Less than three years after the Clinton administration devised a plan to protect most of the remaining ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest, the big trees have started to fall again. Taking advantage of an obscure provision in a salvage logging bill recently signed by the president, loggers have begun cutting healthy old-growth forests west […]
Politics
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
Congress is reworking 100 years of federal policy
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Right-wing conservatives, who have long argued that the nation would be best served if public lands and resources were in private hands, believed that their hour had come. On Sept. 19, a bill reached the floor of House of Representatives to create a commission recommending the sale of selected lands now managed […]
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
To save a Utah canyon, a BLM ranger quits and turns activist
Floating past cottonwood trees and tamarisk just before dusk, Skip Edwards deftly keeps his raft within earshot of ours so he can pummel us with facts about the 1964 Wilderness Act. But around the next bend, the former Bureau of Land Management river ranger falls silent and points to a massive red and orange sandstone […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Inside the glitter
In the past, photographers wanting to document Nevada’s workers headed for the mines, forests, ranches and irrigated farmlands. But no more, according to photojournalist Kit Miller. Today’s workforce can be found in the state’s casinos. Miller, a Nevada native, says she took on the project of interviewing and photographing this new Nevada workforce to confront […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
U.S. House to the environment: Die!
Attacking the environment through the yearly appropriations process is not new. But this year’s Congress may take it to new heights. No less an authority than House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., has acknowledged the scope of policy changes hooked on to appropriations bills: he called them “without precedent going back to 1933.” The attacks range […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Washington voters win vote on takings bill
Washington residents will decide at the November polls whether to scrap their state’s new takings law – considered the most extreme take on the subject to date. Volunteers fighting the law, known as Initiative 164, gathered more than 230,000 signatures before the July deadline. That’s more than double the amount needed to force a referendum, […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Memo incontinence strikes again
Leaked memos seem to be a recurring problem for Republican Sen. Slade Gorton. The Washington lawmaker received unwanted publicity in February when environmentalists obtained a memo revealing that industry groups had written his Endangered Species Act reform bill (HCN, 5/1/95). Now comes a second memo, dated June 1 and directed to the managers of three […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
A progressive bureaucrat signs off
Daniel P. Beard, who resigns as commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation effective Sept. 1, snorted when asked the question he’d already heard dozens of times: “Why are you really resigning?” But the long-time reader of High Country News loosened up, and then talked for a half-hour, when publisher Ed Marston noted: “You’ve been one […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
A 77-year-old cow watcher from Arizona
Reader Pauline Sandholdt wrote to let us know that a photo caption in our May 1 issue had blown a “considerable hole” in her confidence in High Country News. The picture in question appeared on page 19 of our special issue on land grant universities headlined, “Reform comes to “Ag” Schools.” It depicted cattle in […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Legislature votes to hamstring Washington state
By late July, Washington state could have the most far-reaching “takings” law in the nation – one so dramatic that even zoning might require landowner compensation. The Washington Legislature’s recent approval of Initiative 164 has elated its backers. “It is a crushing blow for big-government advocates, over-zealous state and federal bureaucrats, and cash-laden, well-heeled environmental […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
This budget cut is destructive
Business isn’t being conducted as usual on Capitol Hill these days, and no better example exists than the perils besetting the Land and Water Conservation Fund The fund, created in 1965 at the height of the Great Society, was designed to finance federal purchases of land for recreation and habitat enhancement, and to give states […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Heard Around the West
The terms of the engagement are clearly expressed in the West’s local papers, especially in the Casper Star-Tribune. This small but extraordinary daily, which tries to cover all 97,000 square miles of Wyoming, gives enormous space to local news, and at times, fills two or three broadsheet pages with letters to the editor. If the […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Will the bill’s authors please stand?
A memo to Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., shows lobbyists wrote most of a bill scaling back the Endangered Species Act. The Feb. 28 memo from Gorton aide Julie Kays says in part: “The coalitions delivered your ESA (Endangered Species Act) bill to me on Friday” I know you are anxious to get the bill introduced. […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
It’s deja vu yet again, says Bruce Babbitt
Washington, D.C. – On Dec. 24, 1992, while most Americans were eating Christmas Eve dinner, the four Marstons were listening to All Things Considered on National Public Radio. The occasion was Bill Clinton’s nomination of Bruce Babbitt to be secretary of Interior. To be honest, the occasion was NPR reporter John Nielson’s taped interview of […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Is it politics, or is it revolution?
With Republicans firmly in power after the November landslide, a kind of insurrection is brewing in nearly every Western state. In legislative halls throughout the West, it’s popular to assert states’ rights under the 10th Amendment, streamline or gut environmental regulations and push private property “takings’ legislation. Some states, including Arizona, Utah and Idaho, have […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
County commissioner courts bloodshed
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. Dick Carver barnstorms the West telling crowds of ranchers how he faced down an armed federal agent to open a road in the Toiyabe National Forest. “We’re going to bring the power of […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Back to the past: House resets pollution laws
This is not a good time to be an environmentalist in Washington. With House Republicans scrambling to meet their self-imposed deadline of voting in the party’s Contract With America by the Easter recess, some of the most anti-environmental bills in the history of environmental legislation have blasted through the House of Representatives. This is also […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Slash and burn
Many good, green guys and gals were blown away Nov. 8, and bills now in Congress would block environmental regulation through “takings” analyses that elevate property rights above the public good. But legitimate fears should not blind the environmental community to new opportunities for positive change. Voters also blew out deadwood and shook the foundations […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
James Watt charged with felonies
A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., has indicted former Interior Department Secretary James Watt for lying to Congress and obstructing an investigation of fraud and influence peddling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Federal prosecutor Arlin Adams says that after Watt left the Reagan cabinet in 1983, he earned $500,000 for interceding […]