A ranch that promised to be an important addition to Wind Cave National Park in the Black Hills is now for sale on the open market. The 5,555-acre Casey Ranch would increase the park’s land base by 20 percent, and add an 85-year-old homestead and a “buffalo jump” — a cliff from which American Indian […]
Recreation
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
On a new national monument, has an agency been cowed?
Can cows coexist with rare plant communities in a national monument? That is what President Clinton asked the Bureau of Land Management to determine when he created the 52,947-acre Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in 2000. The monument, east of Ashland, Ore., is an ecological crossroads where three distinct bioregions – the Siskiyou Mountains, the Cascade Range […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
National monuments are here to stay
President Clinton’s national monuments have survived a legal assault by two conservative groups that sought to strip the areas of protection. On Oct. 6, the Supreme Court declined to hear arguments against six Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service-managed monuments created in 2000 and 2001. The monuments, including Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona and Giant […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Snowmaking and drought: a bad combination
Researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder say that extended drought, coupled with mining pollution, could make for rocky winters at Colorado ski resorts. A recently released study published in the American Geophysical Union’s EOS Journal examines the Snake River Watershed in Summit County, Colo., where hotter weather threatens snow conditions at popular ski resorts […]
Posted inWotr
Ski resorts go for the green
Because ski resorts are beautiful in winter and green in summer, they have usually been considered good environmental citizens. But in the last few years, that perception has begun to erode. In 1997, there was the Earth Liberation Front’s terrorist attack on Vail’s Two Elks Lodge to protest the resort’s expansion into lynx habitat. Later, […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Bill would redraw the boundaries of national monument
But some Montana ranchers want to stay where they are
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
National monument back under attack
In southern Utah, local officials are escalating their fight against the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. On Aug. 25, Kane and Garfield County commissioners and two state legislators sent a letter listing their grievances with the monument to Utah State Bureau of Land Management Director Sally Wisely and national BLM Director Kathleen Clarke, among others. The […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2003: The West's Biggest Bully
Showdown at the Four Corners
Visitors to the Southwest know the Four Corners Monument as a bleak, dusty site that tourists flee once they’ve snapped a photo on the slab where four states come together. But that could all change with a proposed $4 million expansion project. Four years ago, Congress authorized $2 million to build an interpretive center, permanent […]
Posted inWotr
Free Hetch Hetchy!
To the members of a nonprofit group called Restore Hetch Hetchy, one solution to overcrowding in Yosemite Valley in California seems obvious: Create a duplicate of that enormously popular attraction, complete with its own spectacular waterfalls and soaring granite cliffs. The proposal would not require a team of theme-park engineers to execute since a natural […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 2003: Courting the Bomb
Developer tries to make a killing off the Black Canyon
Notorious for snapping up private inholdings surrounded by federal land and then reselling them for big profits, Colorado developer Tom Chapman is at it again. Chapman made a name for himself in 1992, when he used a helicopter to carry building supplies for a luxury cabin into a 240-acre inholding within the West Elk Wilderness […]
Posted inWotr
The strange allure of tipsy trips in Montana
Drinking and driving in Montana has begun to be something of a cliché. Locals tell out-of-state newspapers that we measure distances in beers. A Los Angeles Times story a few months ago included a quote from Bill Muhs of Bozeman: “Bozeman to Billings is a six-pack drive…. Crossing the state would be a whole case.” […]
Posted inWotr
When does a deer become an elk? And other questions…
At what point did moose become marvels, bears become monsters and a 300-yard walk get to be strenuous? When did the human eye need a digital camera to properly experience the unimaginable proportions of the West? While working for the Park Service at Natural Bridges National Monument in southern Utah, and now for a concessionaire […]
Posted inWotr
It’s time for ‘quiet recreationists’ to speak up
At long last, the people who make our beloved backpacking tents and climbing ropes and kayaks have taken some responsibility for helping us trample freely about the wilderness. In May, leaders of the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) gave Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt an ultimatum. Leavitt had just signed deals stripping temporary wilderness protection from 2.6 […]
Posted inWotr
Hanging loose in Wyoming’s bear country
My friend Fred says that what he enjoys most about camping in the wild is watching people hang their food. Though you’re miles from a television, it’s far funnier than anything Hollywood could invent. And on a recent trip with some friends, Fred and I demonstrated the truth of his theory. The concept is simple: […]
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
Park Service guts budget to fight terrorism
The National Park Service plans to cut millions of dollars in trail and building repairs to cover its share of the “war on terror.” Since 2001, the Park Service has moved more of its rangers to parks with international borders and high-profile icon parks such as the Statue of Liberty. As rangers are reassigned, their […]
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
Mammoth airport expansion on hold
Conservationists recently won a round in their fight to curb expansion at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. In April, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the Federal Aviation Administration violated federal law when it chose not to conduct a full-scale environmental impact statement on the proposal to expand Mammoth-Yosemite Airport on the east side of […]
Posted inJune 9, 2003: How we see the West
Tourist tales from the New West
I knew I was in trouble the first morning of our cruise. We were headed up the Columbia and Snake rivers on a Lewis and Clark bicentennial expedition, and this well-dressed widow sat down beside me at breakfast. Her diamond ring was the size of an unshelled peanut, and her hair matched the silver flatware […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
Hiking toward healing
Maybe it sounds crazy for us to have spent years getting me well from cancer, only to go out into grizzly bear country. But we wanted to be back in the wild country that I dreamed of when things were at their worst. Diagnosed with cervical cancer at 30, Katie Gibson of Bozeman, Mont., craved […]
Posted inApril 28, 2003: Indian Power
Bison arrive in Grand Canyon uninvited
While Yellowstone National Park struggles to keep its bison herd within park boundaries, managers at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona are facing the opposite problem. Drought has recently driven a herd of bison into the park from the House Rock Valley, a region of steep, wooded canyonlands in the Kaibab National Forest just north […]
Posted inApril 14, 2003: Change comes slowly to Escalante county
Off-roaders steer agencies with dollars
A proposal for an off-road vehicle (ORV) trail in central Idaho is kicking up dust. The Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation wants to link 460 miles of existing routes already open to ORVs on federal lands. The agency says the loop trail, which would run through the Lost River Valley and the towns of […]