National Forest, and for more than 20 years, hunters and hikers have enjoyed the valley and…
Explore both Earth and space
I was very disappointed by Paul Larmer’s dismissive editorial regarding NASA’s plans to send humans to the moon and Mars (HCN, 2/2/04: A plan for Spaceship Earth). Larmer writes, “We’ll travel the galaxy later, when desperation and exploitation are no longer the driving forces.” If Larmer bothered to read more than media tidbits, then he…
Say ‘no’ to Wal-Mart
Thank you, HCN and Stacy Mitchell, for shedding, at the least, a minute amount of light on a most deserving subject — one that most mainstream media sources avoid out of fear for their lives. Wal-Mart and other similar mega-corporations and multinationals have practiced this perversion of “free market” economics for years — and largely…
Whiplash? Hardly
The article noting the seesawing plans for snowmobile use in Yellowstone Park repeats a common refrain that I have seen in many news articles about this issue: the suggestion that we should feel sorry for the buyers and users of snowmobiles because the rules changed (HCN, 1/19/04: Yellowstone snowmobilers suffer whiplash). I wish news writers…
Everybody get together
Segregating skiers from snowmobilers may not be the most appropriate answer to the increased popularity of the backcountry in winter (HCN, 1/19/04: A moment of truth for user fees). That more and more people are enthusiastically enjoying these wonderful backcountry locations should be celebrated, not feared. Public lands are one of the things in which…
It’s a winter recreation crisis
I would like to commend Rachel Odell for her recent story about snowmobiler and skier conflict on public lands (HCN, 1/19/04: A moment of truth for user fees). The national forests, like the national parks, should take a stand on this issue sooner, rather than later, if they wish to head off serious resource degradation…
Resurrected memories of a prison camp
If we haven’t already forgotten our nation’s World War II-era internment camps, we speak of them only in hushed tones. Even in the eight Western communities where the camps once stood, their memory is lost, rolled up and stowed away like old chain-link fence. A new exhibit touring North Dakota, “Snow Country Prison: Interned in…
Calendar
San Diego will be hosting the Annual West Coast Conference on Soils, Sediments and Water on March 15-18. The conference is sponsored by the Association for Environmental Health and Sciences; hot topics include bioremediation, brownfields, military base cleanup and pesticides. www.aehs.com . 413-549-5170 Find out whose money your lawmaker is spending: Check out the Center…
Reading for — and about — a rainy day
Here in the Northwest, you can accumulate large quantities of the following: rainwater, unemployment and local literature. The folks at Oregon Quarterly (the University of Oregon’s magazine) collect the third. Last year, they ransacked their archives and created a new literary record of the region, Best Essays NW. Most of the 27 essays read like…
Ski areas get greener
Western ski areas got their best grades yet in the 2003-2004 Ski Area Environmental Scorecard — but they weren’t spectacular. The median score for the 76 ski areas, graded by the Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition, was a C+. Tops were Colorado’s Aspen (93.9) and Buttermilk (93.3), which earned high marks for being environmentally conscious. Vail…
Follow-up
Two federal judges are duking it out in Yellowstone’s snowmobile saga. Last December, Judge Emmet Sullivan struck down a National Park Service plan that would have allowed 1,100 snowmobiles daily into the park, and instead re-instated a ban on the machines (HCN, 1/19/04: Yellowstone snowmobilers suffer whiplash). But in early February, Judge Clarence Brimmer blocked…
Creating immigrant leaders: Labor organizer Ramon Ramirez
WOODBURN, OREGON — Disoriented, poor and unorganized, Latino immigrant farmworkers traditionally have not had a lot of political power in the United States. They often do the low-wage jobs American-born workers won’t do, working in an industry that largely precludes its workers from bargaining through unions. And because many immigrant farmworkers have entered the United…
The New West collides with open-range laws
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Last Open Range.” Kent Knudson picked up a rifle and opened fire, defending his 40 acres in Arizona, and got handcuffed and hauled to jail. John Ward, driving a truckload of hay in Oregon one night, rounded a curve and smashed into 1,300…
We’re bickering with our neighbors while the feds spend our money
As John Kerry was firming up his front-runner status in seven Democratic primaries on Feb. 3, Oregon voters were defeating Measure 30, an $800 million package of income tax surcharges, cigarette tax renewals and minimum corporate-tax increases, which was intended to restore funding that has been cut from education and basic services. “Defeat” isn’t quite…
The Last Open Range
From Wyoming’s windswept high desert, a question for the West: Do we have to fence it all in?
Watt turns history on its head
On a snowy evening in early February, three High Country News staffers made the five-hour drive over three mountain passes and through a blizzard, to Boulder, Colo., to see this paper’s former nemesis: one-time Interior Secretary James Watt. Professors Patricia Nelson Limerick and Charles Wilkinson, of the University of Colorado’s Center of the American West,…
Dear Friends
Congratulations! The crew at High Country News extends a hearty welcome to the newest member of the clan: Paolo Bacigalupi and his wife, Anjula Jalan, arrived in the world at 3:24 a.m. on Jan. 25 — and has hardly allowed his parents a wink of sleep since. Paolo reports that Arjun set a record a…
Postscript to a water war
Nearly a decade after an attempted water grab in California’s Imperial Valley, the saga takes a strange new twist
My great-grandfather the crow killer
The one time I met my great-grandfather was unexpectedly, at the Grand Canyon. It was on an overcast March day when I was 18. I wasn’t looking for any relatives. I was just trying to take photographs. I’d never visited the national park, and so my grandfather, Frederick, had driven my 11-year-old brother and me…
Old-growth trees to fall in the Sierra
The Forest Service ditches a collaborative forest plan in favor of getting out the cut
Heard around the West
NEVADA Better not mess with Nevada: It’s big, and getting bigger. Last year, Nevada gained an average of 6,141 people every month, making it number-one for growth in the nation for the 17th year in a row, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Citing climate and affordability, 70 percent of the newcomers to the state flock…
Arizona land swap dogged by questions
Yavapai Ranch Land Exchange called a bad deal for public, spur for sprawl