The use of initiatives and referenda – direct democracy – to change the law for environmental reasons faces a challenge when big money enters the picture.
Newcomers turn out to be just like locals
Dear HCN, Your Sept. 30 issue profiling Walt Minnick was encouraging; let’s hope he prevails. But Minnick’s strategy and Stephen Stuebner’s report misses the mark. The politics of the New West are much more complex than the hope that newcomers are liberal, pro-environment, urban refugees. Between 1985 and 1991, according to Census Bureau estimates, 2…
It’s too easy to blame others
Dear HCN, Jonathan Brinckman’s profile of Senate hopeful Walt Minnick is written with the arrogance that all too often portrays people of the land as part of the problem but ignores very real problems created by growth in the West (HCN, 9/30/96). Consider his thesis: Those in Idaho who care about the environment are battling…
Warty and wonderful
Dear HCN, Jon Margolis’ otherwise excellent “Washington Watch” column Sept. 16 contained the following sentence: “Bill Clinton has the aesthetic sensibilities of a frog.” On behalf of the Amphibian-American community, I would like to state that this is an unfair and unkind slur against frogs. What would a moonlit evening be without the musical chorus…
Burning is not the answer
Dear HCN, There is another side to fire as a “natural tool” for achieving forest health. One problem is that we no longer have natural forests, since for the last 80 years, fire has been suppressed, giving us an unnatural condition. I have been monitoring some of the Forest Service’s controlled burns in Wallowa County…
Environmental laws fenced out
One sentence tucked inside the foot-thick omnibus spending bill could spell trouble for wildlife along the nation’s borders. Signed into law Oct. 1, the provision allows the U.S. attorney general to waive both the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act for border projects such as fences or roads. The provision was crafted…
Frequent fliers fleece Grand Canyon
One-third of the air-tour operators in Grand Canyon National Park are breaking the law by not paying a required $25 per flight. According to data compiled by the Sierra Club, some companies such as Las Vegas Airlines and Air Nevada allegedly fail to report their business to the Park Service, and two operators openly refuse…
Casualties of controversy: Two editors’ jobs and a biologist’s naivete
Now that the public has gotten into the habit of regulating bear hunting through initiatives, the issue has become increasingly polarized. That became obvious this summer when Colorado bear biologist Tom Beck stepped out of the hunting culture to write an essay critical of the sport and attitudes toward it. Among other observations in the…
Forest chief resigns
Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas will be teaching wildlife biology instead of administering the nation’s forests next winter. Thomas announced in October his retirement from the Forest Service; he plans to accept an endowed professorship at the University of Montana in Missoula. Thomas refused to comment on the political intrigue that has ruled the…
What happens above ground…
For thousands of years, water has percolated beneath southwestern Oregon’s Siskiyou Mountains to form weird marble caverns with limestone chandeliers. Now, National Park Service officials say a neighbor’s mining, logging and grazing may be altering the delicate chemical composition of the caves’ water sources. The “neighbor” is the Siskiyou National Forest, which completely surrounds the…
Will Idaho voters derail nuclear trains?
It’s easy to see how the politically powerful of Idaho stand on storing nuclear waste in the state: Gov. Phil Batt signed an agreement a year ago allowing more than a thousand such shipments to enter the state in exchange for a pledge that existing waste leave the state by 2035 (HCN, 9/2/96). Republican Sen.…
Congress’ 11th-hour moment of maturity…
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In the end, and just barely, the Congress of the United States decided to act like grown-ups, creating or expanding about 100 pieces of national parkland around the country, as they intended. But because so many of its members had acted like children, they also “passed’ – well, they caused to be…
Colorado voters decide fate of 3 million acres
Anyone who has read Amendment 16 in Colorado knows that it will fundamentally change the way the state manages its 3 million acres of school trust lands. Instead of maximizing revenues from these lands through leases or outright sales, the state land board would only be required to produce “reasonable and consistent income over time.”…
… comes after two years of arrested development
You might call the 104th Congress a roller-coaster ride for environmental legislation: Conservative Republicans began by attempting to weaken or dismantle many of the nation’s strongest environmental laws, attaching many of their proposals as “riders” on the backs of appropriations bills. But the Congress concluded by rejecting virtually all of the more radical measures, and…
Heard around the West
At a pizzeria in Telluride, we recently overheard a couple of shopping-bag laden tourists discuss their vacation. “It’s like Switzerland,” one sighed happily, “only cheaper.” But Colorado is not Switzerland, despite the best efforts of Telluride and Vail. The chocolate here is not nearly as good; our passenger train system is just about nonexistent, and…
A mystery the size of your fist
I am wondering about beargrass. This summer brought such an explosion of blooms to the Northern Rockies it was front-page news – more beargrass than anyone can remember, more beargrass than anyone can explain. So much beargrass that you don’t have to be a naturalist to stop the car and marvel at the hillsides blazing…
Dear Friends
Braving blaze orange It’s hunting season again, and who knows it better than this office? Our neighbor to the south is a meat locker which works overtime this season, thanks to pickup loads of dead deer, elk and, lately, bear. The gang of cats that patrols the alley seems in hog heaven while the animal-lovers…
Has big money doomed direct democracy?
The history of initiatives is the history of the rise and fall of contentment with, and trust in, representative government.
She works to save the past
Longtime HCN subscriber Ann Phillips finds herself drawn time and again back to a place that many experience as timeless: southeastern Utah. There, with one hand, she tries to record archaeological sites before they vanish; with the other, she works to prevent them from vanishing. The educational consultant turned archaeologist came through Paonia recently with…
How citizens make laws
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. * An initiative is a proposed law or resolution placed on the ballot as the result of a petition drive among registered voters. It is then voted on by the electorate. * A referendum is a decision by the legislature that is put to…
Western hunters debate ethics tooth and claw
Stew Churchwell considers hunting an important part of the “back to the land” lifestyle he leads near Challis, Idaho. If he doesn’t get a deer or elk, “I’ll be sentenced to beans for a whole year,” he says. He grew up in Oregon, where he hunted bear and raccoon with his father and the family’s…
Utah counties bulldoze the BLM, Park Service
A flurry of bulldozing in three southern Utah counties has led to one arrest, federal lawsuits and miles of newly improved roadways through wilderness study areas and the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The bulldozing, ordered by county commissioners in San Juan, Garfield and Kane counties, is the most serious challenge yet to federal land…
Should city slickers dictate to trappers?
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this essay appears as a sidebar to a feature article, “Western hunters debate ethics tooth and claw.” Editor’s note: Under the banner of People Allied With Wildlife, more than 1,000 volunteers fanned out across Colorado earlier this year to drum up support for a constitutional amendment that…
Polluted waters divide Oregon
PORTLAND, Ore. – One side has a punchy message: that cows and clean streams don’t mix. The other side warns that fencing cows off from hundreds of miles of streams will be a worse failure than the Great Wall of China. At stake is the Oregon Clean Streams Initiative, one of the toughest sets of…
An ‘unfair, inflexible’ bid to clean Montana’s water
Francis Bardanouve is not the man you might expect to see leading one of the year’s most contested environmental initiatives. A rancher from Harlem, Mont., he spent nearly 30 years in the state Legislature, where he was known as a conservative Democrat. But along with a businessman, a retired rancher and a Republican legislator, Bardanouve…
Judge sends a message to cows
A federal judge in Oregon has ruled that the state can decide how, and even whether, cows that pollute waterways can graze on federal lands. U.S. District Court Judge Ancer Haggerty said Sept. 27 that the Clean Water Act requires all applications for grazing permits on national forests to first undergo a state review to…