As a fourth-generation Oregonian whose family has only minimally depended on the forest-products industry, I often find myself drifting far from zero-cut environmentalists on the one hand and industry cheerleaders on the other (“A New Forest Paradigm,” HCN, 4/29/13). It’s all too obvious to me how the industry and its dependent towns got into the current […]
Politics
Posted inGoat
Big Brother’s big data is coming to Utah
Last year, with a great deal of prescience, Wired magazine published James Bamford’s long form story describing Bluffdale, Utah where “Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors,” and where, off of Beef Hollow Road, construction was underway on a building five times the size of the U.S. Capitol. The building, which Bamford describes […]
Posted inJune 10, 2013: Paradise at a Price
Is the Violence Against Women Act a chance for tribes to reinforce their sovereignty?
Victims’ advocates joined legislators at the North Dakota Capitol in Bismarck on March 26, to discuss the recently reauthorized Violence Against Women Act. The meeting began on a celebratory note: The federal law restored to tribal courts the right to prosecute non-Indians for abusing or assaulting Native American women on Indian land — something the […]
Posted inGoat
Will Nevada force mining companies to pay their fair share?
The Nevada State Legislature wrapped up its biennial legislative session last Tuesday morning with a number of “good, bad or just plain weird” bills, as the Las Vegas Sun put it, headed to the desk of Gov. Brian Sandoval for approval. The Governor has already vetoed some of the proposed laws, including one that would […]
Posted inRange
Collaborative brings good news to Clearwater Country
Idaho is a paradoxical state. In some places it’s desert and sand dunes, in others, ferns and red cedar. Its people are also a complex mix of rugged individualists with strong churches and communities, of urban professionals and backwoods blue-collar workers. Those contradictions can pull the state apart or bring folks together. One of those […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Of Muir and Pinchot
In “A New Forest Paradigm,” Nathan Rice refers to “John Muir’s preservationist ideals” and “Gifford Pinchot’s utilitarian forestry” (HCN, 4/29/13). Muir certainly fit the mold of a preservationist, believing nature should be preserved for its own sake. But many would argue that Pinchot was more of a traditional conservationist rather than a utilitarian. The latter […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Saving the real old growth
I read with interest Nathan Rice’s excellent article “A New Forest Paradigm” (HCN, 4/29/13). I was around in the 1970s, when the last of the old-growth giants were being felled in Oregon and Washington. I deplored what was happening then and cheered any means of saving those venerable trees, some of which were over 500 […]
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
Word watch
The new buzzword in the woods is “ecological forestry,” to replace “new forestry,” which academics advocated and promoted in the 1990s. I applaud the desire to provide ecosystem management that somewhat mimics nature, but I often question motives (i.e., “to get the cut out”). What “A New Forest Paradigm” fails to acknowledge is that every […]
Posted inGoat
Dying to come to the USA
Cochise Stronghold rises abruptly from the desert outside Tombstone, Ariz., a craggy nest of pink granite spires and domes. Rock climbers like me flock to the area for its tall, coarse slabs, weird rock formations, epic sunsets and remote backcountry feel. Although it’s never happened to me, many climbers I know have encountered tattered backpacks, […]
Posted inWotr
Once there was an effective governor and a middle ground
It’s sobering to recall that, not that long ago, the West wasn’t labeled Blue or Red, but rather a shade of beige. Just a generation ago, centrists like Mike Mansfield, Cecil Andrus, Frank Church, Scoop Jackson, John Melcher and progressives like the cousins Morris and Stewart Udall represented Westerners in Washington. Today, if a Western […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
How right-wing emigrants conquered North Idaho
If anyone in Kootenai County could have predicted the Democrats’ downfall, it was Dan English. He had spent most of his life in the Idaho Panhandle and monitored more than 100 local elections in his 15 years as county clerk. The first ballots he counted, in 1996, revealed tight contests between Republicans and Democrats, but […]
Posted inGoat
Save our gauges
In the spring of 2011, a big, fast-melting snowpack, along with ice-jammed rivers and persistent rain brought intense flooding to Montana. Miles City, in the southeastern part of the state, declared a flood disaster after part of its levee system eroded away, and the town’s stream gauge on the Yellowstone River measured the third highest […]
Posted inGoat
The other Cannabis legalization story
There were obvious ways to avoid being drafted into combat during World War II: Be a woman. Or a man younger than 18. Or a man of prime age who was somehow “physically, mentally or morally” unfit. And then there were less apparent avenues. For instance: grow hemp. The government would not only allow you […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
Token protection?
It’s wonderful that people from many cultures in northern New Mexico recognized the economic benefits from heightened federal recognition of the Río Grande Gorge near Taos. National monuments are powerful economic drivers, and we welcome President Obama’s action. Yet the language of the Río Grande del Norte proclamation offers little additional environmental protection beyond status […]
Posted inMay 13, 2013: Right-wing Migration
The trouble with original claims
I am excited about the Río Grande del Norte National Monument. However, I work for one of the tribes in New Mexico, and given my familiarity with Native issues, I always find the position of the Hispanic community in New Mexico to be rather hypocritical. When they state that they have a claim to the […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Seeking balance in Oregon’s timber country
“Now, that is an old-growth tree!” shouts Jerry Franklin on a September day in the hills above Roseburg, Ore. A mammoth Douglas fir towers 10 stories above, dwarfing everything around it. Sunlight filters down through the thick canopy to a group of about 20 University of Washington students. “You can really see who the veterans […]
Posted inWotr
The public-land legacy of Max Baucus
When Montana Sen. Max Baucus announced last week that he would not seek a seventh term in 2014, Montanans instantly began debating his legacy. After nearly 35 years in the Senate and four in the House, Baucus’ reputation as a conservative Democrat who straddled party lines is well established, and his mediocre lifetime score of […]
Posted inRange
Congress quickly fixes the wrong problem
Last week was a perfect illustration of the broken structure that is the United States government. Congress cannot pass a budget. It can barely pass a law to pay bills already incurred and owed. And its best “deficit” cutting attempt is the decade-long sequester, across-the-board cuts that hit the wrong programs, at the wrong times, […]
Posted inWotr
Don’t mess with the Forest Service
Earl Butz, Richard Nixon’s controversial secretary of Agriculture, was a profane man known for his hair-trigger temper and rough handling of subordinates. So when the chief of the Forest Service stood him up for a meeting, Butz unloaded in response: “There are four branches of government,” he reportedly snarled, “the executive, legislative, judicial and the […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Emily Guerin on ranchers’ and BLM’s collaborative approach to fighting wildfire
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, KDNK’s Nelson Harvey talk with High Country News assistant online editor Emily Guerin about why this unusual collaboration is working in Idaho. Wildfire sound courtesy of dynamicell, freesound.org Shovel […]