In Mormon Country, young Polynesians search for identity — and for an escape from a seemingly unstoppable cycle of violence.
Also in this Issue: The BLM lets the gas industry sit behind the desk and The Great Salt Lake is loaded with mercury.
Industry walks a fuzzy line between preservation and extortion
Gas company offers millions for permission to maximize drilling
A refreshing take on Wal-Mart vs. The World
“Unless you’ve been residing in a national wildlife refuge, you probably hear a lot about Wal-Mart,” begins The United States of Wal-Mart, by Denver writer John Dicker. Being anti-Wal-Mart is so popular these days, it can be hard to separate the good criticism from the bad. But Dicker’s book clearly qualifies as good. It is…
Follow-up
The Mexican wolf program is on the rocks. In mid-July, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists captured F511, the alpha female of the first wolf pack reintroduced in the Southwest. They planned to remove her radio collar and vaccinate her four pups (HCN, 7/25/05: Wolf Man John). But according to Colleen Buchanan, assistant coordinator of…
Crazy like a fox, or a fish, or a bat…
Field biologists are a rare breed. If you have any doubt about this, Jennifer Bové’s book, The Back Road to Crazy, will change your mind. Field biologists find pleasure in wading, chest-deep, against a fast current of sub-zero water before the sun has even considered rising — all to net and count tiny fish no…
The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America’s Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism
The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America’s Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism by Robert W. Righter 277 pages, hardover $30: Oxford University press, 2005 Robert Righter, a history professor at Southern Methodist University, chronicles the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. Although the water needs of San Francisco…
High Country
High Country by Willard Wyman, 160 Pages, hardcover $24.95: University of Oklahoma Press, September 2005. If by now you’ve tired of the summer-reading crop of spy thrillers and cheesy romances, try this Depression-era novel about a boy, Ty Hardin, who leaves the family ranch in Montana to become a mulepacker. After being wounded in World…
Primrose focus of legal dustup
This summer, no one is enjoying the dusty trails of central California’s Clear Creek Management Area: The Bureau of Land Management has temporarily closed 30,000 of the area’s 75,000 acres. George Hill, the BLM’s Hollister assistant field manager, says the agency shut the area down to protect people from naturally occurring asbestos dust. But environmentalists…
Horn hunters face hard times
For centuries, Asian men have consumed powdered antlers to try to boost their sexual performance, a tradition that’s helped fuel today’s demand for deer and elk antlers. Recently, though, the rising popularity of Viagra has “just about finished off” the Asian market, says Mike Aldrich, of Pinedale, Wyo., who buys and sells antlers. But more…
Domenici clobbers cooperation on the RioGrande
New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, R, wants to give more money — nearly $13 million annually — to a five-year-old program dedicated to endangered species on the Middle Rio Grande. He also plans to put the Middle Rio Grande Endangered Species Act Collaborative Program under federal authority and trim its membership. But not all the…
Birds get a break from blades
This winter, the whirling blades of half of the more than 5,000 windmills perched atop Altamont Pass will grind to a halt for two months. That plan will allow migrating birds to fly safely through the area. Under new county permitting rules, the windmill companies, which supply power for 120,000 homes, will halt their turbines…
Engaging essays on a changing West
Just a quick note to say how much I loved the June 27 issue with the three essays on the West. Each of them was fresh, engaging, and disturbing. (Perhaps Jesse Wolf Hardin’s was more triumphant than disturbing.) I was moved. Our West as we have thought of it is really changing. Thanks to all…
Smithsonian serves up Forest Service Lite
On a recent visit to this year’s U.S. Forest Service display at the Smithsonian’s annual Folklife Festival on the Mall in Washington, D.C., I saw some disturbing gaps in its representation of the Forest Service “culture” — the timber program was nowhere to be found. I asked a few uniformed Forest Service folks at tables…
The cowboys are winning
I read the story about the BLM’s new grazing rules and Erick Campbell with great interest (HCN, 7/25/05: New Grazing Rules Ride on Doctored Science). It was essentially the same story that HCN wrote about me seven years ago (HCN, 6/22/98: More internal fire at the Forest Service). The last paragraph says it all: “the…
Sasquatch in Seattle?
I read the Yeti article with interest (HCN, 7/25/05: A most unusual sanctuary, where the Yeti roams free). I thought you might like to know that we here in King County, Wash., have Bipedus giganticus (Sasquatch) listed in the King County Wetlands Folio as a species known to inhabit wetlands. This is a science-based three-volume…
A return to feudalism
The BLM’s new grazing rules are a farce (HCN, 7/25/05: New grazing rules ride on doctored science). Tony Davis’ article says the new rules allow extended rest. The opposite is true; I believe the new rules prohibit more than one year of rest. The people I knew before I retired from BLM were in on…
A balanced story on an unbalanced man
Matt Weiser’s profile of Rep. Richard Pombo was a reading experience I will long savor (HCN, 7/25/05: Will the real Mr. Pombo please stand up?). While the content is extremely depressing to anyone who gives a damn about the environment, the depth of research that went into the piece is worthy of high praise, as…
Industry embeds its own in the BLM
Mining and energy companies fund workers at land-management offices
The Great Salt Lake’s dirty little secret
High mercury levels may have a surprising source
The American Dream, sans gasoline
I’ve had it with gasoline. Not only is it helping melt the glaciers in Glacier National Park, thaw the Alaskan permafrost, and drown low-lying Pacific islands, but it’s also emptying my wallet. So when my husband, Jack, and I decided to buy a new car recently, we both wanted it to use as little gas…
Heard around the West
WESTERN COLORADO The Gladstone Kibosh, a lively newspaper published 114 years ago in the then-booming mining town of Silverton, Colo., was surely edited by a Western wag. Here’s an excerpt from 1891, reprinted in the modern weekly, the Silverton Standard, which itself celebrated its 130th year of publication this summer: “Advertise in the Kibosh. It…
She builds new words in an ancient tongue
Name: Reba Teran Vocation: Language coordinator, Shoshone Cultural Center in Fort Washakie, Wyoming Age: 50 Known for: Compiling a 9,000-word audio dictionary of the Shoshone language She says: “We’re trying to save our culture without a language. But you can’t have a whole culture without language.” It’s not easy to translate a modern word like…
The Gangs of Zion
In Mormon Country, young Polynesians search for identity — and for escape from a seemingly unstoppable cycle of violence
The theology of growth
The West has long been shaped by human migrations, and the inevitable melding — and clashing — of cultures. That’s no less true today than it was in the days of tribal warfare or gold panning. In fact, it is probably more so. Americans have flocked to the Interior West in recent years to escape…
Dear friends
SURPRISE! The West, as we like to say around here, is more than just a pretty picture. It is a growing, changing, contentious and often uncomfortable place where society’s decisions, for better or worse, are writ large on the landscape. We pride ourselves on finding the stories behind the scenery and telling them well through…
In the suburbs of Los Angeles, your future awaits
Los Angeles is nearly built out. The last empty bits of the metropolis are already being fitted into a titanic grid of neighborhoods that extends 60 miles from south to north and from the Pacific Ocean deep into the desert. The closing of the suburban frontier in Los Angeles ends a 100-year experiment in place-making…