Note: a sidebar article, “A muckraker throws a well-aimed wrench,” accompanies this feature story. WESTON HILLS, Wyo. – Larry Gerard’s blue work shirt whips in the wind as we stand among ponderosa pines on this ridge. To the west, the Bighorn Mountains glitter with spring snow. Just below, rancher Joe Collins is planting wheat. The […]
Growth & Sustainability
Posted inMarch 29, 1999: Wheeling and dealing
A muckraker throws a well-aimed wrench
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In the end, Wyoming’s self-appointed public-lands watchdog wasn’t able to halt the “Big Trails’ land swap atop the Bighorn Mountains. But his one-man battle against the controversial deal changed the way land exchanges are handled in the Cowboy State. The watchdog is John Jolley, […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
The ranch restored: An overworked land comes back to life
Note: in three sidebar articles accompanying this feature story, environmentalist Kathleen Simpson Myron, environmentalist Rose Strickland, and retired BLM range conservationist Earl McKinney give their perspectives in their own words. McDERMITT, Nev. – The Trout Creek Mountains of southeastern Oregon will never rank among America’s most magnificent peaks. Although beautiful in their way, the Trout […]
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Fun-hogs to replace cows in a Utah monument
As tourists flock to southern Utah’s new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, ranchers are breaking camp and moving out. In December, the nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust announced it had brokered a deal between five ranching families and the Bureau of Land Management to retire or relocate grazing allotments on about 120,000 acres inside the monument. “There […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wants to lure volunteers to work in a number of positions ranging from trail crew workers to campground hosts. Volunteers choose the region and the Corps matches them with a project. Call the Volunteer Clearinghouse at 1-800-VOL-TEER, write to P.O. Box 1070, Nashville, TN 37202-1070, or check out www.orn.usace.army.mil/volunteer. […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Agencies seek quieter public meetings
This winter, hundreds of people filed into school gymnasiums, town halls and hotel conference rooms, working up the gumption to stand in front of a crowd and speak out on the future of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. To their surprise, the stomach butterflies were for nothing. They didn’t find the rows […]
Posted inDecember 7, 1998: Vail and the road to a recreational empire
Land Trusts
The last decade has been a good one for the West’s land trusts. A census conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Land Trust Alliance reveals that the number of land trusts that serve the Rocky Mountain states has risen from 20 to 52, and the Southwest shows similar growth. Nationwide, these private nonprofits, whose primary purpose […]
Posted inOctober 26, 1998: The Oregon way
Trading away the West
Historical photographs of ranch life tend to be so full of men that an observer might think no women ever lived on the range. But in 1898, Mabel Souther did more than just live on the Big Red Ranch in northeastern Wyoming – she took pictures that documented the working life there. Perhaps her cowpoke […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
More than pretty parks
The secret’s out. Some Bureau of Land Management land can rival the scenery of more famous – and more crowded – national parks. The BLM, in cooperation with more than 20 conservation and recreation groups, has just published Beyond the National Parks, a guide to Western public lands, which covers all the Western states, including […]
Posted inAugust 3, 1998: Tribes reclaim stolen lands
We can take it
As the country struggled through the Great Depression, nearly 3 million young men came together in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) with the motto, “We can take it.” Between 1933 and 1942, the CCC built 125,000 miles of roads, strung 89,000 miles of telephone lines and revegetated almost a million acres of rangeland. This year, […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Fees please visitors
Land-management agencies call new user fees an “unqualified success’ and they’re asking Congress to make them permanent. During its first season on more than 200 sites around the country, the fee program raised $53.5 million. Before the trial fees got under way, public correspondence ran about 2-to-1 against, saying they discouraged low-income and local users […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
To burn or not to burn
Another 40-foot stick-figure totem will be set ablaze by 12,000 revelers in the desert in Nevada if a federal agency says yes to the San Francisco-based organizers. Last year the Burning Man arts get-together was moved to private land, where county fees, including $308,000 for fire insurance alone, drove the festival into debt. That made […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
VERNAL, Utah – Dinosaurs live on in northeastern Utah. A life-size plaster Tyrannosaurus rex, advertising nearby Dinosaur National Monument, stands poised to pounce on visitors as they enter the town of Vernal. The wide main street is lined with hotels, restaurants and gift shops – the Dinosaur Inn, Dine-a-ville, the Dinosaur Quarry. Thousands of visitors […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Colorado BLM going wild?
The Bureau of Land Management has announced that an additional 167,000 acres of public land in western Colorado are eligible for wilderness status. When the BLM’s roadless lands were first surveyed in 1980, 800,000 acres in western Colorado were given protection as potential wilderness areas. The new acreage may now be added to these existing […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Private rights vs. public lands
Thousands of inholdings create conflicts inside federal lands
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
On the offensive: developer Tom Chapman
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. There are those who say he’s a classic American businessman who’s become a fierce defender of private property rights. Critics believe he’s a Colorado profiteer who makes millions blackmailing the U.S. Forest Service to buy him out. One thing is clear: Thomas E. Chapman […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Managing scenery, wildlife and humans
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. STANLEY, Idaho – Since it was set up 25 years ago, the Sawtooth National Recreation Area has been colored by a contentious relationship between the Forest Service and private landowners, whose inholdings – including homes, ranches and businesses – account for 25,000 of the […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Counties want to develop public land
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. It’s not the pristine view that Lewis and Clark observed nearly 200 years ago. Wind surfers zip across the wind-whipped river; barges haul goods to seaports and cars cruise down the freeway. Cities, dams and homes dot the landscape. But the Columbia Gorge National […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Haggling over the Grand Staircase-Escalante
Conoco has turned its back on an oil well in Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. In December, Conoco engineers “packed up their oil rig and they are out of there,” says Bureau of Land Management spokesman Don Banks. “The hole has been capped without a blade of monument grass or a dollar of taxpayer green […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Mountain bikers in Moab pay to ride
MOAB, Utah – Mountain bike pilgrims who come to ride Moab’s Slickrock trail find something new these days: a tollbooth. Next to the booth, a sign reads: “Welcome to Sand Flats. All fees are used here for improvements.” A visit to this mecca of mountain biking now costs $1 per person if you’re walking or […]