There’s grim news for the Yellowstone cutthroat
trout: Whirling disease, the fatal parasite that wiped out several
trout populations in Colorado and Montana in 1994 (HCN, 9/18/95),
has resurfaced in the prize fisheries of Yellowstone National Park.
The extent of the disease in the park is not yet known, but the
Salt Lake Tribune reports that 11 infected cutthroat trout were
found in Yellowstone Lake earlier this
month.
Earth First! activist
Lori Graves of Moscow, Idaho, got a rude awakening one morning
early this month when a Molotov cocktail was ignited on her front
steps and a cross was set afire in her yard. Graves, who was
arrested last summer for protesting an Aryan Nations march in Coeur
d’Alene, Idaho, believes the firebombing was the work of a member
or supporter of the right-wing group. “I’m scared to death right
now, but I know we have to respond,” she says. “We can’t just run.
That only empowers them.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has
vowed to fight the reopening of an experimental reactor at the
Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeastern Washington (HCN,
8/3/98). Supporters say that the Fast Flux Test Facility could
produce plutonium for the space program and medical isotopes for
the treatment of cancer patients, but “none of these arguments
passes the smell test,” said Wyden at a press conference in early
December. The Department of Energy is expected to decide the fate
of the reactor by the end of
December.
The push to move the
massive Atlas uranium tailings pile away from the banks of the
Colorado River near Moab, Utah, appeared to be dead in the water
last summer (HCN, 8/17/98). Now, political support for the idea is
on the rise. In mid-November, conservative Grand County, Utah,
joined a lawsuit challenging the federal Nuclear Regulatory
Commission’s decision to leave the low-level radioactive waste in
place. And late last month, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, Utah
Gov. Mike Leavitt, R, and Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, paid a visit
to Moab and called for the pile to be moved. “I am puzzled by the
fact that the pile was placed in the floodplain of the river in the
first place,” said Babbitt.
*
Michelle Nijhuis
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
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