Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles is in a pickle. Last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency effectively delayed the drilling of 39,000 coalbed-methane wells in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin – a major energy project Griles and the Bush administration had hoped to expedite (HCN, 11/5/01: Wyoming’s powder keg ). The EPA rated Interior’s environmental […]
Politics
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Grazing foes float a buyout
But will ranchers and Congress buy in?
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Congress goes barmy over the Army
WASHINGTON, D.C. – “Let’s all go barmy, live off the Army” sang Mack the Knife and his friends in The Threepenny Opera. They must be in town. Come to think of it, they must have gotten elected to Congress, which has been acting barmier-than-usual, thanks to the armed forces. It started in March, when the […]
Posted inMay 13, 2002: Beyond ecology: Restoring a cultural landscape
New monuments: Planning by numbers
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, just before and after George W. Bush was inaugurated, when some of his Western supporters spoke openly about nullifying those 11 new national monuments created by the presidential predecessor they hated. Enter reality, both legal and political. It turns out that the […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Bush will edit NW Forest Plan
The Bush administration thinks the Clinton-bred forestry plan that has governed – and limited – Northwest logging since 1994 is a failure and needs overhaul or replacement (HCN, 7/26/93: Clinton vs. Foley: House speaker is furious at plan to protect Northwest forests). The Northwest Forest Plan procedures that aim to protect habitat for endangered species […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Campaign finance reform may boost grass roots
WASHINGTON, D.C. – We all know that whoever looks too closely at the trees can lose sight of the forest. Something along this line has happened to those around here who make their living watching trees and forests, fields and streams, or mountains and deserts, either to extract resources from them or to guard them […]
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Bush administration wall hanging
Many environmental organizations send their supporters calendars of desert cacti in bloom, lynx lunging through powder snow or fly fishers casting into roaring mountain streams. Not Earthjustice. This year, the environmental law firm’s 2002 calendar profiles 12 Bush administration appointees in Technicolor rhetoric. Each month features a not always flattering color photograph of a different […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
Predator politics gets ugly in Idaho
Fish and Game Director Rod Sando quits
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
Greens join ‘Let’s derail a judge’ game
Federal judges around the West have often been the backstop protecting everything environmental, from stream quality to spotted owls. So it’s surprising when green groups say some judges are systematically undercutting their work. But some “highly ideological and activist judges are threatening the very core of environmental law,” warns a campaign by a dozen groups, […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2002: Last dance for the sage grouse?
No game plan for the public lands
Has the Bush administration forgotten about the West?
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Joy Belsky: ‘She made us better’
Joy Belsky, a Portland, Ore., range ecologist who rose to national prominence while crusading to boot cattle off public lands in the West, died Dec. 15 of breast cancer. She was 56. Belsky took on ranchers who, she argued, were letting their cattle trample native plants and wildlife, public agencies that she believed discriminated against […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Bad moon rising
How Montana’s once-mighty progressive coalition has waned
Posted inNovember 19, 2001: Bringing back the bosque
‘Scholarship, sainthood and simplicity’
Frank C. Craighead Jr., a world-renowned grizzly bear researcher, environmentalist and author, died in Jackson, Wyo., on Oct 21. He was 85. Craighead and his brother, John, who lives in Missoula, Mont., were best known for their pioneering research on the great bear, Ursus arctos horribilis. Among the first people to track wildlife using radio […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Remembering Mike
One of the country’s statesmen died Oct. 5, 2001, at the age of 98. Mike Mansfield grew up in Great Falls, Mont., and worked in the copper mines of Butte before launching one of the longest and most distinguished political careers in history. It was punctuated by his staunch opposition to the Vietnam War. Below […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
The Rio Grande’s unsung diplomat
River activist ‘Uncle Steve’ Harris makes waves rather than headlines
Posted inSeptember 24, 2001: River of dreams
Montana guts a green law
Environmentalists fear life in the post-MEPA era
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
Indian activist may lead cowboys
NEW MEXICO The Sagebrush Rebellion got a charismatic new general in early August: American Indian activist, actor and author Russell Means kicked off his campaign for governor of New Mexico with a visit to rural Catron County. “It’s time for the cowboys and Indians to get together,” he said. Means, the Libertarian Party candidate, was […]
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
Integrity and passion
W.L. Minckley, who stands out in Craig Childs’ lead essay as a three-dimensional figure of integrity and passion, died June 22 in a Mesa, Ariz., hospital from complications associated with treatment for cancer. Dr. Minckley, 65, had mentored graduate students at Arizona State University in Tempe from 1963 until his illness in June. While he […]
Posted inJuly 30, 2001: Not in our back yard
A local heroine
We ran into Paonia’s foremost scientist near our office a few evenings ago, where she was arguing with the cash machine at First National Bank. It beeped insistently at her, until she pushed the right combination of buttons and got it to disgorge her credit card and some cash. It was a rare sighting. Dr. […]
Posted inJuly 30, 2001: Not in our back yard
Forestry nominee: Rey of light or death Rey?
‘Mastermind’ of salvage logging rider would oversee U.S. Forest Service