Jon Marvel, Hailey, Idaho, architect, founded the Idaho Watersheds Project to target public-lands grazing, but his notoriously in-your-face, confrontational style has roused a lot of controversy along the way.
The Wayward West
A 25,000-acre swath of the last wilderness on Washington state land is now safe from chainsaws (HCN, 6/22/98). Shortly before organizers of the Loomis Forest Fund stepped before the Washington Board of Natural Resources to ask for an extension July 6, in came an anonymous $1.5 million check. The 11th-hour check gave fund raisers the…
DDT doesn’t just fade away
A half century after the National Park Service dumped DDT on the northern part of Yellowstone National Park, traces of the deadly pesticide remain in the ecosystem. Scientists studying cutthroat trout last summer tested fatty tissues of the fish and found DDT – even though it has been banned in this country since 1972, a…
A disaster puts spotlight on pipeline safety
When a pipeline carrying gasoline exploded near a city park in Bellingham, Wash., earlier this summer, it fanned the flames of a battle over a new pipeline proposed for the state. Two 10-year-old boys and an 18-year-old fisherman died when the explosion ripped along Whatcom Creek, scorching 1.5 miles of riverbank and setting one home…
No luck for this lynx
On the morning of June 19, a truck driver hauling road base to the Vail ski expansion reported he had seen what he believed was a squashed Canada lynx on Vail Pass. He had. A radio collar revealed it was a small, two-year-old female, trapped in British Columbia in December and released into Colorado’s San…
Protests proceed at Vail
The White River National Forest near Vail, Colo., was a busy place on the morning of July 1. After a springtime break for the elk calving season, work was scheduled to begin anew on the controversial expansion of the Vail ski area, which will increase the size of North America’s largest ski area by 25…
Wild Rockies Rendezvous
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies knows how to have a meeting. Its 14th Wild Rockies Rendezvous, Sept. 17-19 in the Rattlesnake Mountains at Snowbowl, Missoula, Mont., includes live music along with workshops. The keynote speaker is Martha Marks, president of Republicans for Environmental Protection. Contact Bob Clark, P.O. Box 8731, Missoula, MT 59807 (406/721-5420);…
Water in the West: The Challenge for the Next Century
In February, we told readers that they could acquire Water in the West: The Challenge for the Next Century on CD-ROM. However, just the fortunate few who called before it ran out were successful. Now it is again in stock and available through the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission. Contact them at 303/445-2100; fax…
Weighing artifacts against gold
The Bureau of Land Management has decided that a cyanide heap-leach gold mine in California near Yuma, Ariz., can’t get under way for at least two years. The moratorium was hailed as a victory by opponents of Glamis Imperial Corp., who say the mine would ravage the habitat of threatened desert tortoises and infringe on…
Montana Governor’s Range Tour
Six ranches around the remote town of Jordan will hold the 1999 Montana Governor’s Range Tour, Sept. 8-9, highlighting successful ranch management techniques, such as controlled burning, and growing alternative crops. Contact Jodi Pierson of the Garfield Conservation District at 406/557-2740 or the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation at 406/444-6667. This article appeared…
Life in the dead zone
BUTTE, Mont. – For years, engineers have assumed that the water inside the Berkeley Pit, an abandoned copper mine on the edge of this hillside town, could not support life; the water has the pH of battery acid. Then a few years ago, a curious analytic chemist, William Chatham, noticed a small clump floating on…
Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance
Field trips organized by the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance include a jaunt to see the Snake River Restoration Project and a visit to a natural gas field under development near Pinedale. For a complete schedule, contact Heather Thomas, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, P.O. Box 2728, Jackson, WY 83001 (307/733-9417). This article appeared in the print…
Let’s obey the 1872 Mining Law
Dear HCN, Before launching into my diatribe, I want to thank you for the recent cover story on the history of the Butte mines (HCN, 6/7/99). It ought to be required reading in history classes in Montana public schools. Now, here’s my response to the letter you printed from Battle Mountain Gold’s corporate consigliere (HCN,…
From Como Bluff to Cultural Icon: Our Enduring Fascination with Dinosaurs
While Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen might not be household names, their animation in movies such as Jason and the Argonauts and the original King Kong is memorable. You can see their work at the University of Wyoming’s Art Museum in Laramie, now through Nov. 14, in an exhibit called From Como Bluff to Cultural…
‘Bureaucrabloat’ and other occupational hazards
Dear HCN, Regarding Randolph F. Edwards’ brutal attack on my “dumb poorly drawn cartoon” of park rangers with deformed heads, Mr. Edwards must realize that I doodle from experience. I was a park ranger at Arches National Park for 10 years and the consensus among field rangers (the ones who actually work in the park,…
Politicians talk tough
In mid-July, a billboard suddenly appeared on the boundary of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument, advertising three 40-acre lots at the lip of the 2,000-foot-deep canyon (see page 16). The price? $190,000 each. It’s the latest attempt by real estate developer Tom Chapman to cash in on private land inside protected federal…
Hats off to Stiles
The artful cartoon by Jim Stiles (HCN, 5/24/99) was deeply appreciated by many current and former National Park Service (NPS) rangers who have first-hand knowledge of the extent to which our parks have become increasingly militarized. I worked for the NPS as a seasonal backcountry ranger for six years (1987-92), and consistently received official commendations…
Gambling with the future?
Gambling has been an economic jackpot for a handful of Indian tribes in recent years. But in northern New Mexico, some members of the Taos Pueblo fear that plans to add a five-star resort hotel and casino may bankrupt their tribe. The Taos Pueblo opened the Taos Mountain Casino, its first, two years ago to…
Do low incomes make Montana “poor’?
Dear HCN, My regular economic pen pal, Ed Marston, interprets the economic data in the Claiborne-Ortenberg Foundation’s report Montana: People and the Economy as showing that Montanans live in “poverty,” are “hurting” and “impoverished,” face a “failing” and “weak” economy, and do not live in a “middle-class’ society (HCN, 6/21/99). He concludes that we do…
Poisoning a stream back to life
A plan to poison a 77-mile-long trout stream on Ted Turner’s Flying D Ranch in southwest Montana is raising the hackles of some unlikely critics. The plan is the brainchild of the state of Montana, which hopes it will bolster westslope cutthroat trout populations and ward off a federal listing under the Endangered Species Act.…
Old growth by the numbers
In 1987, foresters on the Clearwater National Forest in north-central Idaho pledged to set aside 10 percent of the Clearwater’s 1.8 million acres in old-growth forest reserves. The agency says it has lived up to that pledge, reserving almost 200,000 acres. Environmentalists in Idaho who have studied the agency’s data say the numbers don’t add…
Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Note: this feature story includes four sidebar articles: Jon Marvel, rancher Brad Little, Land and Water Fund lawyer Laird Lucas, and Air Force pilot and environmentalist Herb Meyr give their perspectives in their own words. SILVER CITY, Idaho – Imagine a silver-haired 52-year-old fellow walking into a saloon in this remote mountain town in the…
The river comes last
Deep in the Wyoming wilderness and high above tree line, glacial cirques collect and funnel pure alpine waters from Cloud Peak’s 13,000-foot summit down to the muddy torrent of the Bighorn River. Draining north into Montana, the river transects the Crow Indian reservation, where it is joined by the Little Bighorn, famous as the site…
‘My response is reasonable’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. JON MARVEL: “I want to destabilize the system we’ve got now, where 20 percent of ranchers in Idaho use public lands they’ve degraded or destroyed. I think my response is reasonable – I’m reacting to large-scale abuse by a tiny group of people. “The…
Tribes find a future in the past
DENVER, Colo. – The students were three men and two women, all members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in Pine Ridge, S.D. Last spring, they enrolled in a new, pilot course at their tribe’s Oglala Lakota College. This class was so unique, the professor said, it was best taught on the prairie. Some of its…
‘Jon Marvel is the wing nut’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Based in Emmett, Idaho, Brad Little is a third-generation sheep and cattle rancher. He has been active in range-reform efforts for more than a decade; this year, he joined the board of directors of High Country News. Recently, he talked about his neighbor Jon…
‘We’re trying to turn up the heat’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Laird Lucas graduated from Yale Law School in 1986, worked for a federal judge, and then went into “high-pressure” litigation at a large San Francisco law firm. He has been with the nonprofit Land and Water Fund in Boise, Idaho, for the last six…
‘I think we can work with ranchers’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. A fisherman and a hunter, Herb Meyr is a retired Air Force pilot in Mountain Home, Idaho, who spends a lot of his time working as a volunteer with groups such as the Idaho Wildlife Council, the Idaho chapter of Foundation for North American…
Dear Friends
Now hear this The half-hour Radio High Country News is expanding. Starting this month, the interview program that takes the West as its beat can be heard in Carbondale, Colo., on KDNK, Mondays at 4:30 p.m.; in Taos, N.M., and Alamosa, Colo., on KRZA, Fridays at 7 p.m.; and in Telluride, Colo., on KOTO, Tuesdays…
The quiet Takings Project is trespassing on democracy
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a modern brick building across Lafayette Park from the White House, on a one-block street called Madison Place, several judicial officers of the United States government are engaged in a … in a … well, in what seems to be a conspiracy to subvert it. Not doing a bad job of…
Heard around the West
A rodeo held in Aurora, Colo., in July attracted 114 gay men and women to compete in he-man stuff like bareback bronc-riding. “We are true to the Western spirit,” said bull rider J.D. Norton in The Denver Post. “We are cowboys and cowgirls, even though we have a different private lifestyle.” Because it’s not professional…
Tom Chapman: A small-town boy who made good
PAONIA, Colo. – Many Westerners see Tom Chapman as a scourge who extracts millions from taxpayers by threatening to develop private land within national parks and wilderness areas. To me, he is just a local Paonia boy who made good. Starting in the 1980s with nothing more than a real estate broker’s license, an ability…