The growing desire of Native Americans to protect their sacred sites in the West leads to sometimes acrimonious debate over public access, the First Amendment and the definition of sacred places.
Just don’t do it
Just don’t do it Oregon’s logging codes might aim to protect fish, wildlife and water quality, but they can’t always protect people. A Coos Bay company recently defied a request from the state Forestry Department that loggers voluntarily stop clear-cutting slide-prone slopes above highways and homes. The state’s request came in response to last winter’s…
Forest Guardians
Should commercial logging on public lands become a thing of the past? Some environmentalists think so, and their “zero cut” campaign is making waves around the West. This is just one of the topics of the Forest Guardians’ first annual conference, to be held at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, N.M., June 20-22. The conference will…
Pressure builds for Yucca Mountain
Pressure builds for Yucca Mountain If the U.S. Senate has its way, more than 30,000 tons of some of the worst stuff on earth will be temporarily stored at Yucca Mountain, Nev. In April the Senate voted 65-34 to amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, thereby designating southwestern Nevada as the temporary resting…
Western governors’ annual meeting
Teddy Roosevelt would be proud. That’s the mood Western governors want at their annual meeting this June in Medora, in North Dakota’s Badlands, where Roosevelt hunted, ranched and fell in love with the West. Representing 18 Western states, the governors will meet June 22-24 to discuss the theme, Common Interests: Commanding Our Own Destiny. The…
Mount Zirkel’s acid trip
Two Colorado power plants are cleaning up their act, but it may be a case of too little too late. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey studying the Mount Zirkel Wilderness near Steamboat Springs, Colo., have found that air pollution from coal-burning power plants in the towns of Hayden and Craig harms wildlife. The plants…
Watch for fish-friendly foods
Salmon-friendly agricultural products are leaping right onto grocery store shelves this month. In the first attempt to market produce made with the Pacific Northwest’s dwindling salmon population in mind, the nonprofit Pacific Rivers Council has introduced a “Salmon-Safe” program. Twenty-four producers, ranging from wineries and vegetable growers to apple orchards and rice farms, have been…
A Republican wins it
For the first time, a Republican will represent ethnically diverse northern New Mexico in Congress. Bill Redmond won the May 13 special election to replace Rep. Bill Richardson, who left office to become this country’s ambassador to the United Nations. Democrat Richardson had represented this district since its inception in 1982. Redmond, a minister, credits…
Free-range ferrets
Black-footed ferrets could inhabit northwestern Colorado’s Moffat County and Utah’s Uintah County as soon as this fall, if a federal proposal wins approval. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service chose each county because it had public lands populated by plenty of prairie dogs, the preferred prey of ferrets. Ferrets would be released into the Little…
Yellowstone at 125
Yellowstone National Park turns 125 this year, and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition wants to re-examine not only the park’s mission but the national park ideal worldwide. The GYC holds its 14th annual meeting at Montana State University in Bozeman, May 29-June 1, under the theme: The National Park Idea: Where have we been? Where are…
Eco-ranching – really?
Is ecologically sensitive ranching possible? The Sierra Club’s Santa Fe, N.M., chapter and the Quivira Coalition think it is, and on June 14 they will host a free workshop to show that a ranch can be both a successful livestock business and a landscape of healthy native grasses, riparian zones, streams and wildlife. “The goal,”…
Let’s talk
Bitter disputes over public-land use and property rights in the West may increasingly be resolved through dialogue and cooperation, according to panelists at a conference on environmental conflict resolution held recently in Tucson, Ariz. There were 70 speakers and 260 participants at the conference, sponsored by the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at…
A negligent bureau?
What is the Bureau of Land Management doing in the woods? Not much good, says Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a national organization of resource management employees. The watchdog group’s latest project, a Comprehensive Study of the Public Domain Forestry Program of the Bureau of Land Management, details what it calls rampant negligence within the…
For urban dropouts
John Clayton, who lived in the Boston area before moving to rural Montana, has written a no-nonsense book that could help disgruntled urbanites make an informed decision before hitting the highway. The title says it all: Small Town Bound: Your guide to small-town living, from determining if life in the country lane is for you,…
The Colorado Trail Foundation
You can learn more about Colorado’s alpine environment by experiencing it this summer. The Colorado Trail Foundation offers three classes: “Alpine Wildflowers,” July 20-26, taught by botanist John Sowell; “Watercolor and Ornithology,” July 27-Aug. 2, taught by painter Marge Barge, and “Geology of the San Juans,” Aug. 3-9, taught by geologist Jack Campbell. Classes take…
The wayward West
Ranchers and farmers in New Mexico are urging New Mexico State University to turn down “tainted” money from the Ted Turner Foundation because the group also funds environmentalists, reports the Associated Press. Russ Miller, general manager of Turner’s ranches, reminds the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Board that Turner is a rancher, too. In fact,…
Youth Conservation Workshop
Today’s students are tomorrow’s land stewards, and for those interested in land management and conservation, the Colorado branch of the Society for Range Management is taking applications for four scholarships to its annual Youth Conservation Workshop, July 6-12. This national organization of ranchers, farmers, academics and employees of federal and state agencies sponsors the summer…
Judge settles Telluride wetlands dispute
The Environmental Protection Agency has won a seven-year dispute with the Telluride Ski and Golf Co. (Telski) over the resort’s destruction of protected wetlands that feed the San Miguel River, one of two undammed rivers left in Colorado. U.S. District Court Judge John Kane accepted a $3.8 million settlement against the company last month, requiring…
Heard around the West
Reader Frazier Nichol in John Day, Ore., had a deep thought the other day, maybe the same day he opened his fortune cookie and found a contemporary bit of wisdom: “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.” We know that’s the way the cookie crumbled, because he…
Flood bill awash with anti-environmental riders
As Congress rushes to pass a flood-relief bill, lawmakers are tossing controversial pieces of legislation into the mix in hopes of floating them through unnoticed. The bill itself would provide $5.6 billion in relief money to flood victims and ranchers who lost livestock to bitter winter weather. But the worst of its riders could send…
Moving in, as the snow moves on
KELLY, Wyo. – The robins arrive first, though some years it’s mountain bluebirds, with snow still on the ground at the end of March and more to come. Much more. They remind me of how we all announce ourselves as creatures of home. This is true, at least, of the creatures with whom I share…
Feds learn that a man’s ranch is his castle
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A few years ago, so the story goes, the Forest Service folks who deal with endangered species were taking aerial photographs to locate prairie dogs, and thereby the black-footed ferrets which prey on them. Which was fine – as long as the planes were flying over public land. When they started flying…
Uh, oh – the glaciers are growing
Whitefish, Mont. – Bundled against the driving snow of another January blizzard, the regulars stomped into the Buffalo Cafe for their morning brew. The Flathead Valley was on the verge of exceeding the annual snowfall record with almost three winter months to go. The steamy cafe buzzed with chatter about aching backs, collapsed roofs and…
The sacred and profane collide in the West
RAINBOW BRIDGE, Utah – Western writer Zane Grey once described the graceful sandstone bridge spanning a side canyon off the Colorado River as the only place he’d ever been that didn’t disappoint him. It’s easy to see why. Often dubbed “the seventh wonder of the world,” Rainbow Bridge, at 290 feet tall and 275 feet…
‘There’s a notion that Indians practicing their religionsare less than religious’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Charlotte Black Elk, 45, is a spiritual and cultural leader of the Lakota Sioux tribe. She lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation, 190 miles to the east of Devils Tower, where she began leading a Sun Dance in 1985. Charlotte Black Elk: “I grew…
Mutual respect costs us little and gains us much
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When Devils Tower National Monument Superintendent Deborah Liggett first started holding meetings with climbers and Plains Indians to discuss a new climbing plan, consensus seemed possible. But one commercial climbing outfitter sued, and now the matter is in court. Liggett is a 17-year veteran…
How do you define sacred?
Note: this essay appeared in this issue alongside the feature story. When it comes to sacred sites, what land managers need is a centralized, disciplined Native American counterpart who could cut a deal, sell it to his or her fellow tribal members and enforce it. In other words, the Park Service needs the Vatican, or…
Dear friends
Feedback We heard from 80-year-old Nancy Coy of Perry, N.Y., recently, who said our “green Christian” story April 28 made her hopeful, as both an environmentalist and agnostic, about the world again. “Since I have insomnia,” she writes, “I listen to late-night talk radio and have to choose between the Rush Limbaugh sort of rhetoric…
Some fear the Colorado is getting nuked
As the Colorado River crests in early June, activists will gather on its banks at a bend near Moab, Utah, where the river opens up into marshes, 30 miles upstream of Canyonlands National Monument. This is where Atlas Minerals’ 10 million tons of uranium tailings are piled – and where the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is…