Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Big Buyout.” The legislation proposed by the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign would offer a “golden saddle” to public-land ranchers, ponying up $175 per animal unit month — the amount of forage needed to support a cow and her calf for a month. […]
Growth & Sustainability
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
One BLM district grabs the bull by the horns
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Big Buyout.” One hot spot for grazing retirements is the Upper Deschutes area of south-central Oregon, where ranchers have been butting heads with a burgeoning population of newcomers, prodding the Bureau of Land Management to move cows off the land. Private development is […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Public-lands ranchers: Should you trust this man?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Big Buyout.” Andy Kerr, who has been an environmental activist for more than 20 years, was a key figure in the struggle to curtail logging in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, he is the director of the National Public […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2005: An Empire Built on Sand
Nevada desert to be sold for debt relief
Bush wants proceeds from public-land sales sent to Washington, D.C.
Posted inMarch 21, 2005: An Empire Built on Sand
BLM land sold without study
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Nevada desert to be sold for debt relief.” On Feb. 9, several developers paid a surprising $47.5 million, more than four times the projected price, for 13,000 acres of federal land just north of Las Vegas. The […]
Posted inWotr
One West
Looking back over the past century, the greatest shortcoming of the conservation movement in the American West has been its near-total failure to devise a strategy for privately owned land in the region. By any yardstick — watershed acres, animal species, ecological processes — conservation success on private land has been small. While many environmentalists […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
The road to nowhere
Utah’s backcountry road takeover comes apart at the seams
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Protecting the people’s right of way: Public-access advocate Bill Calvert
The Yuba Goldfields in California’s Central Valley is one of the more bizarre and intriguing landscapes in the state — a swath of moonscape, wetlands, and sagebrush that stretches along both sides of the Yuba River. Huge piles of rock tailings, left by gold dredgers in the early part of the last century, loom over […]
Posted inWotr
Sneak fees stalk our public lands
Would you still call your town library “public” if a private corporation managed the books your taxes paid for, then charged you a fee to borrow them? Thanks to a provision sneaked into the recently passed federal spending bill, we may face that question about our public lands. Just hours before senators were expected to […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
BLM’s crown jewels go begging
National Landscape Conservation System remains underfunded even as visitors increase
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
Japanese cars may get all the good lanes
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Colorado voters hold the cards on renewable energy.” A proposed new law would give some hybrid-vehicle owners access to California’s coveted commuter lanes — and the CEO of Ford Motor Co. is feeling left out. The bill, […]
Posted inAugust 30, 2004: How Long Will it Flow?
Public lands lifeline
Wading through the vast web of laws and policies that govern our public lands can be confusing even for lawyers, let alone for ordinary citizens. Even commenting on a Bureau of Land Management resource management plan, which guides grazing, mining, oil and gas drilling, and off-road vehicle use, can be daunting. But The Wilderness Society […]
Posted inAugust 30, 2004: How Long Will it Flow?
Interior encourages BLM land sales
Selling public lands will let Western cities sprawl into new territory
Posted inAugust 30, 2004: How Long Will it Flow?
Fees and our forests don’t always fit
The next time you visit your local public library, drive an interstate highway through the West or attend a city council meeting, imagine how frustrated and upset you’d be if you were charged a fee for the privilege of doing so. In spite of the tax dollars you already pay to support these entities, imagine […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Taking the load off the environment
BASALT, Colorado — Jonathan Fox-Rubin wants to start a revolution in car manufacturing. In his sunlit office in western Colorado he explains his approach to the weighty question of how to make cars easier on the environment: He goes straight to the body of the car. If the skeletal system of automobiles can be made […]
Posted inWotr
Bumper stickers and the politics of rage
“You’ll be lucky to get out of South Dakota alive,” the professor said, looking at one of my bumper stickers. He smiled, adding, “I may be kidding.” This was not my first warning that this bumper sticker might be dangerous. Leaving that small college campus, I was thoughtful. My cars have carried the same message […]
Posted inWotr
Sometimes a policy is just words
One of our nation’s more dubious political practices is the tendency to cloak questionable — even harmful — environmental policies in the rhetoric of conservation. Consider the debatable environmental merits of the current administration’s “Clear Skies” and “Healthy Forest” initiatives, two policies that many argue weaken existing protections for air, water and forests. This month, […]
Posted inWotr
Fees and our forests don’t always fit
The next time you visit your local public library, drive an interstate highway through the West or attend a city council meeting, imagine how frustrated and upset you’d be if you were charged a fee for the privilege of doing so. In spite of the tax dollars you already pay to support these entities, imagine […]
Posted inWotr
Driver’s ed from a pedestrian’s point of view
A few of my friends have completely sworn off bike-riding on roads. One too many shoulder brushes with the side-view mirror of a recreational vehicle. One too many dives for the ditch. They can’t take it anymore, and who could blame them? Some are threatening to give up walking as well, since being a pedestrian […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
A champion of ‘cooperative conservation’: Interior Secretary Gale Norton
In recent months, High Country News has spilled a lot of ink covering the Bush administration’s policies for the public lands — and the controversies swirling around them. At the center of that storm is Bush’s secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton. Norton is charged with overseeing the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land […]