If the 13 endangered salmon runs on the Columbia and Snake rivers go the way of the dodo on our watch, the responsibility for this denouement cannot be laid at the feet of the five Columbia River Indian tribes or their allies in the biological and aquatic sciences. For two decades, in courtrooms and at […]
Politics
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Racetrack
Environmental groups are worried that a proposition on California’s ballot may limit their ability to sue corporations that violate state or federal environmental laws. Proposition 64 would repeal a section of the state’s Unfair Competition Law that allows state or local attorneys or members of the public to sue a business for “unlawful, unfair and […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
‘Green elephants’ abandon Bush
Republican conservationists pine for the
days of Roosevelt and Goldwater
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Despair not one more day
“… My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” — Adrienne Rich History shows that the proverbial rock can be rolled, if not to the top of the mountain, […]
Posted inWotr
Why the West gets mostly ignored in an election year
The other night we were channel-surfing and hit upon the Miss America pageant. “What year did women get the vote in the United States?” a contestant was asked. The answer, according to the pageant judges, was 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The correct answer is a little more complicated. […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Election-year environmentalism
The Bush administration throws enviros and hunters some bones
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Dems stumble in Arizona race
One of the environment’s dirty dozen leads in congressional ‘fair fight’
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Californians take a stand on GE crops
Farmers fear a ballot initiative may takedown a tried-and-true rice variety
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
In presidential politics, the West is a forgotten time zone
The other night, we were channel-surfing and hit upon the Miss America pageant. The contestants were being asked questions, and the one on the screen was “What year did women get the vote in the United States?” The answer, according to the pageant judges, was 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Environmental issues disappear into election-season smog
If you care about the environment, and you survived the presidential debates without running out into the backyard to scream at the heavens, you’re a bigger person than I. For those of you who missed them, the three debates included just one question on that “fringe issue” of what’s in the air we breathe, and […]
Posted inWotr
American — and proud of it
Until I traveled to Holland recently, I didn’t know how irreversibly American I am, perhaps not precisely a patriot — the word comes from the Latin for father — but certainly one deeply identified with my native land. In Amsterdam, people eyed me with pity, suspicion or loathing as soon as I opened my mouth […]
Posted inWotr
The West has to count on itself
If you care about the environment, and you survived the presidential debates without running out into the backyard to scream at the heavens, you’re a bigger person than I. For those of you who missed them, the three debates included just one question on that “fringe issue” of what’s in the air we breathe and […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
The Coyote Caucus Takes the West to Washington
Their fathers were Western conservation giants. Can the younger Udalls bridge today’s social and political divides and leave their own legacy?
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
The Udall bloodline is consistent
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Coyote Caucus Takes the West to Washington.” Throw a stick around the West’s public offices and institutions, and the odds are decent you’ll hit a member of the extended Udall clan. Joining Mark Udall and Tom Udall in Congress is their second cousin, […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Udall patriarch laments startling changes
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Coyote Caucus Takes the West to Washington.” Stewart Udall lives in a comfortable adobe house near downtown Santa Fe, N.M. Now 84 years old, he’s earned the distinguished looks of a Western sage, with his beaked nose, strong face, long hair. Each evening […]
Posted inWotr
So much for sticking to the center
Return with us now to those thrilling days of not quite four years ago, when George W. Bush was taking office and almost every veteran political observer — even including your humble agent here — predicted that his presidency would not stray too far from the ideological center. We were, as fools so often are, […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Racetrack
This election day, Arizonans will decide who can vote in future elections — and what they’ll have to bring with them to the polls. Proposition 200, or the Arizona Tax Payer and Citizen Protection Act initiative, would prevent noncitizens from voting, require all voters to present identification at the polls, and also require state and […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
So much for sticking to the center
Return with us now to those thrilling days of not quite four years ago, when George W. Bush was taking office and almost every mainstream, establishment, veteran political observer — yea, even including your humble agent here — predicted that his presidency would not stray too far from the ideological center. So much for the […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Hunting: It’s not about the gun
I killed my first deer on an October morning, two days after my 14th birthday. I was hunting on my grandmother’s ranch in south-central Colorado, and I can still see that deer, ghost-gray in the dawn, its form more like smoke than animal. I remember how my chest was tight and my arms and legs […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
State judges get political
Special-interest money pours into hotly contested judge campaigns