Despite angry environmentalists, rotting timber, and unenthusiastic logging companies, the Bush administration is determined to push logging on roadless land burned by the Biscuit Fire in southwestern Oregon.
Also in this issue: The House of Representatives has just passed an energy bill that is even more outrageously friendly to industry than the Bush administration had requested.
Rulison drilling may spread contaminants
Jennie Lay’s very nice piece on gas drilling near the 1969 Rulison Plowshare nuclear blast shows a slightly misplaced concern of local residents that radioactive materials might be released by the new drilling (HCN, 3/7/05: Drilling could wake a sleeping giant). Their bigger concern should be contamination of groundwater by the nasty stuff put in…
Let’s not ram corporations through the Grand Canyon
Drifter Smith is correct that interest in floating the Grand Canyon has increased dramatically in the last three decades (HCN, 2/21/05: Let’s not ram more boats through the Grand Canyon). There are many reasons for this. Rafting equipment has become safer, more reliable and less expensive. Opportunities to learn boating skills, low-impact camping skills, and…
Finding good grub in Mormon redrock country
The small towns that border the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah have long steamed with political and cultural conflict. But on the northern edge of the monument, in the tiny town of Boulder, a determined peacemaking effort is under way. Blake Spalding and Jennifer Castle, two young chefs from Flagstaff, Ariz., moved to…
More than numbers: The dead of Idaho’s Sunshine Mine
The statistics of Idaho’s worst mining disaster are still startling, even more than three decades after that fateful day in 1972, when an underground fire broke out in the Silver Valley’s Sunshine Mine: Ninety-one men dead, 77 women widowed and 200 children left fatherless. The oldest victim was 61, the youngest 19. More than half…
Follow-up
Speaking to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in mid-April, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns suggested his agency may relax its ban against “downer” cows being slaughtered for human consumption. The agency adopted the ban in December 2003, after a Washington cow was diagnosed with BSE, or mad cow disease (HCN, 1/19/04: Have another…
The Guymas Chronicles
The Guaymas Chronicles, David E. Stuart, 394 pages, hardcover $24.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2003. Anyone familiar with Southwestern archaeology will recognize the name David Stuart. Only this time, he’s not authoring a ground-breaking study of the Anasazi; he’s writing a memoir of the time he spent in Mexico during the early 1970s. It’s…
Gold mining proposed in historic South Passarea
Four historic routes — the Oregon, California, Pony Express and Mormon Pioneer trails — converge southeast of the Wind River Range in Wyoming, at an area called South Pass. In the 1800s, large wagon trains crossed the Continental Divide here. Now preserved as the South Pass National Historic Landmark, the landscape still looks much as…
Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music andStories of Undocumented Immigrants
Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants, Edited by Nicholas J. Cull and Davíd Carrasco, 192 pages, softcover with DVD $34.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2004. When the movie Alambrista first appeared in 1977, it took viewers by surprise. No moviemakers had ever shown what it was like to…
Former refuge manager takes heat for saving frogs
A federal biologist who was trying to save an Arizona frog from extinction recently found himself facing criminal charges. The Chiricahua leopard frog once hopped from central Arizona to western New Mexico. But habitat loss, predation by exotic bullfrogs and fishes, and drought had reduced the population to a few small ponds in the Altar…
The Hayduke Trail: A Guide to the Backcountry Hiking Trail on the Colorado Plateau
The Hayduke Trail: A Guide to the Backcountry Hiking Trail on the Colorado Plateau, Joe Mitchell and Mike Coronella, 288 pages, paperback $19.95. University of Utah Press, 2005. If you have to ask, “Who’s Hayduke?” this isn’t the book for you. This guide wanders from Zion National Park to Arches via the Grand Canyon, Bryce,…
Beehive state may get new wilderness — and more
Wilderness advocates in Utah have long butted heads with rural county commissioners and the state’s conservative congressional delegation. Last May, in an attempt to resolve the impasse, then-Utah Gov. Olene Walker announced county-by-county discussions on land use, including potential new wilderness areas (HCN, 6/21/04: Lame-duck governor moves deadlocked wilderness debate). Now, the state may see…
Burns amendment needed for mustang management
Shara Rutberg’s article “Do you want fries with that mustang?” does not provide a workable solution to preventing long-term damage to the rangeland ecosystem from wild horse overgrazing (HCN, 4/04/05: Do you want fries with that mustang?). The Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act protects wild horses so there will always be a place for…
Points to consider about buyouts
I’m a rancher and grazing permittee in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin. Our family ranch has used adjacent BLM and USFS permits since the early 1900s, and I found “The Big Buyout” quite interesting (HCN, 4/04/05: The Big Buyout). I’d add a few comments for your consideration: Mary Flitner This article appeared in the print edition of…
Unsalvageable
With environmentalists fuming, logging companies grousing, and timber rotting, the Bush administration tries to save face — and a sliver of its grand plans to log the Northwest’s forest sanctuaries
The wisdom of the ground troops
The U.S. Forest Service has come a long way. No longer does the agency view the 190 million acres of national forests it oversees simply in terms of board-feet and dollars, as it did even as recently as 15 years ago. These days, most of its scientists and managers understand that forests are complex living…
Why should the Arctic Refuge matter to the ski industry?
Why should the 19 million acres of wilderness that make up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the potential oil beneath it, and its resident herd of caribou, matter at all to the ski industry? Sure, the refuge in Alaska is wild and beautiful, it’s pristine, it’s a crown jewel of wilderness. We in the ski…
Dear friends
WELCOME, JASON HCN has a new development associate to help with raising money, planning events and board meetings, and producing a newsletter for former interns. Jason Nicholoff, the eldest son of Circulation Manager Gretchen Nicholoff, grew up in Paonia. After graduating from Ohio’s Oberlin College with an English degree, he did environmental work and grant-writing…
Congress touts ‘green energy,’ but bill is black and blue
Lawmakers are even more industry-friendly than the administration
The allure of the gnarled
The lover of nature, whose perceptions have been trained in the Alps, in Italy, Germany, or New England, in the Appalachians or Cordilleras, in Scotland or Colorado, would enter this strange region with a shock, and dwell there for a time with a sense of oppression, and perhaps with horror. Whatsoever things he had learned…
On the Colorado River, a tug-of-war on a tight rope
A wet winter could jeopardize Colorado’s drought-protection water stash
Heard around the West
COLORADO Headline writers are having a field day in western Colorado with the upbeat story of a “plucky chicken” saved from drowning in a tub, thanks to a man employing “mouth to beak” resuscitation, reports The Associated Press. Chicken-owner Uegene Safken says he first yelled at the lifeless-looking bird: “You’re too young to die!” and…
In the Washington woods, managers face a catch-22
Critics say that by trying to please everyone, new rules could fail fish and wildlife
Protecting the treaty, saving the fish
NAME Kat Brigham VOCATION Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Board of Trustees member HOME BASE Umatilla Reservation, near Pendleton, Oregon CLAIM TO FAME Fighting for tribal fishing rights on the Columbia River, as well as for the health of the river’s fish. SHE SAYS “I like fish any way — baked, smoked, fried, dried or…
In-house wisdom, or White House meddling?
Forest Service insiders say the President’s Council on Environmental Quality added new corporate rules to the agency’s planning program
Cows versus condos — Northwest style
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “In the Washington woods, managers face a catch-22.” Like ranches elsewhere in the West, small tree farms in Washington encompass some of the best fish and wildlife habitat: lowland areas close to streams. An estimated 40,000 people…