The Great Basin has often been seen as a wasteland, but now new visions are defining the region.
Dave Foreman sparks wilderness drive
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. “The Great Basin is a landscape that has always called to my soul,” says Dave Foreman. “Nowhere do we see better classic wilderness than in the Great Basin.” A founder and leader of…
Fragmented ecosystems workshop
Doctoring the land A public forum, “Paradigms in Transition: Natural Resources Management in the New Century,” April 11 at Colorado State University will take a multi-disciplinary look at how we manage – and mismanage – natural resources. “We need to educate land stewards like doctors,” says forum coordinator Rick Knight. “They need to be able…
Are the feds land-grabbers?
Are the feds land-grabbers? According to a federal report, agencies such as the Forest Service, BLM and National Park Service manage 34 million acres more today than than they did in 1964. But that’s only if you exclude Alaska, where 112 million acres left federal control due to statehood land promises and treaties with native…
Little town blues
Little town blues Does anything good come out of rapid growth? The trend toward urbanization of the rural West is the theme of “Community Values, Change, Growth and Quality of Life,” a May 10 symposium in western Colorado’s Glenwood Springs. Speakers include Daniel Kemmis, mayor of Missoula, Raye Ringholz, author of Little Town Blues –…
Love your grandmother
Love your Grandmother A grassroots group called Grandmother’s Friends wants help in barring chainsaws from a roadless area called Grandmother Mountain in northern Idaho’s panhandle. A proposed timber sale would cut 7.8 million board-feet out of the wilderness 50 miles northwest of Moscow. “The area contains some very scenic and diverse habitats that wildlife depend…
Utah escapes missiles
Utah escapes missiles The U.S. Army has decided not to proceed with a plan to launch ballistic missiles from Green River, Utah, and shoot them down over the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The decision, announced March 21, “is great news for southern Utah,” says Scott Groene, an attorney with the Southern Utah…
In their footprints
In their footprints When they mysteriously disappeared from the Southwest some 700 years ago, Anasazi Indians left behind intricate ruins and painted or pecked designs on rock as powerful testimony to their civilization. The desert also preserved a more fragile reminder – sandals woven from yucca leaves, in which the footprints of the wearers are…
Blow-up over nuclear dump
Blow-up over nuclear dump Nevadans have tried for years to convince the rest of the country that Yucca Mountain, 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is a poor choice for the nation’s only permanent nuclear-waste dump. Now they have some powerful allies. Federal scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory recently disclosed an internal debate about…
Unranchers get competitive
Unranchers get competitive When Forest Guardians leased four parcels of New Mexico state land in February, it became the first environmental group to win permits always granted to ranchers. The permits, encompassing 2,078 acres north of Santa Fe, were non-controversial because they have not been leased by ranchers for seven years, says Forest Guardian Director…
The wolf wasn’t guilty
The wolf wasn’t guilty The wolf shot in late January in central Idaho did not kill the calf it was feeding on, says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In a letter to Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R, acting regional director Thomas Dwyer said veterinary pathologists who examined the calf concluded that the animal died…
Fires make public property walk off
FIRES MAKE PUBLIC PROPERTY WALK OFF Dear HCN, Forest fires do indeed cost a lot of money (HCN, 3/6/95). Although it is a drop in the bucket compared to leasing a heavy helicopter, one simple way to cut costs would be to prevent theft. Last fall, I’m disgusted to say, I was involved with a…
Don’t give up fish for pennies
DON’T GIVE UP FISH FOR PENNIES Dear HCN, In my 40-odd years of fishing for trout, steelhead and salmon, I have always had reason to smile, even on bad days. But this year, Idaho fishermen have nothing to be happy about. We have been sold out for $1.23 per year. The National Marine Fisheries Service…
BLM accepts eco-challenge
BLM accepts Eco-Challenge While being videotaped from a helicopter, 50 teams of five competitors each will race through the heart of southern Utah’s canyon country this April. Although 85 percent to 90 percent of the 700 comments received opposed the scheme, the Bureau of Land Management recently gave its approval, with conditions, to the Eco-Challenge…
Writing after Thoreau
WRITING AFTER THOREAU “In the Thoreau Tradition III” brings together writers William Kittredge, Terry Tempest Williams and Linda Hogan in Missoula, Mont., May 4-7. They’ll join 11 others to talk about the nature of the American West and cross-cultural humor, among other topics. Sponsors include Hellgate Writers, the University of Montana, and the Center for…
Doctoring the land
Doctoring the land A public forum, “Paradigms in Transition: Natural Resources Management in the New Century,” April 11 at Colorado State University will take a multi-disciplinary look at how we manage – and mismanage – natural resources. “We need to educate land stewards like doctors,” says forum coordinator Rick Knight. “They need to be able…
At home in the wasteland
Note: this feature article is one of several in this special issue about the Great Basin. The Great Basin can be seen as the geography of hopelessness. Wallace Stegner might roll over in his grave at this turn of phrase. But at the twilight of the 20th century, the Great Basin is still a social,…
The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity
Note: this feature article is one of several in this special issue about the Great Basin. The landscape casts a rhythmic spell in the Great Basin. You feel it driving Highway 50 across Nevada. Grinding up a steep grade to the summit. Seeing a broad valley, and more mountains, one range after another, like waves…
Unlikely reformer: Can sinful Las Vegas help change the West?
The way people gamble, it’s no wonder casino owners in Las Vegas build thousands of new hotel rooms a year. Take the man next to me at the roulette wheel in a run-down casino whose three-story marquee announced, “Where the locals play.” He was betting his Social Security check on a system based on his…
Scientists search for biological treasures
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. The story of change in the Great Basin is written on the landscape. The tectonic forces that shaped the land can be seen in the twisted layers of rock that rise abruptly from…
Dear friends
A special issue Longtime readers will notice that this edition of the paper is fatter than usual by 12 pages and written primarily by one person, Jon Christensen, who covers the vast Great Basin as our regional editor. This special issue has been many months in the making, and Jon joined staff in Paonia for…
Pack ’em in, Park Service suggests
After four years of studying how to limit the impact of tourists at Grand Canyon National Park, the National Park Service is suddenly in a rush to support more tourists. In the park’s long-awaited general management plan and environmental impact statement, released March 10 for quick public comment, the Park Service proposes developments such as…
A bitter rancher and a failed compromise
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. Great Basin National Park was born compromised. Established in 1986, the park covers 120 square miles of the Snake Range, centered on Wheeler Peak near the border of Nevada and Utah. It is…
County commissioner courts bloodshed
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. Dick Carver barnstorms the West telling crowds of ranchers how he faced down an armed federal agent to open a road in the Toiyabe National Forest. “We’re going to bring the power of…
Folk hero has a pure white vision
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. The fight against the MX missile was a turning point in the Great Basin, the first time the region said a resounding “no” to a major federal pork-barrel project. The Great Basin MX…
Activist seeks a green, just Nevada
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. Bob Fulkerson is a fifth-generation Nevadan and environmental activist who should be on top of the world. He could be coasting on victories he helped bring about, including the end of underground nuclear…
Learning from Las Vegas
Note: this feature article is one of several in this special issue about the Great Basin. Time magazine ran a cover story last year hailing Las Vegas as “The New All-American city.” The benediction signaled transformation for what, after all, had been considered Sin City only a few decades ago. In 1994, Las Vegas also…
Timber theft detectives feel a chill
In 1993, investigations by the Forest Service’s elite Timber Theft Task Force led to eight felony convictions and $3.5 million in fines, including the largest timber prosecution in U.S. history against an Oregon-based timber-scaling company (HCN, 8/23/93). The following year, the task force failed to produce a single prosecution, despite abundant evidence that people were…
Salt Lake City: Is this still the place?
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Learning from Las Vegas, in a special issue about the Great Basin. “This is the place,” Brigham Young proclaimed when he first saw the Salt Lake Valley. To the Mormon leader it seemed a divinely inspired refuge for his persecuted Latter-day Saints. These…
Congress pushes unfettered salvage logging
A measure that forces the Forest Service to nearly double the timber harvest on national forests over the next two years is buzzing through Congress. The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the controversial amendment to the appropriations recision bill 275-150. Now it heads to the Senate where environmentalists hope to extricate the so-called Taylor-Dicks…
Back to the past: House resets pollution laws
This is not a good time to be an environmentalist in Washington. With House Republicans scrambling to meet their self-imposed deadline of voting in the party’s Contract With America by the Easter recess, some of the most anti-environmental bills in the history of environmental legislation have blasted through the House of Representatives. This is also…
Elko is halfway home
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Learning from Las Vegas, in a special issue about the Great Basin. With the help of its annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering, which brings up to 10,000 visitors here each January, Elko clings to its image as the last cowtown even as a gold…
After the gold rush
Miners have many ways of turning rock into metal – brute force, corrosive chemicals, high heat and extreme pressure. Likewise, environmentalists are discovering there is more than one way to transform the West’s most refractory industry. Mining has fiercely resisted change since it was first given free license to pillage the mineral riches of a…
A tale of two ranches
Note: this feature article is one of several in this special issue about the Great Basin. For Tony and Jerrie Tipton, a couple in their 40s who live in a trailer and run cattle on public land in the Toiyabe Mountains of central Nevada, it is the best of times. For their neighbor Paul Inchauspe,…
No final solutions for farmers
Note: this feature article is one of several in this special issue about the Great Basin. “IRRIGATED HOMESTEAD LANDS. Now Open to Entry. THE LAND is FREE. Water Rights furnished by the U.S. Reclamation Service. Water Supply under the Great Lahontan Reservoir is permanent and assured.” Many families and businesses in the town of Fallon…
Surprises of Sovereignty
Note: this feature article is one of several in this special issue about the Great Basin. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Indian Reservation, 30 miles northeast of Reno, seems a perfect setting for a resort. The turquoise lake shimmers amid desert mountains at the end of the Truckee River. Earlier in this century, tourists and sports…
Reno turns back to the river
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Learning from Las Vegas, in a special issue about the Great Basin. “The Truckee River is the lifeblood of northern Nevada,” says photographer Peter Goin, an art professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. “Yet look at how we treat it. We treat…