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 $13.1 million needed to purchase
development rights to the forest.
Backers of a
Sonoran Desert National Park in southwest Arizona can’t find anyone
in Congress to sponsor the idea (HCN, 3/29/99). The proposed 3.2
million-acre park southeast of Yuma would link the Barry M.
Goldwater Air Force Range, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge
and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. But it requires an act of
Congress, and the Air Force hopes no sponsor steps forward. “When
you come out here and see this, your adrenaline starts pumping. You
just want to drop some bombs,” Air Force Colonel David White told
the Wall Street Journal.
John Leshy, the
Department of Interior’s solicitor, says “a new cadre of leaders’
is on its way to reforming the 1872 Mining Law. Leshy’s optimism
comes after congressional wrangling over a rarely used section of
the law, which limits the acreage mining companies can use as waste
sites (HCN, 5/24/99). Idaho’s Republican Sen. Larry Craig attached
a rider to the Interior Department’s appropriations bill dropping
the limitation. But House Democrats, with strong support from
Republicans, passed a measure countering Craig’s
rider.
Colorado Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse
Campbell earmarked $2 million of the Interior Department’s
appropriations bill for aspen logging in western Colorado forests.
This will more than double timber sales in the region.
Environmentalists say Campbell was doing the bidding of
Louisiana-Pacific Corp., which gave $5,000 to the senator’s 1998
re-election campaign (HCN, 6/22/98).
For two
weeks in mid-June, Yellowstone National Park officials pumped 400
gallons per minute of treated sewage onto a meadow near Fishing
Bridge. Park officials are seeking money from Congress to help with
a $71 million backlog in sewage and water projects. The risk is
“lower than most things because this is treated sewage,”
Yellowstone’s maintenance chief told the Jackson Hole News. “That
doesn’t make it right. This is something that needs to be fixed.”
* Tim Westby
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
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