Western Colorado Congressman Scott McInnis occupies a congressional seat that until 1972 was the most powerful one in the West. It was owned by the late Wayne Aspinall, a Democrat who chaired the House Interior Committee in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the federal government was continuing the development of the Interior West. Federal […]
Politics
Posted inApril 14, 2003: Change comes slowly to Escalante county
The Northwest’s diehard diplomat
Former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber fought to bring a divided state together
Posted inWotr
The West’s negligent landlord
Western Colorado Congressman Scott McInnis occupies a congressional seat that until 1972 was the most powerful in the West. It was owned by the late Wayne Aspinall, a Democrat, who chaired the House Interior Committee in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the federal government was pouring billions into the the Interior West. Federal agencies […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2003: Bracing against the tide
White House record on rollbacks
It’s undoubtedly grim reading. But it should be required for every conservationist — Democrat, Green, Republican or Independent. The Natural Resources Defense Council has just released its review of the Bush administration’s 2002 record on the environment. In Rewriting the Rules: The Bush Administration’s Assault on the Environment, the council details more than 100 federal […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2003: Bracing against the tide
Does your representative make the grade?
It’s report card time again for Congress, and Western politicians are seeing more Fs than As. According to the League of Conservation Voters’ annual National Environmental Scorecard, Western congressional members had some of the worst environmental voting records in the nation. Out of a possible score of 100, the senators of Colorado, Idaho, Utah and […]
Posted inWotr
The Bush administration is doing something right on fire policy
There isn’t much I can praise about the Bush administration’s approach to Western resource issues. But its instincts on firefighting policy are just about right. If it can fill in its knee-jerk act of cutting the budget with a sound, long-term policy, it could lead the West out of a quagmire that has been deepening […]
Posted inWotr
Everybody’s a greenie now
Suddenly, everybody’s green: developers, who believe a golf course pond is good for wildlife, ski resort managers, who want to use recycled water to make artificial snow, absentee owners, who want to cut everything in sight in the name of fire prevention, though they spend a weekend a year in their Southwest trophy homes. Or […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2003: The Wild Card
While America waits for war, the environment suffers
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the best of times, it’s tough to get the average American to pay attention to such arcane matters as whether it should be legal to sue the Forest Service if it fails to protect wilderness in Alaska, or whether to pay logging firms to thin one section of forest by letting […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
Wyoming at a crossroads
Can a new governor bust the Cowboy State out of its stagnant economic corral?
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
Excerpts from Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s inaugural speech Jan. 6, as he took office
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Wyoming at a crossroads.” “For too many decades, we have dreamed of a day when the government of these United States would transfer the ownership of its lands to state or private hands. While this dream may occupy our hearts, it cannot be the […]
Posted inWotr
There are perils in cowboy diplomacy
If there is one thing President George Bush has figured out, it’s the importance of a 10-gallon hat to the American electorate. We adore the cowboy politician, no matter if it’s a pose. No one cares that he was educated at Phillips and Yale, is the grandson of a patrician senator from Connecticut, and summered […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2003: The death of the Super Hopper
“But you don’t sound like a republican…”
Martha Marks, president of Republicans for Environmental Protection, has gotten used to funny looks and puzzled questions. Yes, she’s a green elephant — but she objects to being put in the same category as “jumbo shrimp” and “deafening silence.” She is not an oxymoron. What she is, she says, is “the environmental conscience of the […]
Posted inWotr
Running Green is a learning experience
“Green Party, huh? Well, I’ll vote for you, as long as you’re not a damn Democrat,” said my 70-year-old neighbor when I told him I was running for the Montana state Legislature. Few weeks later, I introduced myself to Tom, a local businessman and one of the Montana Freeman who’d gotten into trouble with the […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2002: Life in the wasteland
The push is on to privatize federal jobs
Thousands of park and forest jobs could go to private contractors
Posted inNovember 25, 2002: Planning's poster child grows up
Conservation vote groups optimistic
Environmentalists redouble efforts on the local level
Posted inWotr
Surprise: Conservation counted in the last election
To many people who care about the West’s publicly owned lands, the Nov. 5 election results fell somewhere between disastrous and catastrophic. Voters handed control of the Senate back to the Republican Party and enlarged its majority in the House of Representatives, thereby sweeping away the fragile congressional roadblock that had hampered Bush administration efforts […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Fenced out of Bush’s gated empire
It is deja vu all over again. And it isn’t. A president has come to a small Western fairgrounds to push his war agenda. I stand with 700 Flagstaff, Ariz., neighbors at the north entrance to the grounds, a hundred yards from the south entrance where the president’s motorcade will glide in. We hold hands […]
Posted inWotr
Democrats need to pick up their guns
For the past 25 years or so, Democrats have been the party of protection for public lands, while Republicans have generally supported more mining, drilling, logging and grazing. It hasn’t always been this way. The protection of public lands was a mainstay of Republican policy for generations. Democrats, acting on behalf of their constituencies – […]
Posted inWotr
Guess what’s the most dangerous government job
Think of all the dangerous beats assigned to federal law enforcement officers: tracking illegal arms sales, intercepting drug smugglers, guarding the nation’s borders against foreign terrorists, apprehending kidnappers and fugitives, protecting the lives of potential assassination targets. Now, guess which branch of federal law enforcement is the most dangerous, in terms of the rate at […]
Posted inWotr
Of mice and me, or how I paid a fee and built a better mousetrap
I never planned to improve upon any kind of mousetrap but for some reason it appears I’ve done exactly that. This is how it happened: Every year my wife and I spend a few days avoiding the summer heat of western Colorado by camping high up in the White River National Forest. For the past […]