While experts disagree and timber industry pooh-poohs, spotted owl may lose its long fight for survival.
Who will lead the Navajo Nation?
Six candidates for the Navajo Nation presidency are officially in the running for the August 8 primary. Only two will face off in the November general election. For now the list of candidates reads like a directory of tribal leaders. Current tribal president Peterson Zah is seeking a third term. Running against him are tribal…
Summer camp for grown-ups
From June through August the Teton Science School in Jackson Hole, Wyo., offers day- and week-long natural history seminars for adults. Instructors such as photographer Bruce Thompson, artist Hannah Hinchman and naturalists Larry Livingood and Norm Bishop will offer their expertise on wildflower photography, field journals, alpine butterflies, wolf recovery in Yellowstone and scores of…
Grand traffic problems
Vacationers bound for Grand Canyon National Park may want to take the train this summer. Park superintendent Boyd Evison says 3,800 cars are currently arriving each day, and 6,400 vehicles will pack the park during the peak months of July and August. With only 1,600 parking spaces in the South Rim Village, that means drivers…
Earth voices
Inspired by the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Colorado Sacred Earth Institute hosts its first international Voices of the Earth conference July 29-31 in Boulder, Colo. The gathering of environmental, business and spiritual leaders includes Noel Brown, United Nations environmental official; Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop; Matthew Fox, director of…
Roads are the enemies
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt says he will halt all construction of new roads, hotels and entertainment facilities in national parks and monuments. “Roads are the enemies of national parks: They disrupt, divide and fragment,” Babbitt said in a speech to Park Service employees on the steps of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “Our task is to…
The restless West
Western writers, journalists, historians and photographers will gather at Wallowa Lake in Oregon, July 8-10, to take part in the Summer Fishtrap Gathering. This year’s theme, “The Restless West: World War II and After,” brings together novelists Ivan Doig and Sandra Scofield, historian Richard White, poet Benjamin Saenz, essayist Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and others to…
Trail volunteers rewarded
The Adopt-a-Trail program, a national effort to recruit volunteers to help maintain thousands of miles of public trails, has taken off in southeastern Idaho. Participation has increased by 200 percent since 1992, in large part because of Michael Bargelski, an artist who lives in Idaho Falls. Each person who “adopts’ three miles of trail in…
The Chapman saga continues
The U.S. Forest Service, with approval from Secretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons, has signed a deed of trust with Colorado developer Tom Chapman. The deal gives Chapman 105 acres of federal land near the Telluride Ski Area in return for Chapman’s 240 acre inholding in the West Elk Wilderness near Paonia. Chapman must also remove…
Wolves in the schools
The superintendent of Wyoming’s Fremont County School District recently canceled wolf presentations at three elementary schools in Lander. Wild Sentry, a Montana-based wolf education program, has successfully taught thousands of kids in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho about the controversy and stereotypes surrounding the animal. But when area ranchers learned the program was coming to town,…
Self-reliant homes
You can unplug from the electrical grid, writes home-builder and author Michael Potts in The Independent Home: Living Well with Power from the Sun, Wind and Water. Potts’ exploration of both the philosophy and technology of energy independence makes an excellent primer for people wanting to design and build a house, or to minimize power…
Same old DOE?
U.S. Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary may be displaying unprecedented candor by disclosing her agency’s sordid history of radiation experiments on humans. But two reports by the General Accounting Office suggest that the agency remains an old boys’ club. According to one report, the DOE has yet to investigate what happened to $30 million of goods…
Drought for the Northwest
Although snowpack levels throughout the West are average or better this year, the Northwest faces another year of drought. As of mid-May, the water content in Washington’s and Oregon’s snowpack was between 20 and 59 percent of normal, while precipitation in the Snake River Basin averaged just half of normal. Low reservoir levels and trickling…
Guide for green loggers
The Forest Trust, a non-profit group in Santa Fe, says logging doesn’t have to flatten forests. In a new publication, the group describes the work of more than 30 groups that both provide jobs and conserve resources in rural communities. Forest-Based Rural Development Practitioners features mainly non-profit groups in California, New Mexico and eastern states,…
Could a treaty block a mine?
Although international treaties are best known for settling wars, a treaty could affect an underground gold mine proposed just outside Yellowstone National Park. Under a 1972 international treaty known as the World Heritage Convention, ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1973, Yellowstone was deemed a “world heritage site.” The 136 nations that approved the treaty…
Tribe courts nuclear utilities
A New Mexico Indian tribe’s controversial plan to house high-level nuclear waste on its reservation may be rolling. The Mescalero Apache Tribe obtained written commitments in April from more than 30 private utilities to spend $5,000 apiece studying how to finance and manage open-air waste storage. The facility would use concrete bunkers to hold more…
Five star visitor complex
The Bureau of Reclamation is now building the nation’s first boondoggle tourist stop. Thanks to cost overruns and management neglect, the Hoover Dam visitor center in southern Nevada will cost $119 million instead of an estimated $32 million. Scheduled to be finished in 1995, the 44,000-square-foot center, which sits on the side of a cliff,…
Grazing allotment in hot water
Oregon environmental groups sued the Malheur National Forest May 11 for violating the Clean Water Act on a grazing allotment along the John Day River near Camp Creek. The groups say grazing has destroyed vegetation along river banks, causing water temperatures on the John Day to hit 75 degrees, seven degrees above the state standard…
Not for the birds
A grizzly bear that found the seeds in a bird feeder to his liking was recently moved to the southwestern area of Yellowstone National Park. The two-and-one-half-year-old male bear was trapped by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks on private land near Big Sky, Mont., reports AP. The bear was the first trapped…
Editorial was biased
Dear HCN, I have long appreciated High Country News’ in-depth treatment of natural resource issues. While I have not always agreed with your conclusions, I have usually believed that articles were thoroughly researched and conclusions were based upon objective analysis of the facts as they were known. One recent exception was the May 2 “Opinion”…
Wyoming dam gets go-ahead
Acting on a recommendation from the state’s Water Development Commission, the Wyoming legislature recently approved a $30 million appropriation to build the Sandstone Dam (HCN, 12/27/93). The commission okayed the project despite conflicting evidence regarding the geologic suitability of the site. Mike West, a geologist hired by opponents of the dam, says he found irregularities…
An admirer of “Ms. Schock’s Grit’
Dear HCN, Unless we markedly cut back on grazing in our arid Southwestern lands such as HCN wrote about May 2, we will continue the process of desertification that has been ongoing ever since large-scale overgrazing started in New Mexico. That long-time ranchers will be forced out of business by adopting prudent grazing policies is…
Oil, feathers and EPA
Thousands of birds flying across the Western plains each year fatally mistake oil pits for bodies of water. Once the birds land, their feathers become coated and they die. In its first attempt to address the problem, the Environmental Protection Agency recently fined Texaco Refining and Marketing Inc. and four other companies $300,000 and ordered…
A new Navajo newspaper
The Navajo Nation newspaper market already has three major papers competing for readers among the reservation’s 200,000 residents. But Deswood Tome, publisher of a new monthly newspaper, Dinéh Tribune, says there’s still room for one more. “We want to be a newspaper that provides more in-depth news. We want to be the news source for…
Renewable energy festival
Democracy will be celebrated, but energy independence is the main theme of the first annual Freedom Festival July 3 in Glenwood Springs, Colo. The event features an array of renewable and sustainable energy products. Reggae music, alternative health care and craft booths will also share Two Rivers Park on the shores of the Roaring Fork…
Agency takes out a cabin
Jerry Holliday wasn’t pleased when he found out that Forest Service workers blasted down the walls of his cinderblock cabin in southern Utah’s Manti-La Sal National Forest. “Hell, you just don’t blow somebody’s property up and walk away,” Holliday told the Salt Lake Tribune. Holliday and co-owners Gene and Kenny Shumway had built the cabin…
Millions for furniture
Between 1990 and 1992, the Bureau of Land Management in Oregon spent $5.4 million intended for reforestation on staff salaries, new furniture and remodeling buildings, a federal audit reports. Eventually, this misallocation could cost taxpayers up to $200 million from lost timber harvests. The 21-page report also found that since 1990 the Oregon BLM has…
Reading the West
-Reading and writing the West: explorers, adventurers and civilizers’ is the title of an intensive two-week course July 17-29 at the University of Nevada, Reno. Designed for teachers and others who want to learn about Western problems and issues from an interdisciplinary perspective, the course will explore the Truckee River Basin from Lake Tahoe to…
A doomed species?
Spotted owl may be losing its long fight for survival
Northwest forests hit by new lawsuits
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, A doomed species? The fate of Northwest forests has been tied up in the courts since 1987, when the Portland Audubon Society sued the government for failing to address the possible extinction of the northern spotted owl. Although the suit was later thrown out of…
Dear friends
1984 Redux A decade late, High Country News has caught up to George Orwell’s 1984. With the help of a grant from the Surdna Foundation, a team here has begun to create an electronic index and archive of back issues. Almost certainly we will introduce new errors as we transfer information from print to electrical…
Grazing combatants vow to keep feuding
The day after he didn’t get appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt dove back into grazing reform. At a U.S. Senate hearing in Albuquerque, N.M., on May 14, Babbitt told several hundred ranchers and environmentalists that he expects to “stay in the middle of this grazing issue until we work out…
Don’t try to improve grazing; abolish it!
My greatest fear about grazing reform is that it will substitute for substantive reform. The grazing fee will increase from one-quarter to one-half of fair market value, but government will kick back even that increase to those ranchers who talk the range reform talk. The increased fee will go to range developments to mitigate livestock…
Group vows to head off the ‘New West’
GLORIETA, N.M. – About 500 members of People For the West, a Pueblo, Colo., group that supports traditional multiple use of public lands, concluded a three-day conference with vows to become more organized and politically active. Bill Grannell, the executive director and former Washington, D.C., lobbyist for the National Association of Counties, said the goal…
Of buffalo thoughts and amethysts
I’ve grown up and moved away. I live in a city now instead of a little town. My grammar is better, my table manners hardly offend at all and I’ve been seen at art galleries and concerts. Yet still there are people who patronize me when they find out where I grew up. That was…
Old guard may beat new chief
JACKSON, Wyo. – A retired U.S. Forest Service supervisor urged agency personnel to move swiftly to transform an organization that has historically resisted change. Tom Kovalicky, who began his Forest Service career in Wyoming, said that Jack Ward Thomas, the controversial new Forest Service chief, “wants to change bad practices,” but may already be in…
Vandals destroy desert tortoise dens
As a vacation and retirement destination, southwestern Utah boasts a mild year-round climate and the world-famous Zion National Park. It’s also home to the most viable population of the Mojave desert tortoise, a creature threatened with extinction. For years biologists and environmentalists have been studying ways to keep the prehistoric reptile from succumbing to new…
Yellowstone gets new superintendent
In a shuffle of top national park managers, Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Bob Barbee in late May found himself reassigned to the job of director in the agency’s Alaska region. Barbee, who had presided over Yellowstone for 11 years, had just finished building a house near Bozeman, Mont. As superintendent of one of the most…
The Great River becomes a great sewer
FORT HANCOCK, Texas – Red-headed Jimmy Frank Rogers, a junior and an agile receiver on Fort Hancock High’s six-man football team (school enrollment: 102), straddled some spindly salt cedar on the steep banks of the Rio Grande and surveyed what was once the Great River. “I’d guess maybe 20 yards across,” offered Rogers, tugging at…
Low-tech ants give a high-tech Idaho lab fits
It’s nature’s equivalent of David versus Goliath. In this instance David happens to be 7 mm long and Goliath is the U.S. Department of Energy and the scientific community. Their battleground is the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) in southern Idaho where harvester ants are stymieing waste disposal efforts by doing what ants do best…
Gold mines are sucking aquifers dry
ELKO, Nev. – At the Canadian-owned Barrick Goldstrike mine in northeastern Nevada, 30 giant pumps draw 68,000 gallons of water a minute to the surface, 24 hours a day. The pumps have lowered the water table under the open pit mine 1,200 feet. This dewatering keeps the pit bottom, which is now some 800 feet…