Montana Human Rights Network and attorney general’s office fight against increasing influence and influx of radical right hate groups.
Coming up dry
The bull trout is disappearing, says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but the agency cannot protect the trout as an endangered species because it doesn’t have the money. In a ruling June 7, the Fish and Wildlife Service found that the listing of the rare fish was “warranted but precluded.” Doug Zimmer, an Olympia,…
So much for badges
Between 1953 and 1967, workers at Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver, Colo., were either incorrectly monitored for radiation or not monitored at all. Now, the Department of Energy is telephoning hundreds of current and former employees at the closed weapons plant to tell them they were exposed to more radiation than anyone knew.…
Mount Graham fight continues
Environmentalists and Apache traditionalists have a new legal wrench to throw into the controversial Mount Graham telescope project the University of Arizona is building. The site designated for the $200 million project is outside the area approved by Congress in 1988, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court May 25. The university pushed…
Land exchange helped wildlife
Dear HCN, Your recent article titled “Babbitt is Trying to Nationalize the BLM” (HCN, 5/16/94) provided many perceptive insights as to the possible future direction of that very important agency. I do encourage you to revisit the Indian School (Phoenix) Land Exchange brokered in the 1980s by then Arizona BLM State Director Dean Bibles, in…
Lepidopterist poaching ring netted
-I plan on really cleaning house on Rocky Mountain butterflies next year. Am bringing 20,000 envelopes and I expect to fill them all up!” wrote one of three men indicted in a large butterfly poaching ring. All allegedly traded and poached butterflies between 1983 and 1992, from such places as Grand Canyon and Yosemite. An…
Nothing yet beats leaving things alone
Dear HCN, As a not-so-recent graduate of Utah State University’s College of Natural Resources, I’ve known and respected Fred Wagner for years. His June 13 op ed on Yellowstone elk should be read by every environmentalist. However, a few points should be addressed. The Yellowstone Northern Range situation is not analogous to areas where livestock…
There’s another approach possible in Silver City, N.M.
Dear HCN, I was disappointed in a recent article about Silver City, N.M.: “A Struggle for the Last Grass’ by Tony Davis, May 2. Mr. Davis interviewed my husband and some of my friends. He asked questions which indicated he might be looking only for conflict, not for ways problems were being solved. I don’t…
Life is change, pardner
Dear HCN, I would like to respond to Roger C. Brown’s comment in a recent issue (HCN, 5/30/94) that, “(Rural Westerners) may joke about (urban migrants’) lifestyles, but they do not threaten us. On the other hand we, in our condescending and sometimes ill-informed arrogance, have made very concerted efforts to destroy them in the…
BLM reversed on grazing permit transfer
The Oregon Natural Resources Council, with legal help from the National Wildlife Federation, has thrown 500,000 acres of public grazing land in south-central Oregon into legal limbo. The Department of Interior Board of Land Appeals overturned a decision by the Bureau of Land Management transferring grazing permits to the new owners of the MC Ranch,…
Sweet deal harms the Everglades
Dear HCN, Rabbit Babbitt’s reported comment relative to Florida’s Everglades (HCN, 5/16/94) that “when sugar companies blocked us in the Congress, we went to the state legislature in Tallahassee and last week we got a law there,” absurdly misleads anyone hearing it. The statute Babbitt brags about only assures our Everglades remain polluted by Big…
Here come Rainbows
When some 15,000 members of the Rainbow Family meet within Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest later this month, things may be calm after all. In nearby Big Piney, population 454, townspeople are open-minded about the invasion of counterculture types from all over the country, says town clerk Susan Lison. In contrast to Pinedale, where residents are…
In Wyoming, wildlife is public
Landowners can’t own exclusive rights to wild animals on their property, a judge has ruled in Wyoming. Texas millionaire Clayton Williams, owner of a 90,000-acre ranch in Carbon County, and three other Wyoming ranchers recently lost their challenge to a Wyoming law that says the state owns all wildlife as a trustee for its citizens…
Return of the rustlers
Cattle rustling appears to be on the rise in Wyoming and other Western states. Kelly Hamilton, a law enforcement supervisor for the Wyoming State Livestock Board, says over 50 rustling incidents have been reported in the state in 1994. The increase stems from high cattle prices, but a major problem, Hamilton says, is that pickup…
Cougars and caribou
Cougars have emerged as the leading cause of deaths among endangered mountain caribou in the Idaho Selkirk Mountains, reports the Spokane, Wash., Spokesman-Review. Ravaged by clearcuts and roads in their prime habitat, the caribou were listed as an endangered species in the late 1980s. At the end of the decade, 60 caribou were captured in…
Decision kills a dam
A recent Supreme Court decision on water quantity might help the Northwest’s beleaguered salmon. In a 7-2 ruling, the court said states can set minimum flow standards for waters downstream of hydroelectric plants. The case involved a dam that the city of Tacoma and a county utility wanted to build on the Dosewallips River near…
Tourists and tailings in Utah
When the federal government suggested hauling 3 million cubic yards of low-level radioactive sand down the main street of Blanding, Utah, the mayor and city council agreed. That came as a shock to the Department of Energy’s project manager Don Leske, who expected to be urged to build a highway bypass. “When you go to…
Fear of research
After getting hammered by protests from loggers on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Forest Service abruptly killed an old-growth research project it had backed for the last 18 months. University of Washington scientists wanted to erect a 300-foot crane to study one of the least known areas of old-growth forests – the canopy. The Olympic Peninsula…
Debt for nature swap
In an odd twist on modern economics, conservationists want to use the savings and loan debacle to protect the largest privately owned old-growth redwood grove in the world. The 3,000-acre Headwaters Forest of northern California is owned by Pacific Lumber, which was a family business until it was taken over in 1985 by junk bond…
Navajo-Hopi land compromise is near
HOPI PARTITIONED LANDS, Ariz. – For more than a century, the Navajo and Hopi Indian tribes have been battling over the rights to this desert land. Since 1882, when President Chester A. Arthur set aside reservation land for the Hopis that was already inhabited by Navajos, the issue of who belongs here has soured relations…
Utah and the Ute Tribe are at war
It all began with Abraham Lincoln and a promise. In the midst of history’s greatest test of presidential mettle, Lincoln took time in 1861 to establish the Uintah Valley Reservation for the Ute Indians in Utah. Before he wrote the order, however, the federal government asked Mormon leader Brigham Young if the Uintah Valley was…
Elk ranchers escape from Colorado’s Division of Wildlife
Mention the Division of Wildlife to a Colorado elk rancher and criticism comes easy. “They think we’re a terrible disease threat to native wildlife,” says Steve Wolcott, president of the North American Elk Breeders Association, “and that we’re a bunch of crooks.” Mention elk ranching to a wildlife biologist and watch a grimace form. “We…
The West’s grazing war grinds on
After a new round of public hearings, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s attempt at a political compromise on grazing reform appears dead. The proposal – partly developed in negotiations between Babbitt, ranchers and environmentalists in Colorado last winter – would raise fees and tighten ecological standards for ranchers who graze livestock on public lands. At the…
A life to fry for: hot on the trail of bighorn
Night slides down the mountainside, and the temperature in the Tule Desert sinks to 108 in the shade. A bighorn sheep 50 yards away gawks at me while I nervously work down a steep stone slope. I can see amusement in her big, dumb eyes. Suddenly, my backpack nicks a boulder. I hear a horrible…
Camping out in the Merry Widow Mine
BOULDER, Mont. – Most people hear the word radon and think of an odorless, colorless gas that seeps into homes and can cause cancer. But some, like Denise Palmer, think of radon as a miracle drug. Crippled with psoriatic arthritis, her hands had become so painful she could no longer pull her clothes on or…
Outdoor groups fight camping limits
Faced with ever-increasing hordes of visitors, Canyonlands National Park recently issued a bold management proposal to protect its still-pristine backcountry. The plan calls for closing some jeep roads, reducing horse numbers, and restricting where and how hikers travel. Park officials say they weren’t surprised at the stack of angry comments from commercial outfitters, but they…
Home, home on the range … where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
John Trochman calls himself a “Christian Patriot” and defender of the American Constitution. The soft-spoken man with a Robert E. Lee beard is also a field general in the “Militia Of Montana,” a paramilitary survivalist organization formed to fight what it perceives as oppression by the federal government. The number one threat to freedom, Trochman…
Montana organizes to fight the hate groups
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Home, home on the range … where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam. BILLINGS, Mont. – When Wayne Inman left Portland, Ore., two years ago to become police chief of Billings, Mont., he thought he had put hate crimes in his rear view mirror. Only a month…
Dear Friends
Good-bye, for a while High Country News takes its semi-annual vacation, skipping the July 11 issue. It will return with the July 25 issue. The idea is to give readers a chance to catch up on the issues that have been piling up in bathrooms and on espresso tables. Pun-ishing address change There is nothing…