Undaunted optimism runs up against a finite landscape
Communities
Posted inMarch 27, 2000: The last wild river
Oh, give me a home…
Contrasting Western images: A lone cowboy on horseback rides through the recently paved streets of a new, cheerily painted subdivision, while a voice laments that the West is becoming a place an old-timer might not recognize anymore. That’s how the documentary, Subdivide and Conquer: A Modern Western, begins. It takes a sobering look at the […]
Posted inMarch 27, 2000: The last wild river
Tax-averse Wyoming hurts itself
As other Western economies boom, Wyoming is trying to rein in a large budget deficit without raising taxes. The Equality State Policy Center, a nonprofit public-policy advocacy group, doesn’t share Wyoming’s romance with “no new taxes,” and says taxes on the state’s minerals industry are an overlooked source of revenue. A report released by the […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
Shadows out West
She greets you and your kids at the doctor’s office. Watching her as she goes about her work she seems very intent, almost frowning. But when a patient arrives she is attentive, tender towards the suffering, reassuring the frightened, and, especially with children, offering an encouraging smile. Her filing is precise and swift, as if […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
Tom Watkins has left us, but his Western dream remains
Tom Watkins, another pathfinder, has passed from the campfire circle. “He was a strong, clear and important voice backed by a good old-fashioned Rooseveltian-Ickesian liberal heart,” says Bozeman writer David Quammen. “Now we’re all older and more alone again, as we knew we were when Ed Abbey died.” T.H. Watkins died last week from cancer […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
A new town hits the skids
Residents say no to development
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Impressions of Nature, an Internet photography exhibit and auction
American Land Conservancy is presenting Impressions of Nature, an Internet photography exhibit and auction. From March 3-31, visit their on-line gallery at www.impressionsofnature.org and view 71 works (see illustration at right) by renowned nature photographers such as Art Wolfe, Thomas Mangelson and David Muench. Then link to www.ebay.com to bid on the photos. For more […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Acre by acre
Can land trusts save the West’s disappearing open space?
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
A land-trust toolbox
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When land-trust staffers get together, they can sometimes sound more like a group of real estate lawyers than environmental advocates. The deals they broker are complicated, but they use a few basic tools over and over again. A conservation easement is a legal agreement […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
‘We didn’t even know what a land trust was’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Sanctuary Forest was founded in 1987 to protect Big Red, a 2,000-year-old redwood tree in Northern California’s Mattole River watershed. “We started with 11 people, since it took 11 of us to join hands and stand around this one particular tree,” says executive director […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
‘We need a whole paradigm shift’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In 1990, the McDowell-Sonoran Land Trust was founded to protect a 36,000-acre, billion-dollar chunk of private and state land near the affluent community of Scottsdale, Ariz. “We realized we weren’t going to raise that money selling T-shirts, so we went to the city,” says […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
‘Our first focus is the landowner’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust is the first land trust founded by agricultural producers. Jay Fetcher, a rancher in Colorado’s Yampa Valley, hit on the idea of a cattlemen’s land trust when he and his family put an easement on their land in […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
‘We have a stake in the place’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Five Valleys Land Trust in Missoula, Mont., was founded 27 years ago to protect the area’s river corridors. The group has since broadened its mission, and has protected over 15,000 acres with easements or acquisitions.Recently, the trust purchased 1,000 acres of land on […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
‘The growth wasn’t organic’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Utah Open Lands is a statewide group that holds about 18,000 acres in conservation easements. In 10 years, it’s grown far beyond the expectations of executive director Wendy Fisher, who helped start the group in Park City when she was finishing her senior year […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Burgers bolster Colorado open space
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. On their way to Steamboat Springs, Colo., skiers and snowboarders from Denver skirt the open, snow-covered pastures of the Yampa River Valley. Snowhounds who enjoy those condo-free vistas can now help preserve them – by chowing down on hamburgers after a day on the […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
A prof takes on the sacred cow
Wyoming’s Cowboy Joes jump on a grazing critic
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
In Wyoming, academic freedom is an endangered species
Mention the term academic freedom, and some people picture professors sitting in ivory towers, writing arcane articles and books for each other. They’re wrong. Academic research and higher education may be specialized, but they are not arcane or irrelevant. Ask the students who flock to this nation’s major universities, or visit the industries that have […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
‘We still have a ways to go’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Jefferson Land Trust, based in Port Townsend, Wash., is a 10-year-old land trust on the Olympic Peninsula with 1,140 acres in conservation easements. In 1996, the trust also acquired the 130-acre Janis Bulis Forest Preserve, donated by Bulis’ widow, Erika Bulis, who continues […]
Posted inFebruary 14, 2000: Land of the fee
Shaping the Sierra
Even though he is now a professor of planning and landscape architecture at the University of California-Berkeley, Timothy P. Duane manages to fold his childhood memories and love of the “Range of Light” into this hefty and complex book about one of the West’s rapidly developing mountain zones. Like many Westerners with an attachment to […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Searching for pasture
Note: this feature article is accompanied by this issue’s Uncommon Westerner profile: “Not your average beauty queen.” At the college of agriculture at Utah State University, a controversy has erupted over a flock of sheep. It doesn’t look like much at first; it concerns the politics of academic funding and the logistics of breeding livestock. […]