In early April, Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, R, began pushing a bill that would limit presidential authority to designate new national monuments by forcing proposals to undergo environmental review first. The draft law is among a slew of similar measures House Republicans are working on in response to Obama’s March 25 creation of five new […]
Politics
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Bigger fires and evolving threats force changes in the Northwest Forest Plan
The summer of 1994 was a nasty one for fires in Washington’s Chelan County, cradled in the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle. Dozens of blazes, including a disastrous one in Icicle Canyon, tore through the drought-stricken forests in late July. Almost a million gallons of fire retardant were dropped on that county, and some of […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Lawmakers scramble to fix the funding problem in Oregon’s timber counties
State and federal lawmakers are scrambling for solutions to the funding crisis in the southwest Oregon timber counties that have been hard hit by cuts in federal aid. A few of the proposals: The O&C Trust, Conservation and Jobs ActThis controversial proposal would move 1.5 million acres of federal forestland into a timber trust to […]
Posted inApril 29, 2013: A New Forest Paradigm
Northwest Forest Plan timeline
1990 Under court order, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists the northern spotted owl as threatened. 1991 U.S. District Court Judge William Dwyer halts Forest Service timber sales in spotted owl habitat across the Northwest. 1994 Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) enacted under Clinton. Timber harvest resumes, but at much-reduced levels; safety net of “spotted owl […]
Posted inGoat
The companies behind the curtain
Ever since the Bureau of Land Management announced more than a year ago that some 30,000 acres surrounding the towns of Colorado’s North Fork Valley like a necklace had been nominated for oil and gas development, wild rumors have flown about who did the nominating. (Nominating leases prompts the BLM to review whether the parcels are […]
Posted inGoat
Changing of the guard at the Department of Interior
Monday was Sally Jewell‘s first day on the job as the nation’s new Secretary of Interior. She replaces Ken Salazar, Obama’s first-term choice. The second woman ever to serve as the head of Interior (Gale Norton, considered a nemesis of conservationists, was the first), Jewell is now in charge of 70,000 employees and 500 million […]
Posted inRange
Pipeline paradox
Despite many high-profile protests and acts of civil disobedience focused on the adverse effects of extracting and burning the fossil fuels the Keystone XL pipeline would transport, Americans have curious, if not contradictory, views of climate and the pipeline. The KXL, if constructed by TransCanada, would move up to 830,000 barrels per day of tar sands (which […]
Posted inGoat
The who, what, where and why of letting it burn
A dusting of new snow here in Paonia, Colo., HCN’s home base, is making it difficult to imagine the fast-approaching fire season. But it won’t be long before the walkie-talkies crackle to life and giant tanker aircraft are dusting the mountains with red fire-suppressant. 1) Was the fire human-caused? If so, the Forest Service will […]
Posted inApril 15, 2013: Sacrificial Land
Federal austerity hits home in the West
When the Tea Party tide crested in 2010, a number of Western Republicans surfed it into the U.S. House of Representatives. There was Colorado Springs’ Rep. Doug Lamborn, who promotes gutting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, saying it’s “low-hanging fruit” that must be picked to shrink the federal deficit. New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce harnessed […]
Posted inWotr
Roadkill: It’s what’s for dinner
Last week, the governor of Montana signed a bill making it legal to salvage and eat wild animals that had been hit and killed by cars – in short, allowing humans to scavenge edible roadkill. The law applies to deer, elk, antelope and moose, and aligns the state with other states such as Alaska, Illinois, […]
Posted inGoat
The legacy of Documerica
Here at High Country News, we’ve been reading and writinga lot about how the federal funding cuts from sequestration will hit home in the West. But as usual, it takes a personal experience to make things real. For me, it came while sitting on a pit toilet at a Bureau of Land Management trailhead outside […]
Posted inRange
How can we sustainably fund our national parks?
Given the iconic status of our national parks—the spirited geysers of Yellowstone, striking gravitas of the Statue of Liberty and Kodachrome hollows of the Grand Canyon—it’s hard to imagine a time when their establishment and protection were a hard sell. But a century ago, that’s where park champions found themselves; hawking to Congress and the […]
Posted inGoat
On setting aside new national monuments
As of last week, our country has five new national monuments; two of them are in the West. The Eastern sites, controlled by the National Park Service, are cultural – new monuments in Ohio and Maryland commemorate Charles Young, the first African-American colonel in the Army, and Harriet Tubman, the most famous conductor on the […]
Posted inRange
Montana’s Rep. Steve Daines warms up to conservation
When the newly minted Congressman Steve Daines stepped into the press conference he wore cowboy boots, standard issue for Republican Congressmen from Big Sky Country. What set him apart were the words that came out of his mouth. Daines, a Bozeman businessman elected in November, held the conference to announce his support for the North […]
Posted inArticles
How fish consumption determines water quality
Jim Peters lives near Puget Sound in Washington, and during fishing season his kids eat smoked salmon like candy. Peters is a council member of the Squaxin Island Tribe of South Puget Sound. Fish permeate nearly every aspect of their culture; in the 1850s tribal members gave up most of their land to settlers in […]
Posted inRange
15 years of Mexican gray wolves: celebrate or sob?
Friday, March 29 will be the 15th anniversary of the day U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staffers braved a blizzard to release the first group of captive bred Mexican gray wolves – also called “lobos” – into the wild. The wolves had been waiting in pens in the Apache National Forest in Arizona, the first […]
Posted inGoat
Montana’s roadkill bill
I remember when a doe collided with my mom’s tank-like 1973 Chrysler Newport, an earwax gold car we eventually dubbed the “the deer slayer.” Mom trudged to a neighbor’s and called my dad, who came out to dispatch the unfortunate animal, and take it home to eat. It became a family joke to tease Dad […]
Posted inRange
A second century of greatness
Earlier this week President Obama used authority granted by the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate five new national monuments. Delaware earned its first national park unit, celebrating the state’s inaugural role in ratifying the U.S. Constitution. Maryland’s Underground Railroad National Monument pays tribute to famous conductor Harriet Tubman. Nature and culture are now protected […]
Posted inWotr
Pop Quiz
True or False? Earth Day was created in 1970 to celebrate all the wonderful ways that our society benefits from mining coal, extracting natural gas and burning fossil fuels. If you were a student in Utah this year, you might be tempted to answer “True,” thanks to an Earth Day poster contest that’s being promoted […]
Posted inWotr
Maybe we should pay something for that open space
We take so many of the West’s open spaces for granted — the private ranches and agricultural lands that provide invaluable resources for us all – from clean air and water, wildlife habitat and crop pollination, to scenic vistas, hunting opportunities, and so much more. But landowners are rarely compensated for the far-reaching benefits they […]