Endangered chinook salmon have put the brakes on a
new traffic light at a dangerous intersection in Puyallup, Wash.
Because the light will be funded with federal money, the city must
complete a biological assessment to determine if construction will
harm salmon or other wildlife. Nearby resident Pam Bott told AP a
two-month delay is tolerable, but added, “I hope I’m not one of the
people involved in an accident at that corner.”
Traffic in Idaho’s Salmon
River has increased to a trickle. In August, two male sockeye
salmon swam from the Pacific Ocean up the Columbia and Snake rivers
to the headwaters of the Salmon. Both were reared in a captive
breeding program and released near the Sawtooth Hatchery in Idaho
in 1998. Last year, only one sockeye made the trip (HCN,
8/3/98).
Elk and bison can
migrate north out of Yellowstone National Park this winter. In late
August, the federal government and the Church Universal and
Triumphant completed phase two of a deal that will give the Forest
Service 9,000 acres of winter range on the Royal Teton Ranch near
Gardiner (HCN, 3/15/99). In recent winters, the state of Montana
shot bison that wandered onto the
ranch.
The Bureau of Land
Management will have to pick up the pace when it comes to taking
cows and sheep off damaged rangelands. On Aug. 20, the 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals told the agency that when livestock are damaging
grasslands, national rules require it to change grazing practices
no later than the start of the next grazing season. “It’s amazing
that the BLM has to have the second-highest level of the federal
court tell it that its own regulations mean what they say,” said
Jon Marvel of the Idaho Watersheds Project, the group that sued the
agency over the rules (HCN,
8/2/99).
Cows are quietly
coming off the range in southern Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park.
The Grand Canyon Trust teamed up with the Park Service in August to
buy out the 11,688-acre Cathedral Grazing Allotment, removing the
last cows from the northern part of the park. The trust’s Bill
Hedden called the buy-out “a small but historic deal.”
* Greg Hanscom
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
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