“With no disrespect to the eagle, I’ve always thought that the horse should be our national emblem.” —Singer Willie Nelson, arguing against the slaughter of horses for human consumption Interior’s fuzzy science. If it were up to many U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists, the Endangered Species Act would now protect the Gunnison’s prairie dog, […]
Growth & Sustainability
Posted inOctober 30, 2006: Peace Breaks Out In New Mexico's Forests
Two weeks in the West
“It won’t be serving the Wal-Mart and Kentucky Fried Chicken crowd.” — Jeania Joseph, town clerk for Big Water, Utah, referring to the $200 million Amangiri resort slated for construction near Lake Powell. It will boast $6 million villas, $1,200 a night rooms, and a 100,000-square-foot-spa. EPA boots soot, sort of. Fine particles of soot […]
Posted inOctober 30, 2006: Peace Breaks Out In New Mexico's Forests
Peace Breaks Out In New Mexico’s Forests
Out of the angry thickets of the past, environmentalists and loggers cut a new path
Posted inWotr
These are my public lands, partner
“Somebody owns it,” my father said, sweeping his hand across the Pocono Mountains zipping by the windshield. I was a young boy when he told me this, and I can remember being puzzled by how someone could own a mountain. If you grew up in Pennsylvania as I did, you understood that just about everything […]
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
BLM busted for booting whistleblower
Former BLM staffer Earle Dixon, who was in charge of cleanup at the abandoned Yerington copper mine in Nevada, says he was fired in October 2004 after one year of work for informing local residents and the media of radioactive contamination at the mine. He accused the BLM, the State of Nevada and the U.S. […]
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
Clinton-era roadless rule is back… for now
Federal court ruling creates more questions than answers
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
A deliberate life in the Rockies
If you’re feeling assailed by civilization — its cell phones, computers and telemarketers — David Petersen has an antidote for you. But be forewarned: It’s strong medicine. It’s taken Petersen more than two decades to acquire his hard-earned lessons, and the going hasn’t always been smooth. In 1981, he and his wife, Caroline, left behind […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Roadless returns!
On Sept. 19, U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte reinstated protection for some 50 million acres of roadless national forest land. (Separate rules govern the roughly 9 million roadless acres of Alaska’s Tongass.) Laporte ruled that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act when, in 2005, it repealed President […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Free will flounders in the courts
Judges in Nevada and Montana threw out a handful of libertarian ballot measures in September. Montana State Judge Dirk Sandefur ruled that petition circulators engaged in a “pattern of fraud,” deceiving people into signing the petitions for a trio of ballot measures in that state. The measures sought to limit land-use regulations and taxes, and […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Dottie Fox, one of the greatest old broads
It’s never pleasant to read the obituary of someone you’ve met several times and admired for more years than you can remember. But the several obituaries of wilderness advocate Dottie Fox of Aspen, 86, who died Sept. 11, glowed with admiration for her joie de vivre and effectiveness. As reported by the Rocky Mountain News, […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Online: Web watchdog
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Radio: Spice for the ears,” in a special issue about community media in the West. Four years ago, Dave Frazier spent a whole summer in court, suing Boise over the city council’s decision to build an $18 million police station without putting […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
A little wild
Percentage of land in each Western state that is federally owned, versus what is designated as wilderness. 47.2 | 6.2 Arizona 45.1 | 14 California 36.2 | 4.8 Colorado 61.6 | 7.5 Idaho 27.9 | 3.6 Montana 83 | 4 Nevada 33.8 | 2.3 New Mexico 52.4 | 3.7 Oregon 62.2 | 1.5 Utah 28.3 […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
Is the great federal land debate over?
Every decade or so, people push the idea of selling off big chunks of public land or transferring that land to state ownership and management. Outside of small parcels, it has never happened, probably because most of us support leaving public lands in federal hands. With the recent pronouncements of Idaho’s own Dirk Kempthorne, now […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
States crack down on illegal immigrants
Congress punts until after the elections; states turn ‘nativist’
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Underworld
It was August 1997, and I stood beside a manhole cover at Ninth Avenue and F Street in the border town of Douglas, Ariz., with a small gathering of police detectives, firefighters, and city workers. Cones diverted traffic around us. Frank Garcia, a hazardous-materials technician, knelt and ran a tube through one of the silver-dollar-sized […]
Posted inWotr
Utah legislation endangers lands we hold dear
There’s a bill before Congress that would have far-reaching impacts for my backyard in Utah and could also set a precedent for where you live, especially if you — like me — love the public lands that make the West unique. The legislation is called the Washington County Growth and Conservation Act, sponsored by Utah […]
Posted inWotr
Is the great federal land debate over?
Every decade or so, people start pushing the idea of selling off big chunks of public land or transferring that land to state ownership and management. Outside of small parcels, it has never happened, probably because most of us support leaving public lands in federal hands. With the recent pronouncements of Idaho’s own Dirk Kempthorne, […]
Posted inWotr
Rainbow Gathering lacks one color — green
When we tell folks that we have become the unwitting hosts for the Rainbow Family’s annual gathering, the first response is “the who?” As it turns out, some 20,000 Rainbows have gathered in Big Red Park, north of Steamboat Springs, Colo., in the Routt National Forest. Their Web site, welcomehome.org, styles them “the largest non-organization […]
Posted inWotr
Fencing off Mexico is an ecological blunder
Medical doctors have their Hippocratic oath in which they pledge to heal the sick to the best of their ability and do no harm. We ecologists have our own guiding principle: Call it the Leopold oath. The late Aldo Leopold, who worked for the U.S. Forest Service and is considered to be one of the […]