After five years of ambivalence, the Animal Damage
Control unit has changed its name. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture agency, whose main job is to kill or remove animals
such as coyotes that prey on livestock, is returning to its 1948
handle, Wildlife Services. According to a spokesman, the name
change reflects a shift in the agency’s duties since its inception
in 1931 as the Division of Predator and Rodent Control. These days,
for example, the agency prevents birds from fouling up air traffic
control …
When Los Angeles Mayor Richard
Riordan flew to a barbecue in Independence, Calif., to celebrate
the long-term water agreement between Los Angeles and the Owens
Valley, protesters greeted him with placards. One read, “L.A. Kids
– Swimming Pools; Inyo Colony Kids – Lung Disease,” pointing to the
area’s high rate of cancer and breathing disorders that have been
linked to chemicals in dry and dusty Owens Lake. The Los Angeles
Times reports that after chatting with the protesters, Riordan
said, “I have never met more beautiful, wonderful people. This must
be a great place to live.” …
In 1989, Jeff
DeBonis, a Forest Service employee on Oregon’s Willamette National
Forest, started a renegade newsletter, Inner Voice. Its call for a
greener Forest Service grew into the nonprofit Association of
Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. He then left
AFSEEE to found the broader-based Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility. Now, DeBonis has resigned as PEER’s
executive director; program director and counsel Jeff Ruch has
stepped into the job …
The
environmentalist-timber coalition backing grizzly reintroduction
into Idaho’s Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness has already split
environmentalists (HCN, 5/13/96). Now an article in the People for
the West newspaper suggesting that grizzly reintroduction can work
if it is kept strictly in local hands has split the other side,
including PFW. Despite the article by staffer Dave Skinner, the
group is opposed to grizzly reintroduction under any
terms.
A Phoenix, Ariz., public magnet school’s
uniform dress code demands students look traditional – but not too
traditional. Zakkare Garrett, an Indian first-grader who wears his
hair long in the custom of his culture, was told to cut it, braid
it or find a new school. His do did not fit into the school’s
mandate that kids look “neat, like they did in the old days, as our
parents and grandparents would say,” says a Phoenix School District
spokeswoman. Garrett is looking for a new
school.
*Heather
Abel
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
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