As HCN turns 25 years of age, HCN founder Tom Bell fights the proposed Altamont gas pipeline, which he says would harm the historic Oregon Trail at South Pass.
No takers for torched timber
Though the Forest Service is selling burned timber in the West at bargain-basement prices, the timber industry doesn’t seem interested. Industry buyers haven’t even shown up at many recent sales auctions in Idaho and Washington. On the Boise National Forest in Idaho, five recent sales drew no takers, prompting federal officials to drop their prices.…
Pictures worth 2,000 words
Q: When is graffiti not graffiti? A: When it’s very, very old, perhaps as much as 2,000 years old. That’s the opinion of experts who looked at the sandstone wall of Buckhorn Wash in central Utah. They said the human figures and animals were painted by people called Barrier Canyon Indians, although pioneer settlers, explorers…
Higher pay for hotter jobs?
-If they called them firefighters, they’d have to pay them like firefighters.” That’s the aim of union organizer Kenny Harrell of the Sacramento-based California Professional Firefighters. Harrell wants better pay for federal wildland fire crews, now called “forestry technicians.” Under that title, federal firefighters are paid less than municipal workers and then only while battling…
Nobody’s home in resort towns
Homes, not people, are populating resort towns in Colorado. The Northwest Council of Governments says that the house vacancy rate in Vail – the emptiest town in Colorado – jumped from 59 percent in 1990 to 72 percent in 1994, reports the Vail/Beaver Creek Times. While vacancy rates in towns such as Steamboat Springs, Breckenridge…
Hikers find bomb in wilderness
The July discovery of a pipe bomb by three backpackers in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness was thought to be a freak incident. Then Forest Service officials started comparing notes: It was the fourth time someone had found a bomb or explosive in the wilderness in the past 13 months. That realization jarred Forest Service employees…
Organizing takes time
Organizing takes time After eight months of organizing in Santa Fe, N.M., the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) has yet to claim a single unionized shop. That’s proof that Santa Fe tourism workers don’t want a union, says Art Bouffard of the New Mexico Hotel/Motel Association. But organizer Jesse Case insists it’s…
Sharp edge of the West
SHARP EDGE OF THE WEST Jumping into the swim of the alternative press is Edging West, a new bimonthly magazine based in Logan, Utah. Editor and publisher Andrew Giarelli says his target audience includes Westerners from their 20s to their 50s who are “maybe a little irreverent.” The 40- to 50-page magazine covers movie, book…
Breaking the law for trees
Breaking the law for trees With acts of civil disobedience reminiscent of the 1960s civil rights movement, some people in Missoula, Mont., have begun protesting emergency salvage timber sales. One week after President Clinton signed the salvage sales into law, 15 people occupied Montana Sen. Max Baucus’ Missoula office. They refused to leave until the…
Better range, better cows
BETTER RANGE, BETTER COWS If you’re a rancher, environmentalist, or just plain interested in how better range makes for healthier cows and land, then come to Delta, Colo., for a Sept. 11 conference sponsored by the Delta/Montrose Public Lands Partnership. Program speakers include well-known ranchers such as Doc and Connie Hatfield of Brothers, Ore., Bob…
Broads say: Take a hike
BROADS SAY: TAKE A HIKE Great Old Broads for Wilderness will head for the hills this fall to rally support for Utah wilderness. From Sept. 17 through Oct. 14, the group with the great name will schedule day hikes for supporters of America’s Redrock Wilderness Act. The Act would protect 5.7 million acres of land…
Losing the border blues
LOSING THE BORDER BLUES Since the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed, exports to Mexico haven’t boomed nor have jobs increased in the United States. If you’re searching for better news on NAFTA, take a look at the summer 1995 issue of The Workbook. In its feature article, “Cleaning Up the Border: Will Sustainability…
Save the Sonoran
Save the Sonoran “After five years of watching them bulldoze the desert and pack the sardines in, those people living in Del Webb’s 1,400-home Terravita development will need a therapist,” says David Phelps. He’s a local carpenter and board member of Sonoran North, a grassroots group battling the blade in the booming communities north of…
Short takes
The Montana Environmental Information Center will discuss recent state legislation that weakened water quality standards – plus mining, right-wing movements and Montana’s energy future – at its annual meeting Sept. 23 at Flathead Lake Biological Station. For more information, or to register by Sept. 8, contact MEIC, P.O. Box 1184, Helena, MT 59624 (406/443-2520). Desert…
Small town, quirky lives
Though the paper now has a state-of-the-art office, when I worked there it was based in an old church built like a hallway. Cardboard dividers separated Betsy from the interns, and the interns from the bathroom. Our house, “Intern Acres,” had no screens, and no windows in places, just window frames. “That’s good,” my housemate…
Is Altamont historic, too?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, HCN’s founder fights his last fight, yet again. “We’re part of history, too,” says Cathy Purves, Altamont environmental consultant in Lander. Making it clear that she’s not speaking for the company, she continues, “I think it’s presumptuous of us to say that history stops…
The little paper that could
Like one of those gravity-defying trees that grows horizontally out of a rocky mountainside, High Country News has found its niche. Its beat is 10 Western states – the 1 million square miles where so many of the nation’s wild things live on mostly public lands. How do you cover this world from a small,…
Festering Idaho mine to be cleaned; others remain
SALMON, Idaho – Four mining companies have agreed to pay the $50 million cost of cleaning up toxic runoff from a defunct copper and cobalt mine. The complex deal between the companies, three federal agencies and the state of Idaho, addresses acid runoff at the Blackbird Mine, about 21 miles west of here. Since the…
HCN interns: city kids meet gritty rural life
As word filters in from former HCN interns, I’m beginning to understand my place in a long and distinguished line of grunt laborers. I see now that I’m riding a wave’s crest, benefiting from past intern suffering. Compared to bygone days, my time is a cakewalk. One change is that the town of 1,400 is…
HCN’s tough underbelly
The first intern landed on the paper’s doorstep sometime in the mid-70s, starting a train of 117 short-timers now scattered throughout the West and beyond. The intern program came with the paper from Lander – literally. It was an intern who drove the truck from Wyoming and helped haul boxes into the cramped Paonia office.…
Tom Bell: outraged by the outrageous
If I were a consultant to the West’s energy and mineral companies and ranchers, and to their politicians and bureaucrats, I would give them one piece of advice: “Don’t get crosswise with Tom Bell. Early on in your ‘process’ tell Tom your plans. If he reacts with a strong no, change them. It will save…
Heard around the West
Like many Americans, Evelyn and Don Irvine enjoy camping out on public land. Evening after evening after evening, they sit by their small trailer on the banks of the Green River in Utah, watching the water and rafters flow by. Thus far, they’ve been camped on the Green for 20 years, ever since a doctor…
A decadent, old-growth timber baron is chopped down
Harry Merlo was brought down last month by his hand-picked board because he was in the process of destroying both it and the company it was supposed to oversee. Toward the end, the 22-year chief executive officer and chairman of Louisiana-Pacific was a grotesque ruin, bellowing threats to relocate his company across the Columbia River…
Dear friends
Thank you, Ray Ring To avoid a fight, we waited on this column until senior editor Ray Ring was out of the office. Not that Ray has been argumentative while here. Far from it. But he is a man who has never heard a compliment he liked. If we were writing this just for Ray,…
‘Green’ professor cleared in Wyoming
In a decision that rankled officials of Wyoming’s extractive industries, the University of Wyoming has cleared one of its law professors of allegations that his work with environmental groups amounted to misuse of university facilities. University president Terry Roark said that Mark Squillace’s work with Friends of the Bow, the Wyoming Outdoor Council and the…
HCN’s founder fights his last fight, yet again
“This is my last big fight,” says Tom Bell. The founder of High Country News, spare and energetic at 71, hasn’t lost the fiery voice that boomed out of the little town of Lander, Wyo., in the early 1970s. During four years of running HCN, Bell took on not just ranchers for shooting eagles and…
A Western senator hears from his constituents
Six months ago, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s two-year effort to rewrite grazing regulations for public lands seemed in full retreat. Enthusiasm for the watered-down Rangeland Reform package had ebbed to an all-time low among environmentalists. And Western Republicans, emboldened by the 1994 elections, easily wrested from Babbitt a six-month delay on its implementation so that…
Tom Bell
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, HCN’s founder fights his last fight, yet again. Tom Bell: “The issue of the proposed Altamont natural gas pipeline being constructed through historic South Pass in Wyoming should be a case study in how government should not work. Thanks to rogue agencies and rogues…