New Commissioner of Reclamation Dan Beard seeks to make his agency more environmentally sensitive.
Feds flex their muscles
Federal attorneys fired a warning shot March 8 at county governments in the West trying to assert control of public lands. Justice Department lawyers sued rural Nye County, Nev., where local officials have harassed federal land managers. In one instance, Nye County commissioners threatened Bureau of Land Management staff trying to enforce grazing regulations. In…
Wolves feel the urge
In a promising sign for the effort to restore the ecosystem of Yellowstone National Park, wolves imported in January are already trying to breed. Although the 14 wolves shipped from Canada to Yellowstone are still cooped up in one-acre pens in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley, rangers have observed male wolves attempting to mount female wolves. Biologists…
How to nominate an environmental innovator
Hoping to galvanize the environmental movement in the United States, one of the biggest philanthropic organizations in the world began five years ago to give money directly to the country’s best and brightest conservationists. It’s the Pew Charitable Trust’s Pew Scholars Program, which so far has doled out 50 grants of $150,000 to people from…
Our hot legacy
OUR HOT LEGACY “Where and how will we treat and dispose of the backlog of wastes from nuclear weapons production? How clean is clean? Should we exhume large volumes of contaminated soil in order to allow for unlimited use of the land in the future? To foster a sustained and informed public debate on these…
You can’t cut them all
The Forest Service drastically overestimated the number of trees it could cut from Northwest forests, according to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The GAO found that the Forest Service exaggerated allowable sale quantities for three of the most productive forests in the region – the Deschutes, Gifford Pinchot and Mount Hood.…
Gambling with small towns
In three Colorado mountain towns where gambling has been allowed since 1990, four out of 10 residents would now like to move out, according to a study by the University of Colorado. Knocking on every door, researchers found that residents want to take flight because of the rapid and drastic changes in their communities. Although…
Tales from the West
The in-laws are a steady, insistent, increasingly frantic chorus of disapproval over her plans. But, Mary! How can you expect to go to college and take good care of a husband and a baby? Finally, We’re going to put our foot down! She knows that somehow she has got to extricate herself from these sappy…
Governor shoots wolf bounty bill
Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer, a newly elected Republican, recently vetoed a bill that would have placed a $1,000 bounty on wolves shot outside Yellowstone National Park. The legislation would have authorized payment to hunters who shoot wolves outside the park and offered free legal defense for the hunters if prosecuted by federal agencies (HCN, 1/23/95).…
Telling the truth is hard but necessary
Dear HCN: The February 20 High Country News article about the Idaho salmon lawsuit painted a misleading picture. The issues are not about minor legal technicalities, nor gaps between urban and rural folks. The court’s slam-dunk decision was the result of the continued failure of the Forest Service to follow the law and protect dwindling…
Not the whole story
Anti-environmental anger in northeastern Oregon captured headlines last year when Joseph residents hung in effigy activists Ric Bailey and Andy Kerr (HCN, 11/14/94). But according to a recent survey, 58 percent of the residents in the Hells Canyon region believe “the region’s natural environment should be protected even if this means that some people will…
Bigoted drivel
Dear HCN, We read the “Waaaaaahh” essay you published on the back page of HCN Feb. 20, and found it beyond insulting and beneath contempt. It made us sad to see you endorse such sweeping cruel generalizations and obvious vulgar innuendo. Sadder that it appeared just when polarizations and lack of trust over wolf, water…
Mescaleros now vote yes
Reversing themselves, members of New Mexico’s Mescalero Apache Tribe voted “yes’ for storage of high-level nuclear waste on the reservation. The March 9 vote was 593-372 for accepting highly radioactive waste, compared to a 490-362 vote in late January against it (HCN, 2/20/95). The project would store up to 40,000 tons of lead-encased spent fuel…
Taking our time, too
Dear HCN, If the concept of “takings’ is to be a part of our way of life, then the concept should extend to population growth. Increased traffic congestion resulting from population growth could, for example, cause a person to spend an extra half-hour a day commuting to and from work; added up over a working…
Counties can’t “take back’ federal land
Dear HCN, County officials throughout the West are talking about “taking back the land” by abolishing the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service. Last year we began hearing a legal argument that New Mexico was denied statehood on an “equal footing” with the original 13 states, contrary to the U.S. Constitution. This old theory…
Agency kills wolf by mistake
While the federal government was spending millions of dollars restoring wolves to central Idaho, one of its agencies was killing a wolf nearby. The federal Animal Damage Control program accidentally killed one of the endangered wolves in a coyote trap near Priest River, Idaho, in early February. The trap was an M-44, a baited, spring-loaded…
One-size-fits-all environmentalism can be disastrous
Dear HCN, Last summer I spent several days in Salmon, Idaho, as part of my research on the human dimensions of ecosystem management. I expected to hear the same sort of petulant threat-mongering that Jon Margolis mocked – something I’ve heard increasingly often in my years of listening to the voices of the rural West…
R.S. 2477 detoured again
The Department of the Interior has delayed for a third time its deadline for resolving a dispute over an outdated law known as R.S. 2477. In 1866, it granted rights-of-way to rural counties for roadbuilding across public lands in the West. When it was repealed in 1976, pre-existing claims were grandfathered in, creating a flurry…
Three provocative essays
Dear HCN, The Feb. 20 HCN had three very provocative opinions expressed on its back pages. I was startled, however, by Ray Rasker’s comments which followed “Education … is an important determinate to individual success …” He meant that old-timers need to become educated, which is true. I had assumed that he was going to…
Life among the ruins
A subdivision in southwestern Colorado encourages buyers to build homes closely around the ruins of ancient Anasazi dwellings. California developer Archie Hanson bought 1,200 acres of the archaeologically rich land after visiting the area just six miles east of Mesa Verde National Park, near Cortez, Colo. Now he’s offering 31 “Indian Camp” lots of about…
Don’t give up
Dear HCN, During the last 15 years of my 27 years as a fish and wildlife biologist, I came to realize that good range conservationists in the Bureau of Land Management can do more for our public lands than all other disciplines combined. For reader-clarity sake: A “good” range con is one who constantly and…
Reward offered in rampage of eagle poaching
Federal agents suspect that a slew of eagle-poaching incidents in southeast Idaho is linked to the lucrative illegal wildlife trade. Fifteen dead golden eagles have been found in the last two weeks in wetlands on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation. Since December 1992, 41 dead golden eagles have been found in southeast Idaho. All the…
Slash and burn
Many good, green guys and gals were blown away Nov. 8, and bills now in Congress would block environmental regulation through “takings” analyses that elevate property rights above the public good. But legitimate fears should not blind the environmental community to new opportunities for positive change. Voters also blew out deadwood and shook the foundations…
The fight for Reclamation
When John McPhee, in Encounters with the Archdruid, rides down the Colorado River with Floyd Dominy, the bullheaded Commissioner of Reclamation during the 1950s and 1960s, and David Brower, Dominy plunges into the Lava Falls rapid with a cigar clenched between his teeth. Doused by the maelstrom, the cigar, minutes later, glows again: McPhee’s sly…
Forest’s real estate urge goes year-round
The Gunnison National Forest in western Colorado is involved in another hot access question. The last access dispute – with developer Tom Chapman – resulted in a land trade that thus far has given Chapman a $2 million profit (HCN, 1/23/95). That trade was made over strenuous objections from residents of the ski town of…
Dams were built on breathless prose
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. To have a deep blue lake Where no lake was before Seems to bring man A little closer to God. A sweet breeze Across deep water The campfire’s glow Day’s end Peace – From Lake Powell: Jewel of the…
Grand Canyon flood postponed
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. Biologists and Colorado River raft guides alike thought it was a sure thing: For one week in the spring of 1995, floodwaters from Glen Canyon Dam would roar through the Grand Canyon as they hadn’t since the high water summer…
One project seems like the same old BuRec
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. Although the Bureau of Reclamation says it is now a water-conserver, and not a dam-builder, one ghost from the past continues to linger. Southwestern Colorado’s Animas-La Plata water diversion project, first approved by Congress in 1968, is still slated for…
So far, it is the rivers of the region that have suffered
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. So far, it is the rivers of the region that have suffered the greatest change in canyon country. This is not the fault of Major John Wesley Powell, a largely self-taught naturalist, geologist and ethnologist. Powell went on to organize…
Dear Friends
Spring visitors Two roving college classes each spent several hours at High Country News listening to talks about the West and asking questions about this nonprofit newspaper. They wanted to know how to cover a vast area with no staff, and in particular, more about Glen Canyon Dam, which both groups had just toured. By…
Counties may shrink Utah wilderness
On a frozen night in mid-February, about 300 people crammed into an art gallery in Salt Lake City for an old-fashioned rally. While writer Terry Tempest Williams spoke about the need for wild places, a jar was passed among the crowd until it was stuffed with bills; sign-up sheets were filled with names of people…
Study or preserve: Ideals collide at Arizona park
ORACLE, Ariz. – Before she died in 1976, Lucille Kannally willed her ranch here to the Defenders of Wildlife, on the condition that the national environmental group preserve the 4,000-acre patch of desert foothills as wildlife habitat. But the group later handed off the ranch to a government agency, Arizona State Parks, which now plans…
Soft energy may shred Wyoming raptors
CARBON COUNTY, Wyo.- Bruce Morley stands on Foote Creek Rim, the high ridge he hopes to cover with a forest of wind turbines, and eyes the brown haze from a power plant 150 miles away. “Every month this project would generate as much power as a coal train a mile long,” says Morley, raising his…
You say you want to cut government spending? Kick off cows
Dear Congress: Since you say you want to stop wasteful federal spending, I am writing to alert you to what’s going on at the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, where, in 1990, they spent $52 million more managing livestock than they collected in fees. Part of the problem is that the current…