Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story about how snowmobilers dominate the small town that’s the main gateway to Yellowstone National Park (West Yellowstone, Mont.). — The simplest way to evaluate snowmobile traffic in Yellowstone National Park is to flip-flop the season to summer: Imagine if most of the people touring the park […]
Recreation
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Montana revved up about snowmobile agreement
MONTANA When hard-pressed, even the most antagonistic foes can reconcile their differences, as snowmobilers and wilderness advocates demonstrated in their recent agreement on motorized access in Montana’s Flathead National Forest. Early last year, months of legal wrangling between the Montana Wilderness Association, Montana Snowmobile Association and the Flathead National Forest ended in a ruling that […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
Dunes shifts toward park status
COLORADO Rural communities often cringe at the prospect of the federal government owning more land. But residents in Colorado’s San Luis Valley are breathing a sigh of relief now that their valley is one step closer to becoming home to a new national park. In January, The Nature Conservancy signed an agreement to buy a […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2002: Here lies the Rio Grande
Groundswell for a monument?
UTAH After President Clinton used the Antiquities Act to establish Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, Gov. Mike Leavitt railed against the move as an abuse of executive power. But during his State of the State address this Jan. 28, Leavitt asked President Bush for something that made environmentalists’ jaws hit the floor: a 620,000-acre […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2002: Last dance for the sage grouse?
Grand Canyon plan relaunched
ARIZONA The Grand Canyon stretch of the Colorado River has become an ideological and regulatory war zone, as debates rage over the use of motorized boats, and private and commercial boaters fight for their share of the river-permit pie. In 1997, the Park Service tried to chart the future of the Colorado by starting work […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2002: Last dance for the sage grouse?
Snowmobilers rev up for roadless riding
Forest Service delays decision to close Montana’s Mount Jefferson to “hot-rod highmarkers”
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Recreation-fee foes catch an agency fumble
Does the U.S. Forest Service need to relearn basic math? In 1996, Congress allowed the agency to charge recreation fees at no more than 100 sites nationally (HCN, 2/14/00: Land of the fee). Now, it turns out the agency forced visitors to pay at 1,349 trailheads, picnic areas and other sites in the Northwest region […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Greens bail on ‘bilers
WYOMING Last summer, a group of snowmobilers, wildlife advocates, cross-country skiers and business owners embarked on an ambitious adventure: to work out a collaborative plan for managing winter use in the Medicine Bow National Forest’s Snowy Range. By early September, two environmentalists had defected. Eric Bonds of Biodiversity Associates and the other green, University of […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Boy Scouts want new digs
COLORADO The Boy Scouts, with their image as resourceful, courteous, “leave no trace” outdoorsmen, seem an unlikely focal point for an environmental controversy over public land use. But that is where the Western Colorado Council of the Boy Scouts of America has found itself since proposing a new Boy Scout camp in the White River […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
The Buffalo War: a maelstrom of Western issues
If there were one emblem of Western history, it might be the American buffalo. In Matthew Testa’s new documentary, The Buffalo War, that emblem becomes the focal point for an impassioned controversy. “The buffalo provide a mirror,” says Testa. “They reflect how we see ourselves and our place in wilderness. And that reflection is incredibly […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Protecting Arizona’s underground wonderland
State agency may condemn private land near Kartchner Caverns
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
A struggling mountain town looks for a lift
Silverton, Colo., hopes a backcountry chairlift will boost its fortunes
Posted inNovember 19, 2001: Bringing back the bosque
Outspoken Yellowstone ranger gagged
Bob Jackson silenced on salt lick problem
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Pedal where Lewis and Clark paddled
In 1976, a time when bikes were still mostly for kids and cross-country cycling was virtually unheard of, a few friends got together to map a bicycling route across the U.S. in celebration of the nation’s bicentennial. Twenty-five years and 25,000 miles of bike trails later, the group, the Adventure Cycling Association, is attempting to […]
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Utah’s Grand Staircase turns 5
Locals still wondering if the monument will provide an economic step up
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Monument of tall trees will stand
CALIFORNIA In late September, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected a challenge to the newly designated Giant Sequoia National Monument in the southern Sierra Nevada. The monument protects 330,000 acres of forest ecosystem, including nearly half of the world’s remaining giant sequoia groves. Timber and off-highway vehicle groups, as well as Tulare County, where […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Park boss gored by grazing feud
Four-decade controversy continues in Dinosaur National Monument
Posted inOctober 8, 2001: Whoa! Canada!
Ski resorts pump up ecoterrorism defenses
Hired sentries call the measures ‘kind of a joke’
Posted inOctober 8, 2001: Whoa! Canada!
Rebuilding a road to prosperity
Ex-timber town’s plan to resurrect a buried highway worries conservationists
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
Congress may agree on fees
NATION The debate over whether people should pay to play on public lands is heating up once again. The Recreation Fee Demonstration Program, created by Congress in 1996, requires people to pay a user fee to visit certain forests, parks or deserts (HCN, 2/14/00: Land of the fee). Although it is due to expire by […]