Judge Jim Redden has given the Bush administration an ultimatum: Submit a viable plan for salmon restoration, or face the possible removal of four dams on the lower Snake River.
Also in this issue:
Homeless families aren’t found only in urban areas. They’re also struggling to survive in the rural West, as shown by the story of Barbara Trivitt and her two children, who lived in a Jeep in Coos Bay, Oregon, this fall.
A family of criminals and killers
Danielle Marie Cox came from a loving family. She attended private school through the sixth grade, had a 3.8 grade point average in high school, and earned a scholarship to Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore. But the impressionable Cox fell prey to the drama and drugs of a homeless Portland street “family” she met…
Schooling, fish
Before I came to work at High Country News, I lived in San Francisco, a beautiful city of sometimes ugly contrasts, one involving education. In wealthy, cosmopolitan San Francisco, public schools are a horror. There are many reasons why S.F. schools have largely stunk for three decades, but one of them involves settlement of a…
How to be #1 in the world and still be a loser
On one level, Giles Slade’s new book, Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, can be read as the played-straight history of the demise of things like the paper shirt front, tailfins on cars, and the pinball machine. Slade ranges considerably wider than his title lets on, however, and raises fundamental questions about the…
Two weeks in the West
Big coal remains big and the weather gets wacky in the New Year. Is there a connection?
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA AND CONNECTICUT A Squaw Valley ski instructor with mechanical moxie and a $950 rope tow has created a backyard ski area. The Vail Daily says Ken Wittel’s rope tow is powered by a 5 horsepower gas engine that can pull skiers up Wittel’s 300-foot-high hill at 11 to 18 mph. If your backyard lacks…
Under the radar
In the rural West, the homeless are rarely seen and often ignored
Man Camp
Energy companies turn to portable dormitories during housing crunch
Fill ‘er up with moonshine
Name Chris Myles Age 51 Vocation A chronic volunteer, he’s studying to become a paramedic and makes homemade classic guitars. Known for Attempting to distill homebrewed ethanol On what brought him to Silverton “The blue skies here are like nothing I’d ever seen before. You get clear days in the Midwest but there is always…
Just don’t toss it in the recycling bin
Ugh. It’s hard to accept that the likes of this stuff (sludge) is going on the ground that grows my food. But what are the alternatives? If we want to be — must be — a sustainable society, we have to do something with our waste besides bury it or throw it in the ocean.…
One Christmas gift that won’t be returned
Just when I thought Santa would be skipping my house this year, I read April Reese’s article. A more wonderful and heartwarming Christmas present I could never receive! I first discovered Valle Vidal many years ago while roaming around the northern New Mexico mountains. When I came around the bend and my eyes feasted on…
Winning hearts and minds — in the National Park Service
Thank you for the wonderful article “Old but Faithful,” about the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees. I agree with this group’s fight against commercialization, too many fees, and fees that are too high in our national parks. I cannot for the life of me understand how Holly Fretwell, of the Libertarian-oriented Property and Environment…
Maybe they shouldn’t shoot them all
In response to Ted Williams’ article “They should shoot horses, shouldn’t they?” he is correct that wild horses should be managed appropriately on public lands. However, here in central Idaho we have one area where mustangs have roamed for decades and are managed by BLM. I have spent years hiking and photographing these horses. They…
The return of the (non) native
In his essay on wild horses, Williams offers no facts. Instead, he merely quotes harried former BLM employees and a New York Times article to buttress his specious arguments. Moreover, speaking from his presumably well-informed New England Audubon landscape, known perhaps somewhere for the wild horses of which he blithely opines, the kernel of his…
Born to be feral
As someone who has worked in the horse business as a breeder, trainer, competitor, packer and all-around horse-lover all my life, I still have very little patience with those who would place the welfare of the mythical “wild horses” of North America above the needs of wildlife and the health of our public lands. Try…
Why operation of wildlife refuges shouldn’t be privatized
Through the years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hasn’t been known for a willingness to stand up to political pressure. So I was surprised in mid-December when the agency took back control of the National Bison Range in Montana. Until then, it had been operating the refuge jointly with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai…
Salmon Justice
An interview with U.S. District Judge Jim Redden, who’s given uncooperative federal agencies clear warning: Submit a viable salmon restoration plan for the Snake/Columbia River Basin, or face the possible breaching of four major dams.
Dear Friends
FOUR MONTHS OF INDENTURED SERVITUDE This winter, Erin Halcomb is trading in her chain saw for an HCN intern’s computer. Erin, a Colorado native, spent the past five winters in Oregon, thinning trees and teaching environmental education. During the summers, she worked as a fire lookout. Erin first came to Oregon in 2001, when she…
The great wilderness compromise
What would Zahnie do?” I asked myself that question as I hiked into the White Cloud Mountains of central Idaho. I’d come here to report on an ugly internecine fight among environmentalists over the fate of this would-be wilderness of rock and ice, high meadows, pine forests and alpine lakes. Both sides invoked the name…
History of a decline
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Salmon Justice.” Pre-European settlement: The Columbia/Snake River Basin produces between 10 million and 16 million salmon, making it the most bountiful salmon spawning ground in the world. 1933: President Franklin Roosevelt authorizes Bonneville Dam about 40 miles east of Portland, Ore., the first major…
How the Indians were set up to fail at bison management
I wasn’t born soon enough to be a cowboy on the West’s old open range. But for the last 10 years, I’ve been lucky enough to help gather a herd of up to 500 bison every fall on 30 square miles of Montana prairie. I live on the reservation, though I’m not a Native American,…