In Idaho, Democrat Walt Minnick, a multimillionaire, former timber executive and environmentalist, mounts a quixotic campaign against Republican Sen. Larry Craig for Senate seat.
Colorado resort shelves ski expansion
After spending two and a half years and some $400,000, the Crested Butte ski resort in Colorado suddenly dropped plans to build new ski runs on a mountain adjacent to the existing resort. “It appears their attitude has changed and we look forward to working with them,” said a relieved Vicki Shaw of the local…
The Producer/Consumer Connection
Would you like to find a mentor who knows how to run a small farm? The Alternative Energy Resources Organization, a Montana group that links aspiring farmers with retiring ones, is holding its 22nd annual workshop, The Producer/Consumer Connection, Oct. 11-13 on Flathead Lake near Rollins, Mont. To register for the event, contact AERO at…
Wilderness: The Foundation of Culture
To help people understand the ways different cultures look at land that has never been roaded or developed, the New Mexico Wilderness Coalition and the Santa Fe chapter of the Sierra Club are sponsoring an Oct. 5 workshop in Santa Fe, N.M., on Wilderness: The Foundation of Culture. Registration is free. For more information call…
Unplug America: Give mother earth a rest day
Unplug America: Give mother earth a rest day asks people across the country to experience a voluntary blackout Oct.13 by turning off anything that consumes energy, including gas, coal and electric power. Native American environmental groups, including the Seventh Generation Fund, started the event in 1992 to raise awareness of our energy consumption and its…
It ain’t over till it’s over
When President Clinton announced a $65 million land swap with Crown Butte Resources Inc. to stop development of a gold mine on the boundary of Yellowstone National Park, it sounded like a done deal. But federal officials have only six months to come up with property that Crown Butte must agree to accept; if not,…
Literary natural history
Scientists are not well known as communicators but a memorable few have mastered both fields – Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson and E.O. Wilson, for example. The University of Nevada at Reno will pay tribute over the next seven months to similar contemporary scientists through a series of free public readings and discussions titled Literary Natural…
Snail’s trail leads to Yellowstone
Wolves and exotic lake trout aren’t the only new denizens of Yellowstone National Park. New Zealand mudsnails, as tiny as BBs and as prolific as fruit flies, have rapidly spread throughout the park’s upper Madison River. Although trout eat the snails, they pass through the fish undigested and alive, and reproduce so quickly that they…
Small is back
Is the small American farm a dying species? Not according to Jeff Rast, founder of the for-profit Center for Small Acreage Farming in Camas County, Idaho. After working on a large-scale farm for 10 years and serving as an extension agent for the University of Idaho, Rast says he has realized his dream of operating…
Not coal alone
-Today’s power industry has nearly all of its eggs in the fossil fuel basket,” says the Land and Water Fund of the Rockies (LAW), a policy group based in Boulder, Colo. Its 19-page report, How the West Can Win: A Blueprint for a Clean & Affordable Energy Future, imagines a different scenario: a lesser but…
Redwood summer roars back
Musician Bonnie Raitt wasn’t singing the blues in California Sept. 15 when she was arrested with 896 others for acts of civil disobedience – trespassing onto Pacific Lumber Co. property and chaining themselves to mill gates. Their mission was saving the Headwaters grove, the world’s largest ancient redwood forest in private ownership. An estimated 4,000…
Overworked and under-appreciated
Durango, in southern Colorado, has become a mountain biking mecca and popular stop on the Southwest tourist loop. But can you make a living there? For both newcomers and old-timers working in the town’s restaurants, bars and shops, the answer is “barely,” according to a report by two nonprofit groups, Grassroots First and the San…
Who snatched the salmon?
The fish had beaten the odds. After swimming 900 miles from the Pacific Ocean, past eight dams and up to over 6,000 feet, the almost three-foot-long endangered chinook salmon finally reached the Sawtooth Hatchery in Stanley, Idaho. It was one of only 132 adult salmon to make the journey this year to spawn in the…
How to talk Western
Would you like to add some colorful Westernisms to your vocabulary? Look no further than Thomas L. Clark’s new book, Western Lore and Language: A Dictionary for Enthusiasts of the American West: Biscuit shooter – The camp cook for ranch operations (1890s). Bizzing – Hanging on the rear of a moving vehicle on a snow-slick…
Feds go after Summitville boss
Taxpayers got mixed news in late August about the cleanup of southern Colorado’s notorious Summitville gold mine. The good news came from the Justice Department, which announced that it had convinced a Canadian bank to freeze $152 million in stocks owned by the mining executive who oversaw Summitville. That mine’s toxic wastes killed 17 miles…
All is not quiet on the Front
Though oil and gas developers have long had their eyes on the vast reserves that geologists say lie beneath Montana’s rugged Rocky Mountain Front, environmental concerns have held most of them at bay. Now, a more immediate threat looms over the area. Wyoming businessman Mark Alldredge has filed 104 mining claims over 3.4 square miles…
If they build it, will more come?
What’s better for controlling and educating crowds of hikers in Utah’s Grand Gulch – a brand-new visitors’ center visible from the highway or more rangers on the trail? The Bureau of Land Management has removed an old mice-infested trailer and wants to build a 1,600-square-foot center to teach people how not to disturb sensitive archaeological…
Tribal group tries again to save mountain
When Congress gave the University of Arizona a go-ahead to ignore environmental studies and build its third and largest telescope on Mount Graham, construction crews jumped into action (HCN, 5/13/96). Now, an obscure federal advisory group says builders moved too quickly and possibly illegally. According to the President’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the Forest…
Will counties de(grade) wilderness?
If dirt roads in southern Utah suddenly seem free of ruts, washboards and washouts, you can thank Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. Environmentalists believe Babbitt’s recent announcement of a new BLM inventory of wilderness led to a flurry of illegal road work by county crews. For if roads exist, the Bureau of Land Management can’t include…
How the New West will vote is anyone’s guess
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. They moved to Boise to kayak the Payette River’s world-class rapids. They came to Salt Lake City for Wasatch powder snow, the lightest on earth. They came to Seattle for Starbucks Coffee, Mount Rainier and the cutting-edge music scene. Since the early 1990s, thousands of…
Heard around the West
Vail Resorts Inc. should be on top of the world. The already enormous ski area is about to swallow the Breckenridge and Keystone ski areas, making it gargantuan. And Vail president Adam Aron is not just a formidable businessman but also something of a wizard with words. The former cruise-line president recently “mused aloud” to…
Salt Lake has an Olympian traffic jam
On weekday afternoons, I-15 in Salt Lake City has traffic jams that rival those of Los Angeles. In response, Utah has taken a California approach: Build more lanes. Starting next spring, the city’s main thoroughfare will be reconstructed and doubled in size at a cost of over $1 billion, the largest public works project in…
Forget widgets, we sell wilderness
Italian ski racer Alberto Tomba signed a megabucks deal last winter with Vail Associates, the company that operates the Vail ski area. Tomba has a reputation best understood in the United States when compared to Michael Jordan and Madonna. Both admired and scorned, he’s never ignored – exactly the person that Vail Associates wanted to…
The bigger the mine, the better the deal
BOZEMAN, Mont. – The way things are going around here lately, we should change Montana’s nickname from the Big Sky Country to the Big Swap Country: Let’s make a deal! No doubt it’s a form of progress. So were the 1872 Mining Law and the railroad land grants in their day. But qualifiers need to…
Dear friends
Odds and ends Thanks to Boulder, Colo., reader Evan Cantor who sent us 10 years of back issues of High Country News. They’ve been snapped up by Paonia High School, which school secretary Judy Briscoe tells us has become much involved in interdisciplinary teaching. And thanks to Evergreen, Colo., writer Dyan Zaslowsky, who passed on…
Glacier Park finds itself inundated
Some Montanans had a rude awakening this summer when officials announced the end of business-as-usual in Glacier National Park. In July, park Superintendent David Mihalic released management proposals that included closing roads and campgrounds, removing park buildings, and limiting access to the much-loved Going-to-the-Sun Highway. These “preliminary alternatives,” the first steps in revising the 1977…
1996: Clinton takes a 1.7 million-acre stand in Utah
A Bold Stroke: Clinton takes a 1.7 million-acre stand in Utah
The mother of all land grabs
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah: “In all my 20 years in the U.S. Senate, I have never seen a clearer example of the arrogance of federal power. Indeed, this is the mother of all land grabs. And, the declaration by President Clinton is being made without…
Uranium poisons Navajo neighborliness
CROWNPOINT, N.M. – The water in this town on the eastern side of the Navajo Nation is so pure that people drive from as far as 80 miles to fill their barrels. But some fear it will be tainted if a proposed uranium mine gets approved next year. “All it will take is one accident…
A daunting, beautiful place
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Covering an area larger than the state of Delaware, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument encompasses some of the wildest, most desolate land in the country. The expanse of canyons, bluffs, grasslands, cliffs is dotted with fossils and Native American archaeological sites. If you stand on…
Can this man break the right’s grip on Idaho?
NAMPA, Idaho – Wearing a pressed plaid shirt and glossy cowboy boots, Walt Minnick is doing his best to fit in with the crowd at the Snake River Stampede, an annual rodeo here, 15 miles down Interstate 84 from Boise. It’s not working. “Walt Minnick, I’m running for the Senate,” the neatly groomed 54-year-old says…
Managing the monument: The devil is in the details
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. If it survives expected legal challenges, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will in all likelihood stop the industrialization of the Kaiparowits Plateau. While the proclamation creating the monument did not take away Andalex’s right to mine its rich coal fields, federal land managers acknowledge that…
Craig: Betting on Idaho’s enduring conservatism
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. For Sen. Larry Craig, who has been in politics since 1974, the recipe for success is simple: Be a Republican. After all, Idaho has boasted the most conservative state legislature in the country four years running. “He’s not popular like (Wyoming Sen.) Alan Simpson was.…
Clinton learns the art of audacity
Editor’s note: On Sept. 18, just before President Clinton announced the creation of the nation’s newest monument, writer and University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson talked about the historical precedents for protecting land through presidential action. GRAND CANYON, Ariz. – The grandest, most electrifying moments in American conservation history have always been reserved for…
Compare the candidates
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Walter Minnick Gun Control: The Brady Bill is a good idea, along with immediate checks for criminal records of gun buyers. “I own seven guns, so I’m not against guns.” Term Limits: Elected officials should be limited to 12 years of elective and appointive office.…
A harsh and priceless gift to the world
“There was a hardness of stone,” Theodore Roethke starts a poem, “an uncertain glory … Between cliffs of light / We strayed like children.” The Harsh Country, the poem is called. I’m miles away from what I think of as the harsh country, the cliffs of light, the country of bright stone. It has a…