After holding 600 public meetings and reading 1.6 million citizen comments, the U.S. Forest Service released its final version of a plan to limit road-building on nearly one-third of America’s national forests (HCN, 11/8/99: A new road for the public lands). The preferred alternative now includes protecting 9.3 million acres in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, […]
Books
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Yosemite shuffles into a new era
Many of the 4 million visitors to Yosemite each year remember the national park for its towering granite cliffs, magnificent glacial valleys – and for its congestion. On Nov. 14, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt unveiled a new management plan that he says will reduce traffic and help restore the park’s natural habitat. Though park officials […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Backtracking
“Western road maps are full of old trails: the Lewis and Clark Trail, the Oregon Trail, the Sante Fe Trail, the Outlaw Trail, and the Nez Perce Trail. Their vague lines connect the West that was to the West that is. They may even stretch to the West we imagine will be. But underneath them, […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Ferrets are back in town
Black-footed ferrets once roamed the prairies of South Dakota. But the destruction of prairie dog towns vastly reduced the ferret’s habitat and pushed it onto the endangered species list. Now, the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe is restoring ferrets to the reservation, where the predators fill an important niche in the fast-disappearing shortgrass prairie ecosystem. So […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Saving Places 2001
Colorado Preservation Inc. invites anyone interested in preserving historic and diverse cultural sites to Saving Places 2001. The event will take place Feb. 2-3, 2001, at the Denver Athletic Club and will feature tours, workshops, social events and speakers. For more information, call 303/893-4260 or write: 910 16th St. #1100, Denver, CO 80202. This article […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Rivers without water
Rain pelts cities in western Oregon at up to 10 inches a month in the winter wet season. Yet each summer, 10 major rivers and streams, including the often-visited Deschutes, dwindle to trickles or dry out completely. “The average person isn’t even aware this problem exists,” says Reed Benson, executive director of Portland-based WaterWatch, a […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
A bird? A plane? It’s the environmental air force
Soaring above oil and gas wells in a six-person Cessna 210 is a far cry from flying in a crowded commercial plane. LightHawk, a nonprofit airline, uses the view to protect the environment. Based in San Francisco, Calif.; Aspen, Colo; and Seattle, Wash., LightHawk flies nearly 1,300 politicos, conservationists and journalists over degraded landscapes every […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Some Puget Sounders bet on the farm
In western Washington, two counties have begun a program called FarmLink to save family farms. FarmLink connects prospective farmers with current farmers in King and Snohomish counties who would like to sell all or part of their lands. It also provides workshops on marketing and other subjects for both would-be and current farmers. Over the […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Toxic bird feed
Environmental toxins can move through the food chain with surprising speed, James Larison, an Oregon State University biologist, found after studying white-tailed ptarmigans in a 10,000-acre area in central Colorado. Forty-six percent of the birds had accumulated toxic levels of the trace metal cadmium in their kidneys. The sequence, Larison found, begins with willows, an […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Efficient energy is efficient business
It is rare that business sense and environmental quality interest intersect to make a resource-use decision so obvious. But the recent rise in Northwest power prices has turned energy conservation into good business, says Lyn Oha Carey of Washington State University’s Cooperative Extension Energy Program. The program’s Energy Ideas Clearinghouse Web site offers many ways […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Bypass bickering
Fred Dexter of Nevada’s Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club agrees that heavy traffic between Phoenix and Las Vegas mandates another bridge over the Colorado River near Hoover Dam. But Dexter is crusading against the plan the Federal Highway Administration has chosen: a four-lane bridge at Sugarloaf Mountain, just downstream from the dam and within […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Take a walk
If anyone walking along the sidewalk were to make deafening noises, spew poisonous gas into innocent faces, and threaten people with a deadly weapon, they would be arrested. Yet a few feet away, on the public roadway, it is considered normal behavior.– Steve Stollman, a cycling/pedestrian advocate in New York City, quoted in Divorce Your […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Into the depths
Scientists from the federal government and the University of New Hampshire pulled off an amazing feat this July: They went to 600-feet-deep Crater Lake in Oregon and, “took all the water out of it,” says Jim Gardner of the U.S. Geological Survey. Gardner and his team managed this without actually moving any water: They used […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Grassbanks in the West: Challenges and Opportunities
A conference on Grassbanks in the West: Challenges and Opportunities brings together environmentalists, ranchers, the Forest Service and writers Nov. 17-18 in Santa Fe, N.M. Speakers include former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, writer and Valle Grande Grassbank director Bill deBuys, poet and Animas Foundation director Drum Hadley and High Country News publisher Ed Marston. For […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Northwest Mining Association
The Northwest Mining Association holds its 106th annual meeting, “Winds of Change,” in Spokane, Wash., Dec. 4-8. Contact the NWMA at 10 N. Post St., Suite 414, Spokane, WA 99201-0772 (509/624-1158), www.nwma.org. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Northwest Mining Association.
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Cowboy Poetry Gathering
The 17th annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev., Jan. 27 to Feb. 3, 2001, aims to keep the ranching tradition alive and kicking. Contact the Western Folklife Center, 501 Railroad St., Elko, NV 89801 (888/880-5885) or on the Web at www.westfolk.org. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Snake River salmon and steelhead
How much do people value the restoration of Snake River salmon and steelhead runs? Environmental economics students and faculty from Reed College in Portland, Ore., and Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., are trying to find out using a confidential Web survey. Find the survey at people.whitman.edu/~crouter/survey/intro.htm. This article appeared in the print edition of […]
Posted inOctober 23, 2000: Stalking Slade
The power of vision and memory
Messages from Frank’s Landing: A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way, by Charles Wilkinson. Illustrated with maps by Diane Sylvain and black-and-white photographs. University of Washington Press, 2000. Hardcover: $22.50. 128 pages. The dust has long settled from the Northwest’s fishing wars of the late 1960s and ’70s – wars which set Indian […]
Posted inOctober 23, 2000: Stalking Slade
Mapping a vision
Although local environmental groups often know their immediate surroundings in detail, there’s a bigger picture available. The State of the Southern Rockies Ecosystem, a report released by the Nederland, Colo.-based Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project, inventories much of three states – Colorado, northern New Mexico and southern Wyoming – that compose an ecoregion, an area with […]
Posted inOctober 23, 2000: Stalking Slade
Birds break boundaries
The Colorado state office of The Nature Conservancy has worked for years to preserve chunks of the state’s shortgrass prairie, breeding grounds for birds such as mountain plovers, burrowing owls and long-billed curlews. But staffers always knew their efforts in Colorado could provide only part-time protection, since most of these species travel south during the […]