Three men accused of slaughtering more than 30 wild
horses in the Nevada desert have been arrested (HCN, 1/18/99). Two
of the suspects, Scott Brendle and Darien Brock, are stationed at
Marine Corps bases in California. Grisly details about the other
suspect’s life have surfaced in Nevada newspapers. Anthony Merlino
of Reno is described as having once gutted a deer on his living
room carpet. “There was blood and ick all over the place and he
just left it there for two weeks,” a former neighbor told the Reno
Gazette-Journal. “He is dumber than a bag of hammers.”
Unless Utah’s Legacy Parkway
charts a new course, it won’t please the Environmental Protection
Agency. The road project is now planned to traverse the eastern
shore of the Great Salt Lake, destroying 155 wetland acres.
Regional EPA Director Bill Yellowtail told the state to consider
improving its public transportation and existing I-15 corridor. But
Utah is still going ahead with the four-lane freeway. “We’ll
continue to move forward because we have a proposal that we believe
is environmentally friendly,” a state spokeswoman told the Salt
Lake Tribune.
A resort that
seemed a sure thing in the 1970s has just died for good. The
Catamount ski area near Steamboat Springs in northwest Colorado was
once intended to host ski events for the 1976 Winter Olympics,
which Denver turned down (HCN, 6/26/95). Now, 3,000 homes and a
pair of golf courses planned for the area won’t be built. A single
lodge and 40 homes will take their place on a working cattle
ranch.
* Dustin
Solberg
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
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