As private lands become the new frontier in the West’s wild real estate frenzy, ranchers are turning to land trusts in places like Gunnison, Colo., to find out how to hold on to their land and keep it open and undeveloped.
Also in this issue: California decides to set its own new “public health goal” for perchlorate contamination, but critics point out that it is both legally unenforceable and lower than the previous goal.
My father, the kestrel
Great essay by Andrew Becker, “My great-grandfather the crow killer” (HCN, 3/1/04: My great-grandfather the crow killer). My father — a 40-year employee with the National Park Service — was known far and wide for his passion and skills in “birding” (bird-watching). Since his passing over a decade ago, I have often noticed him watching…
Pesticides are killing frogs
Last July, Dr. Donald F. Anthrop wrote a letter, “Pesticides killing Frogs? Poppycock” (HCN, 7/7/03: Pesticides killing Frogs? Poppycock), criticizing an earlier report by Cosmo Garvin (HCN, 5/26/03) about possible effects of pesticides on frog populations. At the end of Dr. Anthrop’s letter, he stated: “This is a sorry excuse for scientific research.” I think…
Asbestos beyond Libby city limits
Since Andrew Schneider and David McCumber broke the story of Libby, Mont., in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, what began as local news about miners and their families dying of asbestosis has mushroomed into a national health disaster. Now, in their new book, An Air That Kills, they expose the asbestos industry’s deadly impact on the lives…
Calendar
Want to get to know the Grand Canyon a little better? Then take a class with the Grand Canyon Field Institute, the nonprofit partner of the Grand Canyon National Park. Throughout the year, the Institute offers classes such as “Women’s Rim-to-Rim Backpack,” “Wilderness First Responder Training” and photography and archaeology trips. For more information or…
Living with the wild
When houses, driveways and garages colonize once-remote locales, the critters already living there might become muted, but they don’t go away. In The Raccoon Next Door: Getting Along With Urban Wildlife, Gary Bogue, former curator of the Lindsay Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek, Calif., tells how to co-exist with the wild animals, birds and insects…
Follow-up
Republican hounds are already after the Democratic fox. When presidential hopeful John Kerry told an online environmental news service, “That black stuff is hurting us,” he went on to say that America’s dependence on oil is “hurting our health … cost(ing) us unbelievable security disadvantages … and contributing to global warming.” Within hours, Reps. Richard…
Overpopulation affects everything
I have just rejoined the Sierra Club so that I might support Richard D. Lamm’s bid for a seat on its board of directors. His position on the immigration/population issues is unassailable (HCN, 2/16/04: Why I’m running: Immigration is the environmental issue). The fact that overpopulation’s looming threat to environmental health is worldwide should not…
Don’t blame the immigrants
In response to Mr. Lamm: Immigration is NOT the environmental issue (HCN, 2/16/04: Why I’m running: Immigration is the environmental issue). To blame the trashing of our environment on immigrants is not unlike the attempt to link Iraq to 9/11; it rides popular sentiment to further a dark agenda. The real environmental issue is consumption,…
One national park could tell the truth about the West
The Black Canyon in western Colorado is one of the world’s most splendid examples of the depths to which erosion and uplift can go. A steep gash in ancient granite, nearly 3,000 feet deep — only 40 feet wide at its narrowest, and not a whole lot wider at its rim — the Black Canyon…
Who will take over the ranch?
As a real estate frenzy grips the West, conservationists scramble to save a disappearing landscape
The great ranch lands sell-off
Few issues over the years have stirred up as much dust in the pages of High Country News as the debate over ranching and livestock grazing. “Cattle ruin the land,” shouts one side. “Anti-grazing environmentalists commit cultural genocide against ranchers,” shouts the other. Former HCN publisher Ed Marston decided to look beyond the tiresome hyperbole…
Bush is a man of his word: He’s audacious, but should that be surprising?
Indulge a small fantasy: It is 1993, and Bill Clinton, about to become the first Democratic president in 12 years, meets with the men who control his party’s majorities in both Houses of Congress. “Mr. President,” say Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and House Speaker Tom Foley, in unison, “you are our leader. We hope…
Dear friends
An important anniversary On Sept. 3, the Wilderness Act will turn 40 years old — an anniversary that comes as the Bush administration’s shift away from wildlands protection has highlighted just how political wilderness can be. And that’s exactly what the Wallace Stegner Center’s Ninth Annual Symposium is all about. “Wilderness: Preserving Nature in a…
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA Sea lions don’t usually venture inland — particularly 65 miles from the Pacific Ocean — but that’s what a hefty 300-pounder did recently in California. It was first spotted crawling in the middle of the road in the San Joaquin Valley, reports The Associated Press. One theory is that somebody “dropped it” there. A…
California scores a goal for perchlorate cleanup
But will the public or the defense industry come out ahead?
New Mexicans take a stand against oil and gas
The fight to keep drillers off Otero Mesacould set the tone for the November election
Connecting Indian Country: Talk-show host Harlan McKosato
ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO — Up on the third floor of Oñate Hall, the broadcast center for radio station KUNM-FM at the University of New Mexico, a pungent, distinctive aroma hangs in the midday air. It seems out of place in the halls of what looks like a nondescript college office building. “Did you smell the…
Not just a ranch: Bucks and acres
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Who will take over the ranch?” If most people looked at the Adobe Ranch, they’d see a meadow with a creek and willows running through it and sagebrush grasslands rising to pine forests. But Carl Palmer sees a distressed asset that he and his…
Biology: The missing science
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Who will take over the ranch?” The Gunnison Ranchland Conservation Legacy and other groups around the West are spending millions of dollars on conservation easements to ensure that ranches are not subdivided. But beyond the ranches themselves, what are the easements protecting? Do ranch…