A ranching family’s desire to develop a road to an inholding in Arizona’s Arrastra Mounain Wilderness is a microcosm of the huge and unwieldy problem of inholdings on public lands throughout the West.
Soul in your soles
When was the last time you felt mud ooze between your toes? Richard Frazine in The Barefoot Hiker encourages readers to free their feet as well as their minds. No joke: Frazine, who lives in Connecticut, has been hiking unshod for over 20 years even through sleet and snow. He recommends a woodland trail for…
When green becomes red
Red ink is red ink, but the U.S. Forest Service and The Wilderness Society color their images of commercial logging on our national forests in grossly different shades. The Forest Service says it made $16 million from commercial timber sales in Oregon and Washington in fiscal year 1996. The Wilderness Society estimates the agency lost…
Quincy comes up short
A professor at the University of California at Berkeley has taken a scholarly look at the Quincy Library Group and at its plan and decided that both are flawed, but not because he opposes consensus efforts. In the same article, Timothy P. Duane finds that a consensus group in California’s Yuba River watershed does something…
Welcome to the “Freedom Zone’
Dear HCN, Maxine Keesling lamented land-use restrictions in King County, Wash., in a letter (HCN, 1/19/98), but on a recent trip to the area I was hard pressed to see any lack of construction or land development. In fact, sprawl and congestion in the Seattle area strongly resemble that of Southern California. If we are…
Working the Watershed
Richard Manning’s article “Working the Watershed” (HCN, 3/17/97) could easily have been titled “Overworking the Watershed.” It described efforts to restore salmon fisheries and oyster beds to Willapa Bay, a part of southwestern Washington state that has been logged and logged and logged again. Now the neighboring, and similarly overworked, Chinook watershed is the subject…
Don’t blame Audubon for a judge’s bad decision
Dear HCN, Letter writer Laurence Jewett of Massachusetts generally took National Audubon Society to the woodshed as the cause of the recent court ruling mandating wolf removal from Yellowstone and central Idaho (HCN, 1/19/98). Only one problem: Audubon didn’t cause the order, the Farm Bureau Federation did. It appears that Mr. Jewett, and a number…
Green Building Resource Center
Design professionals interested in incorporating “green” practices into their work have a new site on the Web. From straw-bale houses to national parks, the Green Building Resource Center provides information about energy efficiency, water conservation and other sustainable-design issues. The site is operated by two nonprofits, the Salt Lake-based Global Environmental Options (GEO) and Building…
Pay to play privately, too
Dear HCN, Since the user fee issue isn’t going away, judging from your recent letters and columns, I’d like to throw in two more cents. My only problem with the fees is that they aren’t high enough, and there aren’t enough of them (HCN, 10/13/97). Terry Anderson eloquently defended user fees; however, he left out…
Western Colorado Pollution Prevention Program
You can’t pick your regulators, but you can pick their brains, says the Western Colorado Pollution Prevention Program. Learn more about environmental regulations from state regulators at an April 22 seminar in Grand Junction, Colo. The daylong seminar costs $15 and class size is limited to 50. Call Sue Kiser at 888/685-8576 or write to…
The “real’ right isn’t wacky
Dear HCN, I am writing in response to the excellent essay by Ken Toole on the far right (HCN, 12/8/97). I have only one problem with his article: Except in the title, he almost always refers to extremists and militias and white supremacists as “the right.” This might give readers the false impression that the…
Gunnison River Basin/Grand Valley Water Quality Forum
The chemicals we use on our gardens, lawns, and highways, and the stuff we dump down the drain can cause big problems for streams and rivers, says Steve Glazer with Colorado’s High Country Citizens Alliance. You can learn more at the Gunnison River Basin/ Grand Valley Water Quality Forum Feb. 26 in Montrose, Colo. Contact…
Ken Toole speaks for the politically correct
Dear HCN, I was disappointed to see Ken Toole’s essay, “How the far right spreads its “wacky” ideas’ (HCN, 12/8/97). In publishing this article, you clarified for one and all that your agenda is a political and lifestyle one, not environmental. You have just alienated the conservative fringe of your readership at a time when…
7th annual Winter Fishtrap Gathering
-We cannot deal exhaustively with the water concerns of the world in a few hours,” says Rich Wandschneider, director of Fishtrap, a group that explores writing and public policy in Enterprise, Ore. “But we can spend time thinking, talking, reading and writing about water.” Join Fishtrap and writer George Sibley, philosophy professor and nature writer…
Mesa County Water Association
The Mesa County Water Association will hold its fifth annual water course Feb. 17 and 25 and March 3 in Grand Junction, Colo. Call 970/242-7490 for information. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Mesa County Water Association.
BirdSource Great “98 Backyard Bird Count
If you have a birdfeeder, binoculars and access to a computer, you can join the BirdSource Great “98 Backyard Bird Count, Feb 20-22. Sponsored by the National Audubon Society and Cornell University, the project will use the Internet to collect sightings from birdwatchers across the continent, documenting some unusual migration patterns observed this winter. Anyone…
No, ma’am, this isn’t Mississippi
When people think of catfish, they’re more likely to imagine roadside cooking shacks in Mississippi than desert streams. But that could change now that the native Yaqui catfish has been restored to Arizona. In October, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released 350 of the blue-gray fish in the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge near…
From orchards to Philadelphia
Utahns who live in the booming Salt Lake City area need to manage growth now, says Baseline Scenario, a study by the nonprofit Utah Quality Growth Partnership. The partnership is a coalition of government, civic and business leaders concerned about urban sprawl in a 10-county area, including Salt Lake City. In the 1960s and “70s,…
The Wayward West
The League of Conserva-tion Voters congressional scorecard is out. The only Western senators to score 100 percent on their voting records are Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both Democrats from California. The entire Senate delegations of Idaho, Texas, Utah and Wyoming scored 0. The League gave 0 scores to 30 senators, all Republicans, and 12…
7th Annual Land Use Continuing Education Conference
Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt and John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War, will be among the guest speakers at the 7th Annual Land Use Continuing Education Conference in Denver, March 12-13. Topics will include preserving open space, private property rights, small town economic development and urban growth boundaries. Contact the Rocky Mountain Land Use…
A scarlet “A’ for ASARCO?
A controversial open-pit copper mine proposed for the Santa Rita Mountains of southern Arizona (HCN, 9/1/97) has been put on hold. In a Jan. 21 letter from ASARCO Inc. to the Coronado National Forest, the company blamed low copper prices for the pullout and said the project would be delayed for “at least a couple…
Scat dogs earn their keep
Moja and Molly aren’t ordinary Labrador retrievers – they earn their keep by locating animal scat for senior scientist Sam Wasser of the Center for Wildlife Conservation in Seattle, Wash. “This is going to completely revolutionize the science of animal monitoring,” Wasser said. Wasser has trained the dogs to sniff out bear and wolf droppings…
Water for people and fish
Photographs of Aspen Village mobile homes and Snowmass Creek are not likely to oust images of the Maroon Bells Wilderness from Aspen, Colo., postcards and calendars. But the 150-unit trailer park and a small but valuable water right from Snowmass Creek have jumped into the conservation limelight. Their fame comes from an effort by citizens,…
Intel Corp. denied desert water rights
Money can’t always buy water, even in cash-poor New Mexico. Intel Corp., the world’s largest computer chip manufacturer, has lost a $1.5 million bid to buy water rights from southern New Mexican farmers near rural Socorro. The company’s 1994 water-use permit requires that it buy water rights, then retire them to offset 4 million gallons…
Counties want to develop public land
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. It’s not the pristine view that Lewis and Clark observed nearly 200 years ago. Wind surfers zip across the wind-whipped river; barges haul goods to seaports and cars cruise down the freeway. Cities, dams and homes dot the landscape. But the Columbia Gorge National…
The Land and Water Fund waits to be tapped
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last year, something unusual occurred hereabouts, and though the extraordinary event did not go unnoticed, its extraordinariness was insufficiently appreciated. What happened was that the United States Congress lived up to an obligation. Though not unprecedented, this proximity to honor was rare enough to have deserved more attention than it received, especially…
Heard around the West
Why did a logging company “rape 30,000 acres of virgin forest?” A satirical magazine on the Internet, The Onion, says the answer can be found in the provocative behavior of the trees themselves: “If you’re going to tease, openly flaunting your abundant natural resources, don’t be surprised by the consequences. “It’s only natural for any…
Dear Friends
A landmark potluck Three times a year, High Country News holds a board meeting and potluck somewhere in its 1 million square-mile territory. The potlucks especially always have lots of good company and good food. But – and this is no reflection on Socorro or Bozeman or Seattle or Salt Lake City or Cheyenne or…
Fore! on the Inyo National Forest
For the first time in its history, the U.S. Forest Service says a golf course will be built on agency land. The owners of the Snow Creek golf course in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., have a permit to turn 95 acres of sagebrush on the Inyo National Forest into a “back nine,” despite the opposition of…
Wolves go wild in the Southwest
In the fall of 1917, Stanley P. Young rode into the Canello Hills in southern Arizona, saddlebags packed with the tools of his trade: steel-jawed traps, metal stakes and chains, leather gloves and a bottle of odiferous wolf lure. The hired gun for the Bureau of Biological Survey was following a pair of wolves whose…
Private rights vs. public lands
Thousands of inholdings create conflicts inside federal lands
The spotted owl has a new enemy
Last May, a birdwatcher in California’s Redwood National Park found the partially eaten body of a spotted owl lying in the trail. Nearby he saw the killer – an agitated barred owl, the feathers of its victim still clinging to its talons. Barred owls and spotted owls are cousins, both woodland owls, with large, dark…
On the offensive: developer Tom Chapman
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. There are those who say he’s a classic American businessman who’s become a fierce defender of private property rights. Critics believe he’s a Colorado profiteer who makes millions blackmailing the U.S. Forest Service to buy him out. One thing is clear: Thomas E. Chapman…
Managing scenery, wildlife and humans
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. STANLEY, Idaho – Since it was set up 25 years ago, the Sawtooth National Recreation Area has been colored by a contentious relationship between the Forest Service and private landowners, whose inholdings – including homes, ranches and businesses – account for 25,000 of the…