From the stale world of coffee-table books, Stone Canyons of the Colorado Plateau offers a jolt of caffeine. The quality of the reproductions is top-notch and the text is worth reading, though this is hardly surprising given photographer Jack Dykinga and writer Charles Bowden, both of Tucson. Their subject is the slickrock country of southern […]
Books
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
No more cheap thrills
How much should we pay to play in the great outdoors? More than we do now, say government auditors. A report by the federal General Accounting Office finds that the Forest Service loses millions of dollars each year by not charging enough to private and commercial recreationists. Investigators say the outdated permit fees charged to […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
An unabashed green’s snapshot of Northwest forest activism
Tree Huggers: Victory, Defeat, and Renewal in the Northwest Ancient Forest Campaign Kathie Durbin. Seattle, Washington: The Mountaineers Books, 1996. 303 pages, illus.; foreword by Charles Wilkinson. $24.95 hardcover. In 1993, Northwest environmentalists were fractured over President Clinton’s Northwest forest plan. While the plan seemed to save millions of acres of old-growth forests, Clinton wanted […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
This trip’s to the pits
It’s not exactly the Grand Canyon, but your next Arizona vacation could include the enormous crater of an open-pit copper mine. ASARCO Inc. ow offers bus tours of its Mission Mine near Tucson, hauling visitors to an overlook of the two-mile-long, 13’4-mile-wide hole deep enough to hide a 100-story building. Tourists can also see “the […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
The houses that HUD built
On the Tulalip Indian Reservation in Washington state, taxpayers’ money administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development built a 5,300-square-foot home for a couple making $92,000 a year. That mansion soon became a symbol of excess for a five-part Seattle Times series in December documenting tribal housing scandals. Because of deregulation of […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Go native
Native plants are enjoying a new celebrity with Western gardeners, landscapers and conservationists. But just what makes a plant a native? Art Kruckeberg, a botanist at the University of Washington and a founder of the Washington Native Plant Society, says the short answer is this: Natives are plants that were here before European contact. The […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Alien invasions
The aliens have landed and they’re killing the natives. It may sound like the plot of a bad movie, but it’s real life: Alien species threaten the survival of native plants and animals across the country. In the report, America’s Least Wanted, The Nature Conservancy has named the 12 most threatening invaders of our nation’s […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Private boaters unite
After witnessing one wrangle too many between private and commercial boaters in the Grand Canyon, Tom Martin decided to take action. This winter he formed the Grand Canyon Private Boaters Association, a counterpart to the nonprofit group for professionals, the Grand Canyon River Guides. “The park seems to know what it wants and Grand Canyon […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Whose West is it?
Developers, planners, attorneys and conservationists will talk about urban and rural land development at the sixth annual conference on land use, sponsored by the Denver-based Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute, March 13-14. High Country News publisher Ed Marston will debate what’s happening to the economy and culture of the New West with William Perry Pendley, […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
When parks close, towns lose
For Nevada fishing guide Jim Goff, who works at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, last winter’s government shutdown cost him a lot of money. “The first week they closed down, I had charters booked every day. I lost $1,200,” says Goff. Goff’s experience as a result of the 26-day shutdown was not unique. A […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Mostly you need faith
Grassroots Grants: An Activist’s Guide to Proposal Writing belies its title by first listing all the reasons why nonprofits should not chase grants. That’s because only 12 percent of nonprofit funding comes from foundation or corporate grants, compared to 88 percent from individuals, writes Andy Robinson, who lives in Tucson, Ariz. To make matters worse, […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Andy Robinson’s tips for activists
Pick your fights. It pains me to say this, but you must develop an aversion to lost causes. If you can’t see your way to victory – even if that victory won’t occur for years or decades – pick another fight. To maintain your sanity and stamina, focus your energy where it will do the […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
El Lobo to return
Once considered as endangered as the species itself, the proposal to restore Mexican gray wolves to the Southwest now appears to be back on track. After the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service released its final environmental analysis on the reintroduction of “el lobo” Dec. 27, biologists moved 10 of 149 captive Mexican wolves to New […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Western raptors on the rise
Some birds of prey in the West are fighting back. The Salt Lake City-based group, HawkWatch International, recently compiled up to 18 years’ of data on the birds collected from sites in Nevada, Utah and New Mexico and found a fast rate of growth among merlins, ospreys and peregrine falcons. The average annual population increase […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Cowboy Poetry Gathering
The Cowboy Poetry Gathering is back Jan. 25-Feb. 1, to celebrate the ranching traditions of poetry, music, art, dance and “plain old visiting.” The 13th annual shindig in Elko, Nev., pays special tribute to Canadian cowboys, while daytime events range from workshops on ranch-kitchen cooking to multi-day classes on songwriting, saddle-stamping and rawhide-braiding. Evenings feature […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Rivers Festival
Sometimes all it takes is a fish and you’ve got a festival. California salmon and how to save them is the focus of the 17th annual Rivers Festival Feb. 7 to 9 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. Keynote speeches by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., writer and environmentalist Tim Palmer, and Cadillac Desert […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Volunteer student interns
The Colorado State Senate seeks volunteer student interns for its regular session Jan. 8 through May 7, 1997. Each intern will be assigned to a senator to answer phones and mail, do research and attend some committee meetings. For more information contact Mary Marchun at 303/866-3065. This article appeared in the print edition of the […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Santa Fe’s Forest Trust
What makes a forest product from the Southwest socially and ecologically responsible? That’s what directors of Santa Fe’s Forest Trust will try to determine at six public meetings Jan. 18 to Feb. 16 in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. The eventual goal is the creation of a voluntary “green label,” to help consumers make […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
National Mining Conference and Exhibition
The 100th National Mining Conference and Exhibition will be held at Denver’s Hyatt Regency Hotel Feb. 2-5. Call Nina Marrone of the Colorado Mining Association at 303/894-0536. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline National Mining Conference and Exhibition.
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Wear what you sow
South Dakotan Michael Melius sells jewelry you plant – -Seed Beads’ loaded with seeds of increasingly rare native grasses and wildflowers and strung on scraps of linen thread. It was the simplest packaging Melius could think of. “I had tried to sell seed mixes in packets with little success, I think, because that packaging implies […]