The Bureau of Land Management has a new nationwide strategy for off-highway vehicle management. The plan, released Jan. 19, calls for local environmental analyses of vehicle impacts, saying that some endangered species habitat may need further protection from OHV use. It also broadens BLM’s definition of off-highway vehicles, which will now include snowmobiles, personal watercraft, […]
Recreation
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Monumental changes
With only three days left before George W. Bush would become president, the Clinton administration pressed forward with its land-protection plans and created seven new national monuments. The Sonoran Desert National Monument in Arizona is the largest of the pack, encompassing over 486,000 acres of desert northeast of Organ Pipe National Monument. The area will […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Park Service bans Jet Skis
A recent settlement between the National Park Service and Bluewater Network, a San Francisco-based conservation group, may eliminate personal watercraft from the entire park system by 2002. Last March, the National Park Service banned Jet Skis from all but 21 of its units. The watercraft are now restricted to 11 national recreation areas – including […]
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Montana, feds find common ground for bison
Greens find no good news for the animals
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Ski area arms race dirties the water
Colorado critics say snowmaking should not be allowed
Posted inJanuary 29, 2001: Power on the loose
Paul Fritz left a unique legacy for the Park Service
We have reached a time when many conservation legends of the 20th century are disappearing. David Brower, the environmental giant, is a recent example. Now we’ve lost a lesser-known but very influential conservationist. Paul Fritz died quite suddenly on Christmas Eve from an undiagnosed brain tumor. He was 71. Fritz’s generation possesses a pure conviction […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Republicans rebuff snowmobile plan
WYOMING Just days after a Dec. 12 U.S. Supreme Court ruling handed the presidency to George W. Bush, Republicans were trying to undo a piece of President Clinton’s land protection legacy. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., attached a last-minute rider to an omnibus appropriations bill prohibiting the National Park Service from spending any money to enforce […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Coalition finds harmony in the backcountry
Skiers, snowmobilers agree to give each other elbow room in Idaho
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Park sues notorious developer
COLORADO The National Park Service says it won’t buckle under to Tom Chapman, the Colorado developer who has a history of marketing luxury homes on private inholdings within the state’s wilderness areas and forests (HCN, 7/5/99: Wilderness developer Tom Chapman is back). Officials at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park near Montrose, Colo., […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Counties want a park road opened
UTAH An unpaved road to spectacular sandstone Angel Arch in Canyonlands National Park has become another battleground in the continuing war between rural county commissioners and the federal government. The Park Service restricted motorized travel along the primitive Salt Creek Road in 1995, reducing the number of vehicles per day from 70 to 20. Since […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Students’ snowmobiles show up industry
WYOMING Last winter, in about six months, university students designed a cleaner snowmobile – a feat the four major snowmobile manufacturers haven’t been able to accomplish in 10 years, says Teton County Commissioner Bill Paddleford. Paddleford co-founded the Clean Snowmobile Challenge, held in Jackson, Wyo., to find alternatives to two-stroke engines that emit more than […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Feds fight chaos in a desert playground
ORVs are banned from more than half of California’s Algodones Dunes
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Ranchers take law into their own hands
UTAH What began as the Bureau of Land Management’s attempt to salvage rangeland from a dry summer has become a miniature Sagebrush Rebellion. This summer, the BLM repeatedly ordered ranchers Quinn Griffin and Mary Bulloch to remove their cattle from remote grazing allotments in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Finally, the agency did the deed itself, […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Are the stars out tonight?
UTAH In this time of booming Western tourism, the star-filled night sky has become a valuable natural resource. That’s why Moab, Utah, is trying to regulate commercial light pollution. City planner Janet Lowe says people come to Moab, a town enviably placed between Arches and Canyonlands national parks, to experience the area’s natural beauty. Now, […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Yosemite shuffles into a new era
Many of the 4 million visitors to Yosemite each year remember the national park for its towering granite cliffs, magnificent glacial valleys – and for its congestion. On Nov. 14, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt unveiled a new management plan that he says will reduce traffic and help restore the park’s natural habitat. Though park officials […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
Anchors away?
NATION Hoping to end a 10-year stalemate over whether permanent climbing anchors should be allowed in wilderness areas, the Forest Service assembled a committee of rock climbers, wilderness advocates, government officials and recreation-industry representatives to advise it on a rule (HCN, 8/17/98: Forest Service pulls anchor ban out of thin air). Thus far, the committee […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Bypass bickering
Fred Dexter of Nevada’s Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club agrees that heavy traffic between Phoenix and Las Vegas mandates another bridge over the Colorado River near Hoover Dam. But Dexter is crusading against the plan the Federal Highway Administration has chosen: a four-lane bridge at Sugarloaf Mountain, just downstream from the dam and within […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Into the depths
Scientists from the federal government and the University of New Hampshire pulled off an amazing feat this July: They went to 600-feet-deep Crater Lake in Oregon and, “took all the water out of it,” says Jim Gardner of the U.S. Geological Survey. Gardner and his team managed this without actually moving any water: They used […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Congress moves on local proposals
Babbitt’s ‘monument tour’ led to some legislative solutions
Posted inOctober 23, 2000: Stalking Slade
Mudfest debacle muddies off-roaders’ future
COLORADO Boulder, Colo., disc jockeys “Willie B” and “D Mack” were just looking for a good time when they invited KBPI listeners to join them with four-wheel drive vehicles at Caribou Flats, west of Boulder, on Sept. 23. But by the end of “Mudfest,” their unofficial gathering, 200 off-road vehicles had driven through a 25-acre […]