A new group complains it’s too noisy in the Pike-San Isabel national forests. “Machines are over-running our public lands,” says Quiet Use Coalition board member Dick Scar. Founded in Buena Vista, Colo., the 100-member group hopes to convince the Forest Service to restrict motorized use in 16 areas of the forest to ensure a more […]
Books
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
User fee critics contest report
New gate fees charged in national parks and other federal recreation areas raise money without turning away visitors, according to a recent General Accounting Office report. But the report was based only on the comments of people at trailheads who were willing to fill out cards; those not bothering to respond or who protested by […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Wallace Stegner Lecture Series
In California, this year’s Wallace Stegner Lecture Series is selling out fast. The series raises money for the Peninsula Open Space Trust’s initiative to protect over 12,000 acres of the San Francisco Bay Peninsula. “The properties are so diverse; you name it and we’ve got it,” says coordinator Janet Curtis. Scientist Theo Colborn recently spoke; […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Beyond Borders
Some 50 writers from around the world will convene in Flagstaff, Ariz., March 17-21, for a gathering called Beyond Borders. Special guests include Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz and Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient. Contact the Northern Arizona Book Festival, P.O. Box 2432, Flagstaff, AZ 86003, or www.weeklywire.com/nabookfest/. This article appeared in the print […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Yellowstone Youth Conservation Corps
If you’re between the ages of 15 and 18, you can join the ranks of the Yellowstone Youth Conservation Corps this summer. For eight weeks, paid participants will learn about the environment through park maintenance and resource management projects. Send applications by March 15 to YCC Program, P.O. Box 168, Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190. […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Five Flagstaff photographers
Five Flagstaff photographers are showing their work in an 80-piece exhibit that will be on display until May 31 at the Museum of Northern Arizona. The museum is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 3101 N. Fort Valley Rd., Flagstaff, AZ 86001 (520/774-5211). This article appeared in the print edition of the […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Sustaining the Missouri River for Future Generations
Native Americans and scientists will be among those meeting in Pierre, S.D., on March 21-24, to discuss Sustaining the Missouri River for Future Generations. For more information on the third annual get-together, contact Jeanne Heuser, Columbia Environmental Research Center, 4200 New Haven Road, Columbia, MO 65201 (573/876-1876), e-mail: jeanne_heuser@usgs.gov, or visit the Web site at […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
The 10,894 acre Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in the Flint Hills of Kansas was created in 1996 and the National Park Service is accepting comments on its General Management Plan until March 5. Use the online comment form at www.nps.gov/tapr/altcom3.html or call 316/273-6034. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Wilderness and Spirit
The School of Forestry at the University of Montana in Missoula offers a lecture series focused on human relationships with nature. Wilderness and Spirit is open to the public and takes place every Tuesday at 7 p.m. until the end of April. Speakers include activist Scott Silver and writers Richard Manning and David Peterson. For […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Putting grass back
-On a quarter section in this country, no one could’ve or should’ve been expected to make a living.” * South Dakota rancher Clarence Mortenson A map of South Dakota’s Spring View Township from 1890 shows a landscape plowed and fenced off by homesteaders, lured by grandiose claims of what the plains might produce. In reality, […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Three cheers for the Treemusketeers
When the city council of El Segundo, Calif., announced that it would not support a city curbside recycling program, the Treemusketeers sprang into action. This environmental organization of young people, 10 to 14 years old, surveyed residents, contacted the city waste-hauler and then devised a subscription-based recycling program. Residents now can pay a waste-hauler $6 […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
A Wyoming river needs help
A group of Wyoming fly fishermen needs help resuscitating a river. Since 1961, a 17-foot conduit has been sucking Platte River water from Wyoming’s Fremont Canyon and tunneling it down to a hydro-electric power plant managed by the Bureau of Reclamation. When the river dries up in the summer, “the bugs dry up, the fish […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Clearcut the neighborhood
Whoever said irony is wasted on the West never met Tom Clyde. Clyde spent 17 traumatic years practicing law in Park City, Utah. In 1984, he packed his belongings into his Volkswagen bus and moved to a cabin on his family’s ranch 20 miles away. From this safe distance, he has been providing the locals […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Are snowmobiles overpowering parks?
During the peak of the snowy season in Yellowstone National Park, as many as 1,000 snowmobiles a day roar over its groomed roads. Critics say the machines cause more noise and air pollution than the park should have to handle. Park rangers who sell entrance tickets complain of headaches and nausea from breathing in clouds […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Yellowstone soft on safety
After five people working in Yellowstone National Park were accidentally killed in a little less than four years, a federal investigation found that the first and most famous national park had ignored hundreds of safety regulations. “Employees at almost all levels demonstrated an unwillingness to take responsibility for safety,” concluded a 1998 report by the […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Giving voice to a Lakota history
It is hard to convey just how good this book is; it’s possibly the best book yet about the famous battle of the Little Bighorn. In Lakota Noon, Gregory F. Michno has gathered approximately 60 Indian narratives and produced a detailed reconstruction of the fighting. Individual warriors tell their stories through a chronological timeline of […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
Riding the rails in Colorado
Rails may be the most cost- and energy-efficient way to move commodities across our landscape, but they’re also a shrinking asset; America’s major railroads abandon about 3,200 miles of track every year. How should state and local governments, and community activists, respond when a railroad files to abandon a line? Colorado, where rail mileage has […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 1999: Uncommon Bounty
A research resource to drown in
Water in the West: Challenge for the Next Century has received a lot of press, including a lengthy description in this paper (HCN, 6/22/98). Much less attention has been paid to the 22 background studies that go with the central report. Not only is the price right (free), but it is almost guaranteed that, whatever […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Fees feed volunteers
Years of budget-cutting have taken their toll on the trails and roads of the national parks, and the Park Service is using a windfall from increased user fees to clean up its act. Two million dollars in park user fees have jump-started the Public Land Corps, a program administered by the nonprofit Student Conservation Association. […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
National Land Trust Census
The last decade has been a good one for the West’s land trusts. A census conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Land Trust Alliance reveals the number of land trusts that serve the Rocky Mountain states has risen from 20 to 52, and the Southwest shows similar growth. Nationwide, these private nonprofits, whose primary purpose is […]