Three decades ago, says musician Paul Winter, solitude was easy to find in and around Grand Canyon. Some of his award-winning recordings feature wind, ravens and other natural sounds from the national park. Not these days. When Winter and guide Fran Joseph of the Grand Canyon Trust went to a spot this fall where the […]
Recreation
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
Wildlife plan teams with controversy
WASHINGTON, D.C. – About a decade ago, wildlife officials in Idaho began to realize that there were more wolverines in the Sawtooth Mountain area than they had thought. How many more and how should they be managed? Well, that would take some study, which costs money. And as is the case in many states, Idaho’s […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
If off-road vehicle enthusiasts ever build a museum, a statue of former Idaho Gov. John Evans should stand out front, a scowl on his face, and his now-famous saying – “You’re politically insignificant” – on the statue’s pedestal. Evans made that remark in 1984 to Clark Collins, an electrician and avid dirt biker who wanted […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Can Madison Avenue tread lightly in the West?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Two men bludgeon a parked Land Rover with sledgehammers. They’re swinging as hard as they can, yet they barely make a dent. This is what Kirk Kirssin of Tread Lightly! considers a responsible television ad. Land Rover didn’t have to show a truck blazing […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Trying to think the good thoughts about ATVs
An elk hunter dislikes ORVs despite their convenience because they make the country too small.
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
The “tough love’ trial is over
After Arizona teenager Aaron Bacon died of perforated ulcers on a wilderness program for wayward teens two years ago, eight North Star employees were charged with felony neglect and abuse of a disabled child (HCN, 6/10/96). Now their trials are over, and only Bacon’s field instructor, 22-year-old Craig Fisher, is guilty as charged. Although Fisher […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Through Hells and high water
Jetboats will be banned for 21 days each summer on a 21-mile stretch of the Snake River through Hells Canyon, according to a Forest Service plan that’s been a decade in the making. Environmentalists and recreationists who float the river between Idaho and Oregon praised the restriction as a long-overdue first step toward returning quiet […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
One win, one loss
Fall brought both good and bad news for the Telluride Ski and Golf Company. The western Colorado company got another green light Oct. 22, to double its skiing terrain, when the Forest Service rejected an appeal by environmentalists. But in a separate agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency, Telski will pay a $1.1 million fine […]
Posted inOctober 28, 1996: Has big money doomed direct democracy?
Frequent fliers fleece Grand Canyon
One-third of the air-tour operators in Grand Canyon National Park are breaking the law by not paying a required $25 per flight. According to data compiled by the Sierra Club, some companies such as Las Vegas Airlines and Air Nevada allegedly fail to report their business to the Park Service, and two operators openly refuse […]
Posted inOctober 28, 1996: Has big money doomed direct democracy?
What happens above ground…
For thousands of years, water has percolated beneath southwestern Oregon’s Siskiyou Mountains to form weird marble caverns with limestone chandeliers. Now, National Park Service officials say a neighbor’s mining, logging and grazing may be altering the delicate chemical composition of the caves’ water sources. The “neighbor” is the Siskiyou National Forest, which completely surrounds the […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Snail’s trail leads to Yellowstone
Wolves and exotic lake trout aren’t the only new denizens of Yellowstone National Park. New Zealand mudsnails, as tiny as BBs and as prolific as fruit flies, have rapidly spread throughout the park’s upper Madison River. Although trout eat the snails, they pass through the fish undigested and alive, and reproduce so quickly that they […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
If they build it, will more come?
What’s better for controlling and educating crowds of hikers in Utah’s Grand Gulch – a brand-new visitors’ center visible from the highway or more rangers on the trail? The Bureau of Land Management has removed an old mice-infested trailer and wants to build a 1,600-square-foot center to teach people how not to disturb sensitive archaeological […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Colorado resort shelves ski expansion
After spending two and a half years and some $400,000, the Crested Butte ski resort in Colorado suddenly dropped plans to build new ski runs on a mountain adjacent to the existing resort. “It appears their attitude has changed and we look forward to working with them,” said a relieved Vicki Shaw of the local […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
A harsh and priceless gift to the world
“There was a hardness of stone,” Theodore Roethke starts a poem, “an uncertain glory … Between cliffs of light / We strayed like children.” The Harsh Country, the poem is called. I’m miles away from what I think of as the harsh country, the cliffs of light, the country of bright stone. It has a […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Forget widgets, we sell wilderness
Italian ski racer Alberto Tomba signed a megabucks deal last winter with Vail Associates, the company that operates the Vail ski area. Tomba has a reputation best understood in the United States when compared to Michael Jordan and Madonna. Both admired and scorned, he’s never ignored – exactly the person that Vail Associates wanted to […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Glacier Park finds itself inundated
Some Montanans had a rude awakening this summer when officials announced the end of business-as-usual in Glacier National Park. In July, park Superintendent David Mihalic released management proposals that included closing roads and campgrounds, removing park buildings, and limiting access to the much-loved Going-to-the-Sun Highway. These “preliminary alternatives,” the first steps in revising the 1977 […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
1996: Clinton takes a 1.7 million-acre stand in Utah
A Bold Stroke: Clinton takes a 1.7 million-acre stand in Utah
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
The mother of all land grabs
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah: “In all my 20 years in the U.S. Senate, I have never seen a clearer example of the arrogance of federal power. Indeed, this is the mother of all land grabs. And, the declaration by President Clinton is being made without […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
A daunting, beautiful place
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Covering an area larger than the state of Delaware, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument encompasses some of the wildest, most desolate land in the country. The expanse of canyons, bluffs, grasslands, cliffs is dotted with fossils and Native American archaeological sites. If you stand on […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Managing the monument: The devil is in the details
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. If it survives expected legal challenges, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will in all likelihood stop the industrialization of the Kaiparowits Plateau. While the proclamation creating the monument did not take away Andalex’s right to mine its rich coal fields, federal land managers acknowledge that […]