Utah, which once boasted exceptionally rich populations of reptiles and amphibians, now does nothing to stop their rapid disappearance.
River bomber discovered down under
When Ken “Taz” Stoner failed to show in court last March, everyone suspected he had skipped town. Stoner was scheduled to be sentenced for his role as the mastermind behind the destruction of Quartzite Falls, a Class VI rapid in Arizona’s Salt River Canyon Wilderness (HCN, 10/31/94). But, as a federal investigation later discovered, the…
Sierra Club zeroes in on logging
By a 2-to-1 margin, Sierra Club members approved a new policy calling for no commercial logging on public lands. The mail-in vote on the so-called “zero cut” policy represents a major victory for about 2,000 loosely affiliated dissidents in the club known as the John Muir Sierrans. In the months before the vote, they waged…
Beavers land on the hot seat in Idaho
Idaho farmers who suspect beavers are damming water that could be irrigating their fields can call on state officials to throw the beavers out – even when their dams are on private property. Idaho Gov. Phil Batt signed the bill in mid-March. The legislation grew out of a dispute between two groups of property owners…
Ten at risk
10 AT RISK The Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone in Montana and Wyoming is one of the nation’s wildest rivers outside Alaska. It’s also the most endangered, according to American Rivers. For three years running, it’s topped the group’s annual report, North America’s Ten Most Endangered and Threatened Rivers. The reason: Plans for the proposed…
Joyriding kills
Joyriding kills Recklessness and speed apparently killed nine snowmobilers last winter in areas surrounding Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. In all of the past four years, only 10 people died. The recent deaths occurred when riders collided with other snowmobiles or with trees. “Anyone who is able to simply sit on a snowmobile and…
Saved by the hair of a bear
Saved by the hair of a bear This summer when Yellowstone grizzly bears enjoy a nice back-scratch, they could be saving their own hides. Researchers from the Yellowstone Grizzly Foundation will set up triangular corrals of barbed wire at various locations in hopes that the bears will rub against the wire and leave a little…
Wildflowers made easy
WILDFLOWERS MADE EASY If you’ve ever struggled to differentiate between pinnate and palmate vennation or corymb and cyme inflorescence, you’ll be happy to hear there’s a new wildflower guide for botanical novices. Written by G.K. Guennel, a spore and pollen expert, the two-volume Guide to Colorado Wildflowers is remarkably easy to use and includes some…
Rocky Mountain Rendezvous: Renew Yourself in the High Country
Conservationists from around the world will gather in Keystone, Colo., July 7-10, to discuss ecosystem management. The 51st annual conference of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, Rocky Mountain Rendezvous: Renew Yourself in the High Country, features speakers Wainwright Verlarde of the Jicarilla Apache Tribe and Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas. Contact Nancy Herselius…
The heart of a ranch was a coyote
Dear HCN: Sid Goodloe’s reliance upon wild turkeys to keep grasshoppers down and to fluff the forest floor (HCN, 4/15/96) to help it burn reminds me of a similar situation involving coyotes on a mountain ranch near Chiloquin, Ore. Through befriending a coyote they later named Don Coyote, the Dayton Hyde family was led to…
Biodiversity Protection: Implementation and Reform of the Endangered Species Act
Biological diversity and the Endangered Species Act are hot topics and the themes of the University of Colorado School of Law’s 17th Annual Summer Conference, Biodiversity Protection: Implementation and Reform of the Endangered Species Act, June 9-12, in Boulder, Colo. For more information, contact Katherine Taylor, Natural Resources Law Center, Campus Box 401, Boulder, CO…
Encouraging, but no panacea
Dear HCN, The story of Sid Goodloe’s success in rehabilitating degraded Western rangelands is encouraging. If there were more land stewards with his kind of passion, land ethic, and patience, there would be less controversy in the West and elsewhere. But this is not, nor will it ever be the case, for as Ed Marston…
More about saguaros
Dear HCN, Congratulations on the Sid Goodloe story (HCN, 4/15/96), which stuck a cattle prod into conventional narratives. I need to explain my sure-to-be-maligned comments about saguaros. I lump them, properly I think, with “woody” plants. But I do not mean to imply that they, like piûon-juniper, have exploded over the landscape. They have always…
Goodloe did it
Dear HCN, The article about Sid Goodloe (HCN, 4/15/96) and his ranch reconstruction is a real winner: The guy has spent 40 years working and seems to be on the right track. He has actually done something to show how it can be done; the reasoning and understanding that he has developed is amazing. It…
Nothing short of extortion
Dear HCN, I must comment on Ron Selden’s article on the Flathead Indian tribes and the Yellowstone Pipe Line Co. (HCN, 3/4/96). Did Selden ask any questions at all, or was the article written by the tribal spokeswoman? First, I won’t defend Conoco’s spill record – it sounds abysmal. They should be made to pay…
Runaway runway advances at Jackson Hole airport
Despite overwhelming public opposition, Jackson Hole airport officials have decided to push the high-altitude airport’s runway deeper into Grand Teton National park. Airport board members characterized the decision to add 968 feet of pavement to the 6,300-foot-long runway as a compromise. “I’m looking at what is doable,” said airport board member Fred Hibberd. An earlier…
Arizona state land opens for conservation
Arizona environmentalists now have a chance to lease state lands for conservation purposes. As signed by Gov. Fife Symington, the Arizona Preserve Initiative allows conservation groups to lease state lands, estimated at 30,000 acres, within a three-mile radius of all major cities. An earlier bill from Symington proposed to open up over 700,000 acres of…
Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
In the middle of the last century, thirsty pioneers traveling along the Humboldt Trail through Utah knew how to find potable water: If there were snakes and frogs in a spring or pool, it was safe to drink. This method never failed them. When Brigham Young and his plucky tribe of Mormon refugees from persecution…
Frogs: The ultimate indicator species
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion Native frog populations are plummeting all over the world. No one knows exactly why, but there are six prominent possibilities. Destruction of wetlands is one, contamination of water supplies by biocides, pollutants, and acid rain another. A third is…
Open your wallet; visit a national park
It’s 1911 and your grandparents are braving mountain roads to visit the year-old Glacier National Park. The charge: $4 to cover everyone in their black Model T. Now jump ahead to 1996. You’re braving the roads to Glacier as your grandparents did before you. But though your burgundy Volvo station wagon is new, the fee…
There’s plenty of money to study Utah’s game
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion Officials in Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources barely had time to note the news that Dick Carter was mothballing his Utah Wilderness Association before the perennial thorn in their sides was back demanding action on another issue. Carter spent…
Colorado Democrats ponder electability vs. purity
Tom Strickland and Gene Nichol are two 40-something former Texans who have used their law degrees to help the Sierra Club. They live 35 miles apart on Colorado’s Front Range, and they’re applying for the same job – Democratic replacement for retiring Republican Sen. Hank Brown. Most similarities end there. Strickland is a partner with…
Heard Around the West
Ah, spring. Tender new buds of May. Raging rivers. Baseball. Senior prom. And, in at least one Western county, an explosion in teen pregnancies. “Going to the prom does not mean that you have to have sex,” Terrie Guthrie of Campbell County, Wyoming’s Planned Approach to Community Health coalition, pointed out to the Associated Press.…
Wyoming’s Red Desert: 15 million acres of contention
ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. – It was the Friday night before the big event, and the first of 300 conservationists bound for this oil and gas boomtown in southwestern Wyoming had started trickling in. They gathered in a local art gallery, where they snacked on hors d’oeuvres and viewed artwork of the state’s vast Red Desert,…
A Colorado canyon faces an uncertain future
Demaree Canyon, a steep-walled sagebrush and pinon-pine expanse in the Bookcliffs area outside Grand Junction, Colo., could become part of the national wilderness system. Or the wilderness study area might be transformed this summer into a series of natural-gas drilling pads. The small canyon’s fate could set a precedent for how much development can be…
It’s Chase who’s lost in the dark wood
In a Dark Wood: The Fight Over Forests and the Rising Tyranny of Ecology, by Alston Chase, Houghton Mifflin, $29.95. Review by Alan Pistorius Alston Chase’s new book sets out to chronicle the continuing fight between the timber industry and environmentalists over old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest and to determine why, in his view,…
Imagine a West without heroes
Heroes have always come with the West. When Indians blocked homesteaders, the cavalry came. When cattle barons closed the open range, President Cleveland reopened it with the Unlawful Enclosures Act of 1885. When aridity slowed settlement, the Bureau of Reclamation built dams. When Western forests succumbed to flames and cutting, Gifford Pinchot’s Forest Service pledged…
Dear Friends
Woe is Montana Poor Montana. And we aren’t even counting the Freemen extortionists who won’t come out of their rooms. No, the latest slam against the “last best place” comes from a grumpy editor of the (need we say powerful?) New York Times Magazine. James Atlas’ family vacation near Yellowstone and Glacier national parks was…
Salvage rider will destroy sacred sites
When Rip Lone Wolf felt it was time for his 14-year-old son’s vision quest, he did what Oregon’s Nez Perce have done for generations: He headed for the sacred land at Enola Hill. The 350-year-old Douglas fir trees that loom over this part of the Mount Hood National Forest, 45 miles east of Portland, shelter…