Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. State trust land may have a single purpose, but each state has a different way of doing business. Most Western states lease trust land for logging and grazing, and many states have huge subsurface holdings that earn millions from mineral development. A few states […]
Growth & Sustainability
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
California monument welcomes cattle
Does the wildlife-rich Carrizo Plain need grazing to thrive?
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Idaho wants to help manage federal lands
Idahoans may soon have more say about how federal forestlands are managed. In 1998, the Idaho State Land Board appointed a group of eight recreationists, teachers, lawyers and timber company executives to devise ways that locals could work with the federal government to manage public lands. In late February, the committee released Breaking the Gridlock. […]
Posted inFebruary 26, 2001: Return of the natives
‘Zero-Cow’ initiative splits Sierra Club
Are urban members ignoring rural range life?
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Critics rail against expansion project
SOUTH DAKOTA Nearly three years ago, Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad (DM&E), based in Brookings, S.D., proposed the largest railroad expansion plan in a century. The $1.4 billion plan would upgrade 600 miles of existing track in Minnesota and South Dakota, and construct almost 300 miles of new track out of Wyoming into South Dakota. […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Legal woes for Legacy Parkway
UTAH After the federal government signed off on the construction of a 14-mile highway along Utah’s Wasatch Front in early January, a coalition of environmentalists and smart-growth advocates, including Salt Lake City’s controversial Democratic mayor, filed two separate lawsuits. Utahns for Better Transportation contends that the Federal Highway Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Mr. Babbitt’s wild ride
Note: this front-page editor’s note introduces this issue’s feature story, “Interior view,” an interview with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. In the rough-and-tumble world of American politics, you can be a hero one day, a bum the next. Few know this better than Bruce Babbitt. Eight years ago, when the U.S. Senate confirmed Babbitt as secretary […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Interior view
Bruce Babbitt took the Real West to Washington: A High Country News interview
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Bush administration faces a reborn Interior
Now that the former attorney general of Colorado, Gale Norton, has been nominated as secretary of Interior (see story page 3), the cast of main characters is complete, and the four-year run of what is certain to be an interesting play can begin. The details of the script will be written on the fly, but […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
From cumbersome to collaborative
The National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the federal government to assess the environmental impacts of its actions, has become synonymous with contentious public hearings and cumbersome environmental impact statements. But it shouldn’t be, argues Daniel Kemmis, director of the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Missoula, Mont. “(NEPA) represents a national recognition […]
Posted inSeptember 11, 2000: Holy water
GAO blasts land exchanges
A recent audit report by the General Accounting Office found that land exchanges by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are rarely in the public’s best interest. In fact, the report says that both agencies often agree to exchanges that undervalue public lands and overvalue private holdings. The report, BLM and the Forest […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Neighbors oppose land trade
COLORADO A 640-acre piece of high-elevation forest and meadowland is the topic of a heated debate in central Colorado. The future of the Little Cochetopa Creek School Section near Salida is now in the hands of the State Land Board, and Chaffee County residents worry the board will choose private development over public domain. A […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Out of the darkness
A Western Colorado community meets a coal boom halfway
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
Lawmaker accepts Babbitt’s challenge
COLORADO Western Colorado’s Black Ridge Canyon has the largest array of sandstone arches outside of Utah, second only to Arches National Park. What it lacks is over-arching protection. That may soon change. Republican Rep. Scott McInnis, from nearby Grand Junction, is proposing to make the 130,000-acre Black Ridge Canyon a national conservation area, with 72,000 […]
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
Stirrings in the San Rafael Swell
A recreation explosion forces some action in Utah’s deadlocked wilderness debate
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
Another compromise plan falls flat
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article,”Stirrings in the San Rafael Swell.” In Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt’s State of the State address in January, the two-term Republican announced what he called an “unprecedented opportunity.” The opportunity was a huge land swap of state and […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Baca Ranch buy-out has strings attached
Bill could put millions of acres of public land on the auction block
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Locked out of the public lands
Rich folks are blocking the public domain, say hunters and ORV riders
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Tug-of-war continues over trust lands
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Wildcat subdivisions fuel fight over sprawl.” In the summer of 1998, Arizona Republican Gov. Jane Hull pulled together 15 conservationists, business leaders and state legislators and formed the Growing Smarter Commission. Their task would be to ward […]
Posted inMarch 27, 2000: The last wild river
Resource Advisory Councils (RACs)
The Colorado office of the Bureau of Land Management is seeking nominations for positions on its Resource Advisory Councils (RACs) throughout the state. Members serve for three years and will have a say in how Colorado public lands are managed. Nominations are due by April 20. For information and nomination forms, contact the BLM Colorado […]