Last May, when a prescribed burn in New Mexico’s Bandelier National Monument blew out of control and destroyed 200 structures in nearby Los Alamos, burn programs around the nation faced intense scrutiny. But in Boulder, Colo., support for prescribed burning in local open space remains strong. The Boulder Fire Department’s prescribed fire management specialist Rod […]
Books
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
The wild West lives
Jack Hunter abandons his Sierra Club lobbying job in D.C. and a marriage gone sour, eager to settle on life’s placid surface near the Diablo National Forest of southwestern New Mexico. He takes up horseshoeing and jumps into a meaningless affair, enjoying the respite from strenuous work for hopeless causes. But then he meets a […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Dangerous parks
National park rangers say inadequate funding is adding new risks to their jobs. Crime in parks is on the rise, and most parks don’t have the money to beef up their law enforcement. To publicize the problem, the U.S. Park Rangers Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police has listed the top 10 most dangerous […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Small steps for change
A third-generation Coloradan, Jessica Sherwood remembers returning to her hometown of Boulder after a 10-year hiatus in Washington, D.C. “I actually cried,” she recalls, on seeing the once-pastoral corridor between Denver and Boulder transformed into an almost continuous mass of houses and malls. Determined to make a difference, Sherwood decided to tout alternative transportation to […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Arctic Refuge
“When a lone wolf howls it sounds distinctively alone. When a pack howls, the sounds harmonize and mix until the voices of a few blend into the chorus of a multitude. A call answered and passed on. A call to gather.” – Lentfer & Servid in Arctic Refuge: A Circle of Testimony That the call […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Harvesting ancient farming
Western agriculture is a risky business. Even if crops survive the frequent summer droughts, their soil can be washed away by fast and furious monsoon rains. Brook LeVan, co-director of the nonprofit Sustainable Settings in Aspen, Colo., wants to help farmers avoid this annual double jeopardy. This summer, with the help of two teachers and […]
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
On the trail of an exotic ‘native’
Long considered an “exotic” species, wild horses occupy a sort of borderland, caught between the mythology of their origins and the reality of their plight today. This is the subject of a new documentary, El Caballo, by Drury Gunn Carr and Doug Hawes-Davis. Known for their hard-hitting documentary films, Varmints (HCN,10/26/98: Varmints) and Killing Coyote […]
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
Disappearing cowboys get exposure
Each spring, photographer Adam Jahiel leaves his home in northeast Wyoming and treks to the remotest corners of the Great Basin to photograph cowboys on their annual roundups. The seasonal journey has become a 10-year personal quest. Jahiel, whose photos have appeared in The New York Times and National Geographic among others, says he is […]
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
Invasive invaders
On a rainy spring day in western Oregon, five volunteers, clad in raingear and heavy work gloves, slowly work their way up the southeast flank of Mount Pisgah, a tract of private land looming above the Willamette River. Led by Kyra Kelly of the nonprofit Friends of Buford Park and Mount Pisgah, the volunteers cut […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
‘Alternative to Madness’
Anti-nuclear activists have a new way to spread the word about the dangers of weapons testing and radioactive waste – documentary film. In 1998, with borrowed equipment, no budget and little experience, John Brooner of Susanville, Calif., and Sandi Rizzo of Reno, Nev., began filming Shundahai Network’s annual spring gathering at the Nevada Test Site. […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Banging the drum for change
Janet Robideau hates being told “no,” thanks to a Catholic boarding-school education where strict obedience was doctrine. Now, all those years of keeping silent and following rules have inspired her to do exactly the opposite: give voice to Montana’s urban Indians and change the rules that have restricted them for years. Robideau, a member of […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Soul food on the range
Researchers at Northern Arizona University’s Center for Sustainable Environments have some bad news about the average American diet: A typical meal’s ingredients travel 2,000 miles from farm to fork, amassing huge environmental and economic costs along the way. The costs are cultural, too, says NAU professor and noted author Gary Nabhan. While Westerners can instantly […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Birds for a feather
Eagle feathers have been important cultural and spiritual symbols for members of the Pueblo of Zuni. “They symbolize strength, courage and vision,” explains Edward Wemytewa, cultural liaison for the tribe. Until recently, however, tribal members had to put their names on a 5,000-person waiting list to receive a carcass from the National Eagle Repository. With […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
A high country whodunit
When gasoline-inspired flames devoured the massive, splendid Two Elk restaurant atop Vail Mountain in October 1998, many people automatically blamed environmental activists. After all, a federal judge had just allowed the Vail ski area, already the nation’s largest and busiest, to expand into an area where evidence of the rare Canada lynx had been found […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Intrepid explorer with a cause
Many recent college graduates shoulder their backpacks for a genteel trip to Europe. Not Soren Jespersen. The Northern Arizona University alum hoisted his for a five-month 2,200-mile solo trek around the Four Corners region to raise money for the Center for Humanitarian Outreach and Intercultural Exchange or CHOICE. The Utah-based group, directed by Soren’s dad, […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
A sand-brown world
… and the tourists in the curio shop not knowing what to say for once in their lives, but feeling the ground rolling beneath them, experience something most of them won’t see in a lifetime, up on the shelf the kachina dolls, those little gods of beneficence who’ve stood there so long they’re mad about […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Battling for the Bear River
When newspaper photographer Dan Miller covered a protest against a highway project near Logan, Utah, he saw a demonstrator brandishing a sign with the timeworn slogan “Think Globally, Act Locally.” The sentiment hit home. “I realized I needed to be thinking backyard, neighborhood, community,” he says. That meant turning his attention toward the Bear River […]
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Finding home
We were all outside watching the sunset from the casita, which had a high view of the city. From there, the “big picture” was not abstract. It was real, tangible, visible – we could just make out the Burger King sign towering beyond the border fence. The sun was blood red, and then the whole […]
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Sacred Objects and Sacred Places
“When Col. John M. Chivington and his drunken troops killed Cheyenne Indians in the infamous dawn massacre at Sand Creek, Colo.,” writes Andrew Gulliford in Sacred Objects and Sacred Places, “the troops also cut off their victims’ heads for shipment to Washington, D.C.” There, the severed heads were used in attempts to establish a racial […]
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Tribal leaders go to school
Freshmen congressmen go to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to learn the ropes. Now, tribal leaders have a comparable resource. This winter, the University of Arizona and the Morris K. Udall Foundation, in conjunction with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, established what could become the premier training center for Indian leaders – […]