A court decision handed down on Friday, Oct. 13, spelled bad luck for developers of the proposed New World gold mine. A federal judge ruled that Crown Butte Mines and its parent corporations had violated the Clean Water Act by failing to clean up old mine waste from the site, which sits on the northeastern […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Deals and delays for Dixie
After a five-year Forest Service study found that cattle have eaten 94 percent of their allotted grass on the east slope of Boulder Mountain in southern Utah, Dixie National Forest ranger Marvin Turner made a decision. On June 1, Turner told cattlemen to reduce their grazing levels by 42 percent. Ranchers cried foul, and three […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
No profit in Kaiparowits Mine
NO PROFIT IN KAIPAROWITS MINE A company trying to open a coal mine on southern Utah’s Kaiparowits Plateau had better take a second look at its numbers, concludes a recent study by the Grand Canyon Trust. The report says the high cost of trucking coal over 225 miles of roads to rail transfer sites will […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
CHAMA VALLEY, N.M. – Even as this high and stormy valley goes the way of the changing West, its course remains eccentric, defined by cross-cultural grudges. Agricultural land is going fast as middle-class Anglos convert ranches to cabin subdivisions or resorts, but the Jicarilla Apaches are also buying up land to add to their reservation. […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
Cut to the past: logging wars resume
Less than three years after the Clinton administration devised a plan to protect most of the remaining ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest, the big trees have started to fall again. Taking advantage of an obscure provision in a salvage logging bill recently signed by the president, loggers have begun cutting healthy old-growth forests west […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Babbitt protests a $1 billion giveaway
-How can a public official give away $1 billion without going to jail?” asked Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as he signed over 110 acres of public land in Clark County, Idaho, worth $1 billion, to a Danish mining company for $275. To drive home the need for reform, Babbitt signed the deed with an ink-dip […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Too many pesticides
TOO MANY PESTICIDES Dams aren’t the only threat to Pacific coho salmon. A report, Toxic Water, by the Oregon-based Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, reveals that pesticide residues in the waters of the Northwest may have built up to harmful concentrations. Since Western states have no reporting requirements for users of pesticides, few records […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Grazing reform: Here’s the answer
We are veterans of America’s longest war: the war over the public lands of the West. For the past quarter century – in a conflict that dates back to the Civil War – we have written and spoken about livestock grazing on federal lands and fought over how those lands should be governed. We have, […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 1995: The West's fisheries spin out of control
Company slips through president’s noose
When President Bill Clinton ordered a two-year moratorium on mining claims on 19,000 acres of federally owned land surrounding Yellowstone National Park, environmentalists cheered. The order did not prevent Crown Butte Mine Inc. of Canada from pursuing its plans to dig for gold and other metals on its already leased claim just northeast of the […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 1995: The West's fisheries spin out of control
Can sheep and coyote ever coexist?
Finding a niche has never been a problem for the coyote. The wily predator thrives in dense forests, bone-dry deserts and even cities, despite more than a century of human persecution. Taking a cue from the coyote, a scrappy coalition of conservationists, biologists, entrepreneurs and ranchers in Montana is trying to claw its way into […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 1995: The West's fisheries spin out of control
Out of a Hispanic valley: kosher beef
For the Valdez family, ranching in Conejos County – a poor, rural, largely Hispanic and Catholic area of southern Colorado – hasn’t changed much since their ancestors settled there five generations ago. Except that Olive and Demetrio Valdez are now reading a book on Judaism that explains the Kashrut, the Jewish rules governing a kosher […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 1995: The West's fisheries spin out of control
The USDA flexes its antitrust muscle
The Farmer’s Union is not the only organization concerned about the concentration of a few companies in the meatpacking industry. The Department of Agriculture recently charged IBP Inc., one of the nation’s largest meatpackers, with breaking antitrust laws by guaranteeing higher prices to one group of Kansas feedlot operators. The same agreement was never offered […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Babbitt begins range reform
Despite requests for yet another delay by Western senators plus a lawsuit from the livestock industry, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt traveled to Grand Junction, Colo., Aug. 22 to launch the first phase of his grazing reform. Accompanied by Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, Babbitt announced members of three Resource Advisory Councils in Colorado, where ranchers, environmentalists […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
Is Altamont historic, too?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, HCN’s founder fights his last fight, yet again. “We’re part of history, too,” says Cathy Purves, Altamont environmental consultant in Lander. Making it clear that she’s not speaking for the company, she continues, “I think it’s presumptuous of us to say that history stops […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
Tom Bell: outraged by the outrageous
If I were a consultant to the West’s energy and mineral companies and ranchers, and to their politicians and bureaucrats, I would give them one piece of advice: “Don’t get crosswise with Tom Bell. Early on in your ‘process’ tell Tom your plans. If he reacts with a strong no, change them. It will save […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
A Western senator hears from his constituents
Six months ago, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s two-year effort to rewrite grazing regulations for public lands seemed in full retreat. Enthusiasm for the watered-down Rangeland Reform package had ebbed to an all-time low among environmentalists. And Western Republicans, emboldened by the 1994 elections, easily wrested from Babbitt a six-month delay on its implementation so that […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
Festering Idaho mine to be cleaned; others remain
SALMON, Idaho – Four mining companies have agreed to pay the $50 million cost of cleaning up toxic runoff from a defunct copper and cobalt mine. The complex deal between the companies, three federal agencies and the state of Idaho, addresses acid runoff at the Blackbird Mine, about 21 miles west of here. Since the […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
HCN’s founder fights his last fight, yet again
“This is my last big fight,” says Tom Bell. The founder of High Country News, spare and energetic at 71, hasn’t lost the fiery voice that boomed out of the little town of Lander, Wyo., in the early 1970s. During four years of running HCN, Bell took on not just ranchers for shooting eagles and […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Sign of the times
Jordanelle, Utah’s newest state park, opened in early July with a new mountain reservoir and a good deal of controversy. A park sign that was supposed to educate visitors about the damage cattle can cause in streamside vegetation included pictures of a cow standing next to a damaged stream and a cowpie. The text read: […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Back at the Diamond Bar…
-USFS Tags Diamond Bar as Green Showplace,” headlined the pro-ranching Hatch, N.M., Courier, after the Forest Service evaluated the 227-square-mile Diamond Bar grazing allotment near Silver City (HCN, 5/1/95). The agency cut ranchers Kit and Sherry Laney’s permitted cattle numbers from 1,188 to 300, but the ranchers will be able to up that to 600-800 […]