Way out on the sagebrush sea of the American West, people are embarking on an uncharted new journey called community-based conservation. Their flagship is the greater sage grouse, a bird that has narrowly avoided being added to the endangered species list because of the cooperative efforts of people around the region. The decision not to […]
Wildlife
Posted inWotr
My jeans grow on trees
My family owns a timber company in Washington state, and for us, money grows on trees. Every time we buy something, we see the physical signs of our consumption in our backyard. Paying for my recent college education, for example, took about 300 log truckloads of second-growth Douglas fir, cedar and hemlock trees. A $60 […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
The little bill that… can’t
For 13 years, the Ojito Wilderness Study Area — a 24,000-acre patch of semi-arid land just 40 miles from Albuquerque — has awaited full-fledged protection under the Wilderness Act. But despite the support of Democrats, Republicans, environmentalists, ranchers, miners, city folk and local American Indian tribes, the land has not been designated wilderness — because […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Rulings keep the West open for business
Decisions not to protect sage grouse and prairie dogs could mean more development in sagebrush and grasslands
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Fisheries agency rewards a loyal bureaucrat
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Conscientious Objectors.” People who worry about the Pacific Coast’s endangered salmon runs are likely to recognize James Lecky’s name. In 2002, Lecky, an assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Region in Long Beach, Calif., reworked his agency’s flow recommendations for the Klamath River. The […]
Posted inWotr
Western governors take aim at wounded species
Judging by their comments last week at a meeting in La Jolla, Calif., Western governors have thought a lot about the Endangered Species Act and its consequences for ranching, farming and real-estate development in their states. It became equally clear during the meeting that many governors have not thought clearly about this most far-reaching of […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2004: Where Do We Go From Here?
Old-growth sales end in courts
Ruling could put the kibosh on Biscuit Fire timber salvage and cutting in old-growth reserves
Posted inDecember 6, 2004: Where Do We Go From Here?
Transforming the Forest Service: Maverick bureaucrat Wendy Herrett
Since the frontier age, the West’s forests have been home to all kinds of rogues and rebels, from family logging operations to stubborn ranchers to hard-core eco-defenders. And for nearly as long, the U.S. Forest Service has been charged with keeping them all in balance. But sometimes, the Forest Service needs its own mavericks. For […]
Posted inWotr
Now that we’ve clear-cut the Forest Service…
I first met the U.S. Forest Service in 1967, when I helped build a log cabin at 9,600 feet on the Gunnison National Forest in western Colorado. The idea that I was part owner of 300,000 square miles of beautiful land intoxicated me. We became so drunk on the land that in 1974, we moved […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
EPA pulls back on fish-killing rule change
A little attention from the media helped thwart an attempt by the federal government to do a favor for the mining industry at the expense of fish and birds. In question is the metal selenium, which is a byproduct of coal- and phosphate-mining, copper-smelting and agriculture. At low levels, selenium is an essential nutrient for […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
Calling all birders
Ever wonder how your feathered friends are faring in the face of deforestation, farming and other formidable foes? You can find out in the National Audubon Society’s State of the Birds 2004 report. Using 40 years of data collected from the U.S. Geological Survey’s national Breeding Bird Survey, the National Audubon Society assessed population changes […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
A New Dialogue for Idaho
Environmentalist Rick Johnson and Republican Congressman Mike Simpson are crafting a new language for wilderness protection, but not everyone wants to speak it.
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
Freewheeling wilderness proposal irks purists
Oregon bill would allow mountain bikers and chain saws in ‘wilderness’
Posted inWotr
A lesson in consensus from contentious Idaho
I can’t get too worked up about the national election’s impact on Western land issues. I don’t live in a state where oil and gas development is roaring through publicly owned lands the way it’s doing in Wyoming and Colorado. Democrats still have enough votes in Idaho’s Senate to stop legislation that fundamentally changes the […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
Keepers of the Flame
GILA NATIONAL FOREST, New Mexico — In April 2003, a thunderstorm built over southwestern New Mexico’s Black Range. Clouds darkened the skies above soft-shouldered hills and steep canyons covered by dense thickets of juniper and piñon pine and galleries of tall ponderosa pine. Sometime around 2:00 in the afternoon, lightning struck on Boiler Peak, northwest […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
Saving wildlife, one animal at a time: Veterinarian Kathleen Ramsay
ESPAÑOLA, New Mexico — Kathleen Ramsay found her calling in a veterinary school lab, when a man brought in a golden eagle caught in a foothold trap. “He threw the trap and chain at me, with the eagle flapping in the trap,” she says. “(That’s when) I decided … to help animals that could no […]
Posted inWotr
The political science of salmon non-recovery, 101
If the 13 endangered salmon runs on the Columbia and Snake rivers go the way of the dodo on our watch, the responsibility for this denouement cannot be laid at the feet of the five Columbia River Indian tribes or their allies in the biological and aquatic sciences. For two decades, in courtrooms and at […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Trout wriggles into a sagebrush rebellion
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raised the stakes in a conflict between environmentalists and Elko County, Nev., in June, when it proposed critical habitat for the endangered bull trout along the Jarbidge River. The agency proposed designating 131 miles of streams in Idaho and Nevada as critical habitat — which sets aside land essential […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Wandering into wolf territory
The long-running political battles over wolf reintroduction in the West can seem fixed in amber: Environmentalists usually stand on one side and cattle growers on another, with the state and federal governments suspended somewhere in between. But as historian Jon Coleman makes clear in Vicious: Wolves and Men in America, these positions solidified only recently. […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Wolves are welcome in one Western state
Oregon may soon be the first Western state to independently welcome back wolves following their near eradication and reintroduction in the Lower 48. In September, a citizen panel of ranchers, hunters, wildlife activists and others presented the state Fish and Wildlife Commission with a blueprint that would allow eight or more wolf packs to move […]