The story of whirling disease in Western trout is a story of human “improvement on nature” gone wrong.
Parks may get control of their air
In an effort to maintain the peace and quiet national parks are known for, Rep. David Skaggs, D-Colo., has introduced a bill giving the Park Service more control over who flies over its lands. His National Park Scenic Overflights Concessions Act gives power to the secretary of the Interior and the Park Service to regulate…
Judge cracks down on Idaho – again
Two years after a federal judge ordered the Forest Service to remove outfitter structures from the Frank Church/River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho, the agency has been hit with a motion for contempt of court. Filed recently by Wilderness Watch in Montana, the suit contends the agency has been lax in forcing outfitters…
Hess and Holechek were wrong on grazing
Dear HCN, The Esmeralda County Public Lands Advisory Committee is concerned with an article by Karl Hess and Jerry Holechek (HCN, 7/24/95) published in High Country News, because we find that some of your information is exaggerated, misleading or in error. This commission even contacted the BLM and Forest Service with requests to determine from…
A teensy addition
Dear HCN, I have been reading your latest issue and, as always, enjoying the heck out of it. I do have one request: You refer to your “1 million-square-mile beat.” So what would be the harm in a teensy addition? The California Sierras. They are (1) high; they are (2) West. Thank you in advance…
Block that myth
Dear HCN, Soon, we’ll be deafened by the whining of corporate loggers bemoaning federal Judge Carl Muecke’s recent order halting logging until the Forest Service develops an overall plan in Arizona and New Mexico to save the Mexican spotted owl (HCN, 9/4/95). Why sacrifice the jobs for a little bird, they insist indignantly. First of…
Speedy action on telescopes ultimately harmed project
Dear HCN, One point which was not clear to your readers regarding the Mount Graham story (HCN, 7/24/95) was that the scientific justification for all three of the proposed telescopes on Mount Graham was tragically unclear to a Congress accustomed to legislating by riders. Look at Congress’ current rash of riders used to legislate major…
Some rocks need a makeover
Dear HCN, I am very disappointed that High Country News, just as many other newspapers, has fallen for the news releases of Rep. Jack Metcalf, R-Wash., regarding rock “painting” on national forest lands along Stevens Pass Scenic Byway, as portrayed in your Barb (HCN, 8/21/95). You need to check the facts. The rocks were to…
Rhetoric redefined
Dear HCN, Confused by the rhetoric of the “Wise Use” movement? Here’s a handy translation: Like the dinosaurs, it’s a species that just can’t adapt. The species in question can’t leap over dams, thrive on freeways, or make a living in a cow pasture. Playground for Easterners. Any place in the Western United States used…
Save invective for the trash can
Dear HCN, John Dougherty’s examination of the circuitous events surrounding the University of Arizona’s Mount Graham International Observatory project (HCN, 7/24/95) was very informative. I was appalled, however, by the quote from Robin Silver (The Southwest Center for Biological Diversity) that administrators and researchers supporting this project are “whores.” Such malicious rhetoric is counterproductive to…
Cows aren’t bad, they’re terrible
Dear HCN, I appreciated the issue on recreational impacts, but have a question regarding Mindy Sandler’s essay on her experiences as a wilderness ranger (HCN, 9/4/95). Being a former backcountry ranger myself, and having noticed an increase in litter, fire rings, etc., in my wanderings this summer, I read her account with some interest. Sadly,…
Restoring a watershed
RESTORING A WATERSHED As part of a cooperative effort to restore Idaho and Washington’s polluted Spokane-Coeur d’Alene watershed, the Sierra Club has created a colorful map of the drainage. The region needs help: mining has left pollution and aquifer contamination; logging and farming have eroded soil. The group’s advice includes cleaning up mine wastes, preventing…
Inside the glitter
INSIDE THE GLITTER Carmen Rios: My mother had 16 kids, 12 of us are still living, and she worked outside the house too! So we’re used to working. Carmen Rios, 21, is a bus girl and occasional hostess in Reno, Nev., where she often puts in double shifts. You can learn about her life, and…
Protecting the coho
In a long-awaited announcement, the National Marine Fisheries Service has proposed to list coho salmon as a threatened species in Oregon and California, though not in Washington. “Pacific salmon are in serious trouble,” said regional fisheries director William Stelle, in The Oregonian. “This is a wakeup call to the region.” If listed under the Endangered…
Start with belief
START WITH BELIEF Caring for Creation is full of academic jargon, but it makes an important point: Our high-consumption, unlimited-growth society is heading toward eco-crisis. How can we persuade enough people to question their lives and care for creation? To convince someone to adopt a new belief, you have to start with something that person…
Landslide kills fish, raises questions
A thunderstorm near Idaho City, Idaho, Aug. 22 washed out dozens of streams and altered the course of the Boise River, obliterating some native fish populations. The rain fell on a watershed which burned in 1994 and which is being logged this summer as part of the Boise National Forest’s “Boise River Wildfire Recovery Project.”…
Report blasts land giveaways
Report blasts land giveaways Following recent congressional proposals that would divvy up millions of acres of federal land among states and private interests, the Natural Resources Defense Council released a report charging that such measures would “impoverish the nation.” NRDC outlines what it calls an assault on public lands: budget resolutions allowing the sale of…
DIA hears from some critics
Because of a late plane coming from Denver International Airport, a standing-room-only crowd of 150 waited nearly two hours at an air summit meeting in Grand Junction, Colo., for DIA officials to show. Once over the Rockies, DIA reps heard a list of woes from regional airport managers: sky-high fares, unreliable service and bumped ticket-holders…
Tools for road-rippers
Tools for road-rippers It’s simple, they say: If you want more wilderness, get rid of forest roads. Since l990, Keith Hammer has published a scrappy guide on how to legally close and restore forest roads. He’s his own best success story. Hammer has hounded officials of Montana’s Flathead National Forest to commit to closing and…
Company slips through president’s noose
When President Bill Clinton ordered a two-year moratorium on mining claims on 19,000 acres of federally owned land surrounding Yellowstone National Park, environmentalists cheered. The order did not prevent Crown Butte Mine Inc. of Canada from pursuing its plans to dig for gold and other metals on its already leased claim just northeast of the…
Greater Yellowstone Predators: Ecology and Conservation in a Changing Landscape
Wolves, mountain lions and martens will be among the animals discussed by scientists at the Yellowstone National Park conference, Greater Yellowstone Predators: Ecology and Conservation in a Changing Landscape, Sept. 24-27. For information contact the Yellowstone Association, P.O. Box 117, Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine…
Another judge says no
It reads as predictably as a Harlequin romance: Rejected by the judiciary, the University of Arizona has rushed into the arms of its political allies. On July 31, for the third time in a year, a federal court shut down the university’s plan to build its $60 million Large Binocular Telescope outside an area on…
Writing the Lives of Southwestern Flora and Fauna
Writers, editors and folklorists will lead a workshop, Oct. 8-10, titled Writing the Lives of Southwestern Flora and Fauna, at Brown Canyon in Arizona’s Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. For information call 520/822-2053 or 520/822-5198. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Writing the Lives of Southwestern Flora and…
Williams almost gets his wilderness
Although Rep. Pat Williams, D-Mont., has never slipped a Montana wilderness bill past an unfriendly Senate, the White House has given him a temporary victory. Williams announced Aug. 23 that an administrative order from Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman will stop development on 1.7 million acres of roadless national forest in Montana. The order establishes a…
Sheep Country
Sheep territory stretches from Florida to Alaska, and now there’s a trade magazine for the 100,000 people in all 50 states who raise the animals. For a sample copy of Sheep Country, contact Janice Grauberger at the magazine’s publisher, the American Sheep Industry Association, 6911 S. Yosemite St., Englewood, CO 80112-1414 (303/771-3500). This article appeared…
Powerlines prove fatal
Even the protected confines of Yellowstone National Park aren’t safe for grizzly bears. Park visitors Aug. 23 found three male grizzlies electrocuted by a downed powerline in the park’s Hayden Valley. The two adults and one adolescent grizzly were probably killed at different times during the previous two weeks when they touched the live powerlines.…
Challenging Federal Ownership and Management: Public Lands and Public Benefits
Are people best served by keeping public lands in federal hands? That and other questions will be aired at the University of Colorado School of Law conference, Challenging Federal Ownership and Management: Public Lands and Public Benefits, to be held Oct. 11-13. Registration is $425 before Oct. 3 and $475 thereafter. Contact the Natural Resources…
10th Annual Wild Rockies Rendezvous
Salvage logging and grizzly bears take center stage at the 10th annual Wild Rockies Rendezvous, Sept. 29 – Oct. 1, sponsored by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. Speakers include John Weaver, leader of the federal grizzly bear team, Hank Fischer, from Defenders of Wildlife, and Seth Diamond, Intermountain Forest Industries. Contact the Alliance for…
An Easterner ponders the West’s alleged wildness
This is a mea culpa. Sorta. A few months ago I published a long piece in The Atlantic Monthly. An excerpt from a forthcoming book, it argued that the forests of the Appalachian spine had recovered much further than people realize – that even the wolf and the mountain lion had begun to return. The…
The West’s fisheries spin out of control
It’s gotten to the point that even car dealers sell trout fishing. Their customers tool around the Rockies in four-wheel-drives named after a famous flyrod – the Jeep Cherokee special Orvis edition. Sticker price $33,000. All the fishing shops, from Bozeman to Taos, offer the latest gear: microporous miracle waders whose fibers somehow breathe underwater,…
Heard around the West
The national forests are lands of many uses, but not all uses are created equal. Every once in a while, one use trumps another. On the Helena National Forest recently, 22 Herefords drank too deeply from an arsenic-laced tailings pond at an abandoned mine near Helena, Mont. Fearful lest the dead cows poison bears and…
Dear friends
On to Wyoming As hunters in camouflage toting bows and muzzleloaders converged on western Colorado in early September, the HCN staff worked overtime preparing for the 25th anniversary of the paper, in Lander, Wyo. We’ll have a report in the next issue on the celebration and Western conversation. Meanwhile, to readers that included rancher Jake…
Don’t worry: Have a Kokopelli day
“It’s a Kokopelli kind of day,” a Coldwater Creek catalog announced in a T-shirt ad. “Spirit lifting, mischief-making Kokopelli is here to remind you not to take life so seriously …” No thanks. I’ll pass on buying the “buffalo on an eco-friendly tee,” the Comanche bow and arrow, the Tapiz range belt, or the petroglyph…
Out of a Hispanic valley: kosher beef
For the Valdez family, ranching in Conejos County – a poor, rural, largely Hispanic and Catholic area of southern Colorado – hasn’t changed much since their ancestors settled there five generations ago. Except that Olive and Demetrio Valdez are now reading a book on Judaism that explains the Kashrut, the Jewish rules governing a kosher…
‘Pocahontas’ is a mean-spirited lie
I really didn’t want to do it. But since the national media has made such to do about it – and as an American Indian journalist – I feel it is necessary to get my two cents into the hype. People magazine displayed its special brand of ignorance with a cutline under the photo of…
The USDA flexes its antitrust muscle
The Farmer’s Union is not the only organization concerned about the concentration of a few companies in the meatpacking industry. The Department of Agriculture recently charged IBP Inc., one of the nation’s largest meatpackers, with breaking antitrust laws by guaranteeing higher prices to one group of Kansas feedlot operators. The same agreement was never offered…
Economist discovers what a free river is worth
If the two aging dams on the Elwha River in Washington state come tumbling down, salmon will return to 70 miles of the river for the first time since 1911. What’s that worth in dollars and cents? You can’t put a price tag on Mother Earth – or can you? John Loomis, an economist at…
Can sheep and coyote ever coexist?
Finding a niche has never been a problem for the coyote. The wily predator thrives in dense forests, bone-dry deserts and even cities, despite more than a century of human persecution. Taking a cue from the coyote, a scrappy coalition of conservationists, biologists, entrepreneurs and ranchers in Montana is trying to claw its way into…