A conservation movement is stirring on the Great Plains, but local farmers are stuck with a harsh reality: It still pays to plow up virgin prairie. The Forest Service plans to rein in cross-country travel by off-road vehicles, but enforcing new rules may prove next to impossible.
Follow-up
For the first time since 1993, the Bureau of Land Management has revised its fees for mining claims (HCN, 3/8/93: Mining reform may hit paydirt in 1993). Now, to mine or drill a claim on BLM land, users will have to pay a $30 one-time claim fee, plus $125 per year — unless they’re “small…
Can’t afford a home? Get out of the city
Oh, come on, Mark Matthews. As I started your Writers on the Range article “I’ve tried, but I can’t eat the view” (HCN, 6/7/04: I’ve tried, but I can’t eat the view), I expected an analysis of Tom Power’s anthem on how we make worthy sacrifices to live in the great West, trading some monetary…
Grassroots wilderness movement is alive in Oregon
In a recent letter to the editor, Felice Pace argues that there are no true grassroots campaigns to preserve wilderness in the Western United States today (HCN, 6/21/04: What grassroots wilderness movement?). That would come as a surprise to the 900 people who appeared recently at three forums in Oregon to support new wilderness protections…
Locals drive Arizona campaign
I am responding to Felice Pace’s letter, in which he portrays the Arizona campaign to designate wilderness in the Tumacacori Highlands as the brainchild of the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the grassroots activists as Pew’s pawns (HCN, 6/21/04: What grassroots wilderness movement?). That perception couldn’t be further from the truth. The decision to promote the…
Wilderness movement adapts to political landscape
Felice Pace’s assertion that there is no grassroots wilderness movement in the West is simply ridiculous (HCN, 6/21/04: What grassroots wilderness movement?). We have a thriving grassroots movement here in Colorado, one that long precedes the assistance of the Pew Charitable Trusts. The support of the foundation did not change our strategy one bit —…
A new twist on urbanism
Few people would connect “New Urbanism” — dense, mixed-use buildings and public transit in pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods — with the Latino barrios of Western cities. One Southern California-based group, however, sees this planning movement and Latino culture as nothing but simpatico. The Transportation and Land Use Collaborative has organized an annual conference and a series of…
Calendar
The World Renewable Energy Congress and Expo will be held in Denver from Aug. 28 to Sept. 3. Workshops will focus on a wide range of renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, fuel cells, wave energy, biomass and more.303-275-3781 www.nrel.gov/wrec. Oregon State University is sponsoring a class on timber and forestland appraisal, “The…
An antidote to despair
Chip Ward’s first book, Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West, was decidedly grim, detailing his fight to keep the deserts of Utah from becoming a dump for toxins ranging from radioactive waste to defunct biochemical weapons. His new book, Hope’s Horizon, gives us a brighter view of recent environmental battles, taking an…
New rules coming down for off-roaders
Cross-country travel will be banned in most areas, but enforcement may be next to impossible
Heard around the West
UTAH Filmmaker Michael Moore really knows how to energize people. His Bush-bashing documentary enraged so many Park City residents that a movie theater added a disclaimer, saying Fahrenheit 9/11 did not represent the views of the management. That a disclaimer was considered necessary disturbed several readers of the Park Record, who praised the film for…
New Mexicans move to make roads more wildlife-friendly
Local residents and school kids speak up about preventing roadkill
An icon of the Rio Grande has all but vanished in the wild
Consensus efforts and millions of dollars haven’t saved the silvery minnow
Buying ecological leverage
Conservationists become land managers in northern Arizona
Speaking up for rural Oregonians: Judge Laura Pryor
JOHN DAY, Oregon — As hail pounds the concrete outside, more than 200 people cram into an Elks Lodge — replete with wood paneling and a smoky bar in the rear — to see Judge Laura Pryor, the chairwoman of the Gilliam County Commission and one of the rural West’s most outspoken champions. With her…
You can’t plant a prairie
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Greening of the Plains.” Once the sod has been busted, prairie restoration becomes extremely difficult, to say the least. “I always say that you can’t plant a prairie,” says Jim Stubbendieck, a grasslands ecologist and the director of the Center for Great Plains…
Backpacker, beware: Don’t boldly go where you don’t belong
I was dismayed when I read Backpacker magazine recently. I worked for the National Park Service for eight years, and I’ve been a guide in Yellowstone National Park. I know there are some places we can hike to and camp at safely, and some places we should leave alone. But now we have Backpacker magazine,…
The Greening of the Plains
A conservation movement is stirring on the Great Plains, but farmers are stuck with a stark reality: It pays to plow up virgin ground
Waxing and waning in the Modern West
The sky still held plenty of light at 9:15 p.m., as I pulled off Interstate 90 and headed north on Montana State Highway 89. My destination was a Motel 6, 55 miles away, where two dozen high school teachers were holed up, in between sessions of a weeklong summer field program sponsored by the Montana…
Dear Friends
A presidential visit Readers Nicki Leniton and Brett Nelson, schoolteachers who live in Carbondale, Colo., came by the High Country News office in mid-July driving a Ford Crown Victoria and towing a 12-foot-tall effigy of George W. Bush. The two are part of a nationwide effort by the nonprofit True Majority (founded by Ben Cohen…
On a lonely road, time rolls to a stop
Three days after rumbling up out of La Guardia, four days before the summer solstice, I was finally there, as far from New York as I could get. I was driving through the spatial and sensorial opposite of my home city: Route 375 in the Great Basin desert, 30 miles southeast of Warm Springs, Nev.…